monica cure

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. ***

In that city, made up of absolutely identical neighborhoods, along identical streets were strung identical houses, in whose identical rooms lived identical people. It was (and was not) as if the city were made up of a single neighborhood, with a single street, on which was a single house, in whose only room could be found a single person. (In fact, we should ask ourselves if this last image represents the only possible real version of the design described above.)

However, the city existed, exactly as defined in the first sentence. The entire difficulty had lain with the conception of the project of a metropolis with neighborhoods, streets, and houses that were absolutely identical, as well as with the designing of houses with rooms that were exactly the same. Once these two obstacles had been overcome, the actual construction of the city was carried out with extraordinary speed and precision, given that thousands of houses were completed according to one and the same model—which constitutes, no doubt, the timeless ideal of builders. Ultimately, the raising of the city came down to two fundamental operations: the production in millions of copies of a single prefabricated element; and the installation of the houses, which consisted of the simple assembling of a few hundred such prefabricated pieces, on the sites stipulated by the systematization plan.

Initially, the inhabitants of Homogenia, like almost all people, were far from resembling each other in any way. But life in a city with a structure that homogenous acted upon them, from the very beginning, in a completely imperceptible and strange way. At first, after they had established that it would be impossible to identify their individual houses, they gave up on the very idea of having a certain home and relied on the most convenient solution, which was occupying, each time, the nearest free room. Besides, people did not even perceive their repeated change of residence anymore since, with the city being homogenous, to get to any house, they would walk down the same path. Then, because it would have been fairly tiring to carry their entire wardrobe with them from one place to the next during their wanderings, the wearing of an extremely simple and practical uniform quickly became widespread. It was a kind of large, unisex cape, which was distributed for free, and being made out of cheap material, was thrown away as soon as it got dirty.

The hardest step was giving up the deeply-rooted tradition of family. For a long time, families had to walk together always, because once separated, it would have been impossible to find each other again. Besides the fact that it was inconvenient, this kind of perpetual migration made the regular carrying out of production, education, and the other social activities that are organized on a basis completely different than that of the family unit, impossible. Pressured by these events, the dissolution of the family was decreed, along with the obligation of each mature individual to educate and feed the children found in the dwelling in which they went to sleep, or met with on the street.

The result proved to be dramatic: not a single day passed in which scores of cadavers, belonging to innocent children whose lives were cut short by hunger, were not found. But families had already been broken up, and it would have been impossible now to reconstitute them; the evolution of things moved quickly, and the only consequence of the increasingly large-scale deaths of young ones had been the habit, slowly acquired, of no longer having babies. Not long after, procreation came to be considered a grave misdeed, and the bringing of a descendent into the world—punishable by law.

The new life of the Homogenians triggered unexpected biological effects. The differences between the sexes were slowly erased; no one was born anymore, but no one died either, and over time, the variations of age disappeared from among them. In the end, by the time every individual morphological particularity had vanished, when all the inhabitants of the city had come to have the same build, appearance, and constitution, there had long ceased to exist differences of thought among them and, to tell the truth, thought itself had gone silent. The identical people moved identically—like perfectly synchronized mechanisms—in their identical rooms in their identical houses, on streets that were…

~

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. ***

Before building the immense transparent cupola, the people hadn’t given much thought to what use it might have, nor what the effects of raising it might be. The cupola had to be built for the simple fact that it had been invented and because it surpassed the like of all that the human mind had conceived of until then. Once it was built, however, the group who invented it continued to add improvements which, imperceptibly, set off unexpected consequences.

History hasn’t preserved the initial name of the city that, along with a vast neighboring territory, was covered by the plastic spherical dome. In time, however, it came to be called Protopolis, and that’s what it was known as until our days. It simply being covered wouldn’t have had, probably, very significant effects; rainfall—already quite rare at that latitude—now blocked by the cupola, had been replaced by a sprinkler system that periodically, uniformly watered the groves and green spaces. Then, through the application, by helicopter, of an extremely fine dust on the surface of the dome, the intensity of solar radiation was lowered to an acceptable limit. One after the other, they introduced a maintenance system to keep the temperature and humidity within an optimal range; the sterovac process for destroying pathogens; “clean” methods for disposing of household waste, of street sweeping, and of the interment of bodies; both dry and wet techniques for the containment of dust; the use of ultrasound to exterminate insects and all other pests, etc.

