by Gheorghe Săsărman
Translated from the Romanian by Monica Cure
*** Editors’ note: We continue publishing the missing entries from Săsărman’s groundbreaking 1975 urban fantasies’ cycle. The original collection of imaginary cities was censored in Communist Romania, and appeared in various states of incompleteness in other languages, incl. translated into English by Ursula K. Le Guin. We are grateful to Monica Cure for her faithful translation of the remaining pieces of the puzzle, hitherto unavailable in English language. For more information, read the introductory note to Motopia, the first entry in the series. ***
The city seemed to have neither beginning nor end. Seen from one of the helicopters continuously circling it, it resembled a gigantic tower, the top of which, made small by the effects of perspective, was lost in the distance. From on the ground, its sprawling outline, as if it were an affront to gravity, sprang up toward the misty vault; deep basements, multi-storied cellars and formidable foundations continued downward, unseen, like the true roots of this matchless tree. From the height of a few kilometers, the rods bearing helio-thermal generators, surrounded by the corollas of parabolic mirrors, began to branch out. They were dotted with cantilevered platforms which served as landing and take-off pads for flying vehicles. The final elevation of the city was unspecified; it rose uninterruptedly, according to the orders the central electronic brain gave the computers that directed the growth of the construction. Though the city was living, it could be compared only in one’s imagination with a tree; in reality, no one ever beheld it in a single gaze, and its partial views gave no grounds for such a comparison.
The city’s internal structure was fairly complicated. Through a network of high-pressure tubes circulated water and the minerals extracted from beneath the ground, nitrogen and carbon dioxide of atmospheric origin—the raw materials required for the preparation, with the help of solar energy, of the food and consumer goods necessary for the inhabitants. The core of the construction also housed the air conditioning and temperature control systems, including the installations used in transportation and communications. The technological nucleus was surrounded by a first ring, made up of public spaces; the outer ring was dedicated to residences. These also accommodated the rooms where family members carried out their daily work—which was of an intellectual nature, given that all other functions had been automatized and were conducted by computers.
Young Nat felt forlorn. He had obtained, after lengthy appeals, permission to visit the city. His request, however, awakened the suspicions of the authorities, who were accustomed to a population that, enjoying the advantages of the stereo-chromo-videophonic system of total communication, had long given up even the friendly visits that had once been kept out of tradition. Besides, the inhabitants of the city were also very busy. The obligation to work had been legislated here more for formal reasons, because the practice of useful activities was so deeply ingrained that each adult citizen dedicated almost their entire free time to it. They all had a multitude of occupations and, having versatile skills, they carried out several operations simultaneously. No one had time for the young visitor.
In the gigantic anthill that was Verticity, Nat suffered from loneliness. He would wander for hours on end through the high-speed—and, after a while, rarely used— elevators without meeting a soul. After spending a few days in a research room, he came to know a bit about the city and its history, not enough, though, to be able to come into contact with those who lived there. He felt strangely attracted to the image of the immaterial being who announced the exact time; finally, he decided to go look for her. It was not exactly an easy thing to do: private information was not given out to just anyone, much less to a stranger; he was completely unable to find out the name of his mysterious Dulcinea. The more difficult finding the unknown woman proved to be, the more his attention was irresistibly captured by her evanescent smile. Soon, Nat impatiently awaited the moment in which the exact time would be announced. Furthermore, the operation would repeat, in the principle transportation junctions, each half hour. Completely absorbed by his passion, the stranger did not notice that the few local women he had met were not anywhere close to as beautiful as the announcer. And, though that could have been a simple coincidence, it offered an explanation pertaining to his strange choices.
Nat did not feel the need for an explanation; obsessed, yet suspecting himself of loving blindly, like a teenager, he decided to find a way inside the broadcasting center, whatever the risks. During his investigations, he continued to fall deeper, every 30 minutes of course, into the ecstasy of the exact time —his favorite show and the only one he cared about. Thus he had the opportunity to observe that the announcer changed outfits each time. During the night, she wore long flowing nightgowns, or she displayed her nude body, which made Nat feel his blood rising to his temples; sometimes he reached out his arms toward the illusory figure, helplessly tearing it, moving his fingers through the air.
—I just hope it’s not some great-great grandmother—he prayed, vaguely remembering a story by Edgar Allan Poe—or the ghost of some diva from a previous century…
When, after a long trek, he arrived, finally, at the broadcasting center, he found out that his prayer had been, to some degree, answered. The chromo-spatial images, as well as the soundtrack, were composed—according to a program developed by the automated system, based on opinions expressed by subscribers—of disparate elements, stored in the center’s memory. In despair, Nat had the revelation that he had fallen in love with the ideal of feminine beauty of the inhabitants of that city, which did not seem to be of a nature to console him. Just as the sculptors of antiquity did, the system created the announcer not by copying a certain model, not by giving her the body and face of some star—even one who, in the meantime, had grown old or had passed away long before—but by simply synthesizing, in an ideal personification, those proportions and features which the citizens considered perfect.
He imagined himself kneeling in front of the Venus di Milo, embracing the base from which the superb marble legs of the goddess rose. He despised himself, then told himself that Pygmalion at least had the excuse that he fell in love with his own creation. Regardless, the tormenting love continued to consume him.
Only later, after he had moved definitively to Verticity, after the inhabitants of the city had accepted him among them, after he had started to understand their secrets, did Nat understand that not one of them considered anything untoward about his passion for the chimerical announcer. Since, deformed by centuries-long sedentarism, the slaves of the new Babylon cultivated their elevated esthetic sensibility in secret orgies, among intangible lovers, apparently made flesh on demand by the household recreational robot.
~
