The Fall of Man

Part II chapter 17

Chapter 17

At his computer a week or so later, Noah searches for the online city that Gwen assures him exists. Sure enough, with a few clicks he is parachuted from thirty thousand feet to hover suspended over the self-contained city. For the first time, as thin strains of cloud waft across his vertiginous view, Noah is able to appreciate its truly condensed nature.

In brilliant sunshine, the perfectly circular plan of the city glitters like a dropped coin against the heavy patternation of the surrounding landscape. From his elevated birds-eye view, the farmland surrounding the Walled perimeter reads as a neat patchwork quilt with a handful of different textures and colours, dominated by the luminous yellow of rapeseed. At its southerly extreme, the busy streets run down to the coast. Waves lap at the waterfront, driven against the Wall from the south-west by the Gulf Stream.

Noah recognises the SunScreen by the distinctive pitchfork shadow that the four tall barrels cast across the fields at the easternmost tip of the Wall. As usual, the boulevard beneath is awash with people moving on foot, by bike and by scooter. From this perspective, they are no more than tiny, colourful blips on the radar. Following them westwards, he zooms in on the hospital complex, and then scrolls across the campus to the giant row of dominos that are the apartment buildings. With a click, the viewpoint drops down to street level and to CCTV footage piped from one of the numerous cameras tucked discretely within the main entrance to his building. Another click and his viewpoint shifts to the reception area. The claustrophobic lift camera pins him to the back of an elderly gentleman as he ascends the building, and then hobbles away down the corridor. Carefully avoiding the lure of the cinema, he moves around the virtual building – a faithful rendering of the world outside his apartment.

Heading back into the city, the same is true of the streets, bars, churches, shops... It is all there in digital form. Little wonder that so few people can be seen wandering the streets, when any sightseeing can be done from the comfort of an armchair. With a superhero spring, he bounds upwards to hover above the streets once more, and then glides across the Wall to coast freely over the surrounding miles of farmland.

Far beyond the meticulously cultivated fields out on the distant horizon lies the dark, unruly edge of a forest. It extends away to the east and west, and appears to fully encircle the human endeavours. As he flies closer to the mysterious perimeter, the image of overgrown greenery becomes indistinct and heavily pixelated. The blotchy margin only extends a short distance before terminating in absolute blackness; presumably the model ends altogether, cutting the city off from the rest of humanity. What’s more, the shifting foliage doesn’t look wholly treelike. Shadowy forms and orthogonal shapes seem to shift and coalesce amongst the fractal limbs…

That evening, Noah walks Gwen back to her apartment as usual. He presses his lips briefly against hers at the door, then with a wan smile she withdraws silently into her room and he is left standing alone in the dim corridor. He thinks back on the day’s events. The date with Gwen was fun, as always. But their rendezvous are starting to seem limited – or at least very heavily orchestrated. They went to the Cinema again; there seems to be a different film to see every night. The rest of the audience were captivated from start to finish – each of Gwen’s breathless gasps more audible than the last. But Noah is haunted by the wild fringes beyond the manicured perimeter of the city. The shadowy forms preoccupy his thoughts. What else, he wonders, could be out there? Was the old world really all erased – ground down to nothing before nature was permitted to return – or is there more to this uncultivated nether-region?