The Protopolitan population quickly became marked for its excellent state of health, the reduction to almost zero of general morbidities, the elimination of infant mortality, and the increase of longevity. In order to protect this most praise-worthy evolution, any foreigner—a virtual carrier of pathogens—was subject to quarantine and a bothersome treatment before being allowed to enter the city; as for locals, they could no longer leave Protopolis since they had lost all resistance to disease and wouldn’t be able to survive contact with the outside world. Soon, the isolation of the metropolis under the plastic cupola became total.

The Protopolitans did not seem to be too affected by this situation. In order to adapt to the requirements of an autarchic economy, they limited the scope of their production to what was strictly necessary for daily living. And since the comprehensive conditioning of the topoclimate permitted it, they gave up clothing. Then, they abandoned their houses, allowing them to fall into ruin, because they found that living outdoors, in parks and forests, was more comfortable and healthier. The forests stretched out freely over the debris, invading the streets and deserted squares. The people gained an increasingly athletic build, they learned to run effortlessly, to agilely climb trees, in search of forest fruits, to hurl themselves from branch to branch in formidable jumps.

For a while, the cultivation of the fields, left to the care of women and children, still seemed profitable to them. The men spent their time hunting and fishing, because the animals in the forests and bodies of water had increased and they constituted the most reliable source of food. Later, the wheat and corn were left to grow as they would, and the cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats that had been turned loose became wild. Chased out of their cages in the zoo, the wild animals, famished, set out to find food for themselves.

The one source of diversion still remaining for the Protopolitans was making babies. And we have to admit that they were wonderfully skilled at it, they even seemed to hit the mark every time. It is true that the choosing and especially the winning of favored women gave rise to disputes and bloody fights among the heated males, each desiring the one who was most attractive; and though such conflicts ended more than once in the strangulation of the weakest, the fecundity of the species more than compensated for the losses. At one point, the population even became troublingly large, in relation to the increasingly modest means of subsistence. Divided into packs, the people then began to wage war for hunting and fishing grounds, for the forests that were richest in edible fruit. At first in secret, then with great pomp, the prisoners were consumed by the victors. Their mandibles grew, their foreheads flattened, necks shortened, chests puffed out, shoulders widened, arms lengthened and, in the end, the people of Protopolis learned how to grab onto branches with their toes; they routinely alternated between bipedal and quadrupedal positions.

The rest of humanity watched the sensational unfolding of the events with vivid curiosity. From beyond the cupola, they filmed using a powerful zoom, they started thrilling live transmissions. And at the betting exchange, the largest share of bets by far was registered for predictions on the question: When will the Protopolitans start growing tails?

~

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.

~

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. ***

He realized from the beginning that it was not some regular city; still, he could not have said what exactly made it different from those he had visited up until then, nor even how he happened to arrive there. He was completely absorbed in looking around, as closely as possible, in order to discover what might be causing the utterly unfamiliar state of mind he was experiencing, which slowly—but implacably—was taking hold of him.

The edifices he saw formed diverse configurations of basic geometrical figures. The details, however, were fairly complicated: the surfaces, far from being smooth, were deeply perforated, furrowed by incisions, they were dotted with dark cavities and multicolored reliefs, of the most bizarre shapes.

Complete silence reigned. At first, he told himself that it was, probably, very early, dawn had hardly broken; he discovered to his amazement, however, that the day’s luminary had risen high over the horizon. He had to admit—rather unenthusiastically, incidentally—that neither the silence nor the persistent emptiness were explicable at that hour, except by the hypothesis that the city was uninhabited. Its founders had lived, at some point, in that land; thus, it could only be an abandoned city—he thought. Indeed, he saw no signs of a possible violent curtailment of life, of destruction. He asked himself what kind of horrific fate could have determined the inhabitants of such a city to abandon their steadfast hearth and go down the path of exile… Or, perhaps, their offspring became extinct gradually, touched by an unknown curse? How much time must have passed since those places had been abandoned?

Having reached this point in reasoning, his amazement suddenly grew: he began to observe that, in all probability, not much time had passed since then. The buildings looked extremely well-kept, with sharp edges, as if barely smoothed over by a trowel, almost perfect, with clean, well-preserved surfaces, without even the lightest covering of dust. This state of salubrity, which any city hall in the world would have envied, contrasted harshly with the typical appearance of an abandoned city. Intent on entering the rooms of the strange edifice—certain that in this way it would be easier for him to figure out the mystery—he began searching for a door, an opening. After a minute investigation, he became convinced that, at least in the case of the construction next to him, the only solution would have been to go through… the walls; given that he was not blessed with such a quality, he found that it would be more reasonable to resume his investigations at another building.

