Button in the Fabric of Time by William Wayne Dicksion Read Free Book Online Page A

eliminating them.”
    “I can see that the city is made from panels,
blocks, and beams of glass, but how are they held together?”
    “We use dovetailing and interlocking. The
interlocking is similar to what you called jigsaw puzzles. We
manufacture the pieces precisely, and fit them together perfectly.
When the pieces are lubricated with crystallizing silicon and slid
together, they are airtight, waterproof, and nearly impossible to
take apart.”
    “I can’t wait to see that being done. I can
see the results, and it’s magnificent. The structure looks
enormous. How big is it, and how many people live here?” The warmth
of Jan-3’s leg pressing against mine was distracting, and her smile
made me think of things other than buildings.
    I could tell by the sly look in Roc-2’s eyes
that he was aware of my distraction, but he ignored it when he
replied, “The city is ten kilometers square and forty floors deep.
Each floor is ten meters high. Eight floors extend into the ocean
and thirty-two floors extend into the air. This is a complete city
in every way; it contains everything that the people need. They
live, work, and play here. Many work in the country doing landscape
maintenance and agricultural work, but we transport the things they
produce to the cities where everyone lives. People travel to the
country for work or pleasure, and they travel to other cities to
visit friends and family. Only in Africa and a few remote islands
do people live on land.”
    “How many cities are there, and how many
people live in a city this size?”
    “There are thousands of cities and this is
one of the smaller ones. This city alone contains more people than
the twenty-first century cities of New York, London, Paris, and
Rome combined, yet it occupies only a fraction of the space of even one of those cities. Those cities wasted a lot of space on
roads, highways, parking lots, garages, and there was wasted space
between the buildings.”
    “We thought we were running out of space,” I
replied.
    “In your time, less than ten percent of the
earth’s surface was populated. Oceans cover approximately
seventy-five percent. Polar Regions were uninhabited because they
were too cold. Deserts were uninhabited because of lack of water.
The coastal areas in temperate zones were populated, but the
central parts of most continents were only sparsely inhabited. You
didn’t lack space—you lacked imagination,” Roc-2 smiled. “Please
forgive me if I seem critical.”
    “It does sound a bit harsh when stated
flatly, but everything you said is true.” Turning to Jan-3, I
asked, “How long did it take those of my time to realize our
mistakes?”
    “You didn’t realize your mistakes, or if you
did, you didn’t act on your knowledge and, because of that, you
almost destroyed the planet. After the Great War, the world went
into a second Dark Ages, and it took 700 years to clean up the
radioactive mess. Our records show that before the Great War, even
in the more developed countries, of which yours was one, the
inequities were enormous. Ninety-seven percent of your nation’s
wealth was in the hands of less than one percent of your people.
And that one percent consisted of greedy men with insatiable
appetites for wealth and power. Fifteen percent of your people
lived below what was called the poverty level. That means they
didn’t have even the basic necessities. Billions lived in homes
without running water. They couldn’t even take showers or flush
their toilets. Billions in the under-developed countries couldn’t
even afford adequate health care, and millions died of disease or
starvation. The diseases could have been treated and food was
plentiful. Your problems were greed and religious fanaticism.”
    “Looking at our problems with the benefit of
hindsight, what did we do wrong?”
    “It seems to me,” Jan-3 said, “that the
people of the twenty-first century were violating the basic rules
of proper human conduct. Their leaders