Only then did he discover that he was on a platform with a very limited surface and that in order to move to the nearby building, he would have had to possess the virtues of the most accomplished acrobat, a record holder in long jumps, and a tightrope walker, all on the condition that he were also gifted with the knowledge and the full set of equipment of an elite mountain climber. Angrily, he examined what he had until then thought was a street more closely; in fact, it was a terrifying successions of tilted planes, crevasses, craters, and chasms, whose walls were shaped the same as those of the buildings.

As he looked farther and farther out and discovered new details, a surprising intuition flashed through his mind. He understood that the city was not only uninhabited, it was actually uninhabitable! Its constructions—which were nothing other than colossal sculptures, lacking any doors or windows, or what is normally understood by doors and windows—permitted neither the entrance, let alone the dwelling, of any man. On the streets—which were far from being actual streets—not one person nor any familiar vehicle could have circulated, and in the squares (if they had existed somehow) it would have been impossible for people to congregate. Moreover, in that city— built by who knows who, or why—people never could have survived because it did not seem to contain even a single object that would have been necessary for them, and people gather in cities precisely in order to avail themselves, communally, of a multitude of useful things; and it would have been impossible for them to survive especially because (only now did he fully realize it) they never could have become accustomed to the meaningless shapes that were ready to disintegrate, the masses on the verge of crashing down and crushing their heads, the unsteady stridently colored surfaces which unleashed uncontrollable anxieties.

How had he come to be there?

Engrossed in his disturbing thoughts, he did not observe that, first as a barely perceptible rustling, then increasingly clearer, a strange breathing sound had occupied the sepulchral silence of the metropolis.

He strained his ears but without being able to discern from what direction the sounds were coming. The sound of calm, regular, peaceful breathing filled the entire acoustic space, fascinating him; he was the only human presence in that wasteland. Suddenly, almost at the same time, he was hit with a familiar scent, that of a sweaty body, with a vague hint of jasmine, and he felt the hot, unsettling touch of an embrace. He would have wanted to close his eyes, to allow himself to be carried away by the enchantment of that illusion which—he could hardly dare to hope—might snatch him from an irreversible experience. He noticed, annoyed, that his eyelids refused to obey him; the image of the absurd city continued to bore into his mind, invasively.

Was he, possibly, the victim of a nightmare?

He should have bitten his lips, dug his nails into his flesh, to convince himself of whether he was awake or asleep. But his jaws were clenched, and his hands would not listen to him; he felt paralyzed, incapable of making a single move. Was that a sign he was dreaming? His lips were crushed, but not by his teeth; a painful shiver ran across his flesh, but whose could be the fingers caressing him? He wanted to examine his own fingers, and realized to his horror that his form had disappeared. He remembered now that he hadn’t seen it since finding himself in that city.

Frozen in terror, his mind spun in circles around his only thought: when would his consciousness return from this surreal projection, from the realms which belonged neither to dreams nor to real life? Would he ever become again what he had been before? Would he regain his uniqueness, his complete existence? Could it be, he asked himself, that the never-ending, beguiling games of his imagination were to blame?

Then, as if in answer, he felt the burning of a pair of knees knocking against his knees…

—God, he moaned voicelessly, I can’t take it!

~

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. ***

—Here, they said, we will found the first city of free earthlings.

For three hundred days out of the year, the sky is an immaculate blue. For the other sixty-five, it rains enough to make the wheat fields, olive groves, and vineyards of that hilly region, ripen.

Why here? History does not record the answer. Maybe for the very reason that three hundred days out of the year the sky was blue.

So they hewed giant blocks of stone, each weighing thousands of tons. They polished them and assembled them into a platform that was so perfectly leveled and so vast that the joints were unobservable except by those with sharp vision, and the edges could not be seen except by the tallest among them. They then crowded together all the people within a radius of almost a thousand kilometers onto it. They counseled them on how to cultivate the land more productively, how to feed themselves rationally, and so that there wouldn’t be a single cause for discontent, they dressed them all the same, in white vestments. They left, completely delighted and convinced that they had instituted the most just order for all time.

When they returned after many hundreds of years, on the monumental terrace, an eczema of temples stretched out, pieced together from the flakes of stone that had come off during the hewing of the primordial blocks. A handful of priests, enrobed in gold and crimson, were officiating the cult of the great sun god Záal, gathering in the treasury of the sacred shrines all the wealth that had come from the toil of the tens of thousands of slaves who, if they had survived the agony of the construction of the temples, now divided their time between the white hot fields and the pitch black of the clay huts, stowed away in the barren valleys.

Risking crucifixion, a few of them had kept, buried under the beaten clay of their only room, the white vestments of their ancestors.

Grieved and disgusted, the founders of the first city of free earthlings decided to wipe out the villainous terrestrial race, considering it unworthy of bearing the image and name of humanity. But, just as they were about to carry out their intentions, one of them felt called to a sacerdotal vocation and wanted to throw the others into slavery. The struggle was short and fierce: the spacecraft disappeared in a formidable explosion.[1] The slaves could resume, undisturbed, their daily torment.

[1] In the opinion of some, a nuclear explosion

~

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 sixth sense—stereognosis, as the special sense of spatial orientation had been named—stood no chance of hereditary integration. The categorical verdict of the geneticists had provoked intense agitation among the Stereopolitan population and stirred up heated discussions throughout the entire world. Visionary geniuses had dreamed up the audacious project of a fully dimensional city, in which the tyranny of the horizontal and the vertical, of the right angle, of the plane, would be abolished; many generations of constructors had toiled to pave the way for the realization of the materials and technologies that would make such a feat possible. No one had foreseen the terrible outcome.

The fully dimensional city—Stereopolis—was now a reality. A reality in which a humanity of tens of billions had put its hopes, as the ultimate chance for survival. It had become evident that only complete control of all three dimensions in urban planning could halt the covering of the entire surface of the planet in an endless carpeting of city that would slowly suffocate it in its own malignant tissue. The slanted curve, tridimensional surfaces, and spatiality, made possible not only the free and organic composition of functions, but also the full inhabitation of the environment, the rational resolution of constructional problems, optimal sun exposure and ventilation, convenient distribution of consumer goods, and efficient waste collection. A score of locations, where the Stereopolitan prototype in variants of increasing perfection would be repeated, had been prepared. A dozen construction sites had already been set in motion; the complicated process of assembling the spatial elements was directed by the most powerful computers in existence.

After the new Stereopolitans had settled into their freshly-made residences, the first worrying signs began to appear: the people weren’t able to adapt to the completely unprecedented demands on their sense of orientation. It was as if an ant, accustomed to moving across a piece of straw or among the stalks of a wheat field, had been buried in a pile of sand, from which it was expected to immediately emerge. Numerous disappearances were registered—especially from among the elderly and teenagers, who were unable to rely on the help of electronic guides—and the time lost during daily commutes was incomparably greater to what it had been before (though the distances to be crossed now were much shorter), which caused complaints. Under the pressure of public opinion, of lengthy media campaigns, special measures were adopted to supplement the means of public transport and perfect the automatic guidance system. The number of those who got lost sharply declined; however, a strange illness, later dubbed stereopolitis, appeared, which caused quite a stir throughout the entire world. At first, those affected by this malady suffered from spells of dizziness, accompanied by the persistent feeling of nausea. Then, their balance was thrown off and they experienced piercing occipital pain. By the time the doctors found an explanation, and decided on a treatment, the patients had succumbed to the illness, because it evolved extremely rapidly. In the end, an agreement was reached that the only solution was for people who had just been affected by stereopolitis to be evacuated from the city; in this way, though they would never completely recovery, it was possible (after a long period of convalescence) for the formerly ill to be reintegrated into a life of useful activity—under the interdiction, of course, of ever returning to Stereopolis.

Given that the number of illnesses were skyrocketing, they began taking preventive measures: the city’s entire population was subjected to special tests, which resembled those employed for the selection of candidates for long term missions in outer space. Those who passed the preliminary stages then went through an intensive training period, which ensured relative immunity. Those who “flunked” were not admitted; for their own good, everyone who lacked the aptitudes was evacuated. In time, the illness died down and very rarely did a case or two flare up. Visitors were advised not to stay in the city more than a week, and those who wanted to move there definitively—if they were not rejected after the first tests—did their prescribed training period. It seemed as if the situation had been definitively resolved. Meanwhile, several new fully dimensional cities were about to be brought into use. The selection committees were busily winnowing out the candidates, the training of the first sets had started, some had already moved in. The official inauguration was expected to take place any day now. That is when the truly dramatic turn of events happened: it was determined, as I was saying, that stereognosis—which the locals had struggled so hard to obtain—was not transmitted to one’s descendants except completely at random.

Those hit worst by the geneticists’ conclusion were the inhabitants of Stereopolis itself. For their children’s sakes, many left the city, only to find out afterward that they could no longer readapt to the predominantly bi-dimensional, traditional orthogonal urban space; in the end, a few of them returned. Others made the decision never to procreate; but it was against their nature and it did not last long.

—I fear for the future of this city… thought the Architect.

He saw people abandoning their children in order to avoid endangering their lives, he saw them committing them to special institutions until the age when they would undergo the tests—and woe to those who failed to pass them! He saw how, void of meaning, the family itself disintegrated, preparing society for a new kind of individual freedom, but plunging the individual into the darkness of isolation, loneliness, and bitterness.

Is there really no other way?

~

by Gheorghe Săsărman

Translated from the Romanian by Monica Cure

*** Editors’ note: With this tale, we continue our series of 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. ***

—Who’s there! Antiope snapped, bolting upright.

She thought she had heard the padding of footsteps on the marble flagstones; the noise sounded again. She grabbed a torch from its stand and moved forward a few paces. Who dared to defy orders and enter, in the middle of the night, the palace? Just what were the girls from the gateway guarding? Right as she was about to call the guards, the intruder showed himself from between the pillars; instinctively, she put her hand to her hip, forgetting that, before going to bed, she had put away her sword, belt and all. Their eyes met in the flickering torchlight. Her heart suddenly struck by Eros’s arrow, the feared queen demurely lowered her eyelids.

—How dare you?… she struggled rather unconvincingly in the vigorous arms which had lifted her into the air, as if she were a child, making her feel the ground slip from under her feet.

Until that moment, she had never suspected that she could be carried in this way, rocked almost imperceptibly, but still dizzyingly, by a virile torso bursting with strength, and set down afterward, with such natural ease, in her fragrant bedding. The pointless question which had remained on her lips from the initial second left her, along with any thought of resistance. How this disturbing young man had managed to reach her chamber no longer interested her in the slightest, nor how he had successfully made it through a citadel as well guarded as that of the Amazons, on whose streets a man had never stepped until then.

Defeated without a fight, Antiope surrendered to the pleasure of discovering love, with whose complete arsenal her people had been so uselessly and unsuspectingly equipped until then. As only a perfect warrior could, she deployed—as if she had known then since always—all the snares of the art of loving and being loved: the fiery wide-eyed gaze; the mischievous glance, shot from beneath eyelashes; the fierce, suffocating embrace; the delicate caress of fingertips; the chaste kiss on the forehead; the tender kiss on the eyelids; the shy kiss on the cheek; the guilty kiss in the palm of the hand; the perverse kiss at the base of the ear; the long breathtaking kiss, with bloodied lips; the greedy kiss; the weightless kiss, like a shadow, like a memory…

The passion unleashed by the game stole her last ounce of lucidity. She whispered invented names for her unknown groom, she called him, she desired without knowing, without being able to put into words that state of excruciating expectation that had reached a paroxysm, which tortured her as not even the most terrible wound could have. The closer she felt him, the more intense that state became, driving her mad. The unexpected scream which started from the base of her throat, from the bottom of her chest, or maybe from deeper, was not so much a cry of pain—an unknown, unrepeatable pain—as it was a sign of the flesh’s victory over the barren tradition that had subjugated the city of virgins until then.

Alarmed by the piercing scream, the Amazons on guard duty rushed in, and seeing their queen writhing and moaning, speared the one holding her captive under the weight of his body before she could make the slightest gesture of resistance. And by the time Antiope roused herself, they had snatched the dead body from the profanatory embrace and dragged it into the square, to the entrance of Artemis’s temple, where they intended to let it rot. The unhappy queen, however, stole the corpse one night and secretly buried it.

She futilely tried afterward, even at the cost of her reign, to break the androphobia of the Amazons, to end the barbarous custom of invading neighboring citadels and kidnapping girls—whose right breasts the Amazons would later cut off so that once the girls became warriors they could more easily wield the shield and spear—in vain she proclaimed love, the union of woman and man, which had been destined by nature from the beginning as the fulfillment of life. Not even the miracle—never before seen in Virginia—of maternity had the power to convince the adamant ascetics. Cast off the throne, pelted with stones and banished from the citadel, fate refused Antiope even her final consolation: her child was born a girl!

~