THE HIGHLINE : CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 1
Forward:
I’ve been poking at this idea for a while and decided to put the first chapter out for general consumption and feedback. I think the first chapter contains the critical parts of the text. I’ll probably be continuing to place every chapter here on substack as they get written and completed. This is a long, slow project, but my recent conversation with
and has inspired me to finally start putting some time into writing it.I hope everyone here can enjoy this first chapter.
1: Skip-Gap
An automated announcement crackled over worn speakers, “Line 10-07, The Marching Duck, departing by the Dominion Port Authority, please enjoy your stay.”
Steel rang on steel as a massive epilocomotive pulled away from the station. A distant horn announced departure loud enough to echo along steel rails below. Adamus took a deep breath and felt weight lift from his shoulders, he sank into the seat of the small cabin. He hadn’t realized how desperate he’d been to leave that city behind until just this moment. He still wasn’t sure if he was running away or running forward. Those towers of glass and neon and steel had been distant when he was still a boy. They looked unnatural against a formerly mountainous horizon. Home, such as it was, had become stifling. Hot with the warmth of millions of new inhabitants.
The train shook under his ass; massive diesel engines forcibly yanked passengers ahead car by car by car. The seven or eight carriage cars were mostly empty. Maybe at one-fifth capacity, so he had the cabin to himself. It wasn’t exactly glamorous, accommodations were minimal for passengers like himself. It was nice to be alone, properly alone for the first time in… it’d been a long time. The last two nights, he’d stayed at a crowded hostel. This was the first real quiet since he’d landed in a barracks; a multi-year contract, the better part of a decade ago. Adamus glanced out through smudged glass and down to where evening light crossed over a paper route map sitting in a seat pocket. He extracted the sheet and ran a finger along disjointed paths through the Penrose.
Line 10-07
Subsector: Vicarus
Stratum: Erudite
Substratum: Lendus
Terrestrum: Venys
World: Othello-1
His finger crossed over to Line 10-21, leaping a small gap in the abstract lines and images.
Subsector: Cicada
Stratum: Highlonus
Substratum: Kisarick
Tarrestrum Monida
World: Siko-Ξ
Adamus was running away, he decided in the back of his subconscious. Not sure from what yet. A few hours earlier, the cabin had been occupied by a family doing the same thing. They’d left from a circuit city upstream. They’d carried with them a little girl, and exited the epilocomotive to join growing throngs in the neon lights of Othello. This little industrial city was growing up fast, bright and colorful, filled with office buildings and industry. Natural resources turned to production and output. New employment opportunities, new places to be. Many of the young cities had even achieved functional digital wireless networks in the last few months. The family had come to make a new life for themselves; the cost of living back home had driven them out, and the pollutants and smog had grown too thick. They didn’t want to raise their girl in a city like that. They didn’t want the watchful lens of AI and digital bureaucrats to govern their daughters’ every decision in life. Better to start again somewhere new and a little less developed. That family, like all migrants in the direction of the frontier, did not represent the majority.
Adamus smoothed over a crease in the paper as he withdrew it. He didn’t know the little girl had bent the page wall looking at the dizzyingly complex network rail routes, nor that she’d carefully restacked the route-map on the instance of her parents a half hour earlier. When he looked out the window, Adamus saw a city built where once there had been a farm and a creek near an orphanage; bulldozed to make way for a concrete shopping mall, and an adjacent six-lane highway. Progress was on the move. The epilocomotive picked up speed.
A forlorn sunset settled beyond distant buildings. Beyond that, massive earth-rippers tore rare elements and metals from the soil along the horizon. Another train rushed past. A tanker containing tons of steel and coal and petroleum. Carriages stretched out for several miles, leaving Adamus staring at flickering shadows. Resources were drawn inward while people like him were shunted out.
Adamus withdrew his MACphone and plugged a film deck into the back. He inserted a pair of wired earbuds. Adamus hoped music would drown out the rumble of machinery. In a few hours, he’d lose network connection; a proper quiet without messages darting across the globe. He probably wouldn’t be on-network again for a while. That might be nice, he decided.
…
What had begun as an expedition to reconnect with his roots a few days ago had altered his perspective. He’d only been gone for about nine years, three to the academy and six more active duty. There was nothing left of his roots here, not really. All his old teachers had either gone or been swept up by the great torrent of change and quick construction. Cloud scraping office buildings crowded by clean-cut profiteers.
Adamus had found himself in a land-claims market office trying to cash out his enlistment stakes to front payment for his stay. His original plan of occupying a spare room in the visitors’ house had fallen apart immediately upon contact with reality. The old Matron whom he’d known as a child was long gone, and so was the building.
“You know, these claims would be worth more over in Acturan-Kappa than they are here.” The pudgy man behind the desk adjusted his glasses and glanced at his glowing screen. “Looks like the going rate is… sixty-five hundred to a hectare. Here at least. That’s based on the latest stratum-scale data, which came in last night.”
Adamus took a breath. It was less than he’d hoped for by over thirty percent. Still, it was better than nothing, and he needed lodgings and to figure out what to do with himself. He briefly considered reenlisting and dismissed the thought just as quickly. His eyebrows knit in thought.
“Like I said, if you can afford the trip and are willing to wait for an alignment, you’ll get a better price next door.” The clerk repeated.
The walls of the municipal office closed in on Adamus like a trench. It was hard enough to get here, much less up through an Acturan apex world. He didn’t want to deal with that. The hassle and the paperwork, and endless questions from automated systems. “Listen, man,” Adamus said softly. “I’m a veteran, and I’m exhausted. Is there anything you can do for me? This is what they staked for me when I joined up and… well, I need the cash.”
“Where’d you serve?” The man asked, his face flickering with interest. When he was younger, the pudgy man had thought about almost considering maybe joining the military. Maybe he could be a logistician or something. He’d thought about it for so long that he was eventually too old to pull the trigger and do it. It was a decision made for him by inaction.
“I served on The Highline,” Adamus said. “I saw a lot of shit in the Highline trenches and I’m damn tired. I don’t know. I was raised here, but it’s changed a lot. I’m headed somewhere new, I guess.”
The clerk’s brows furrowed. “The Highline?”
Adamus nodded.
“Let me see what I can do for you.” The clerk shifted in his seat and looked at the computer screen with intent. “Looks like I can drop the holding fee, that’ll get you up to seventy-eight and a half a hectare. That’s the best I can do, though.”
“You can do that?” Adamus asked.
The clerk leaned in conspiratorially. “We’re still running an old un-networked system, so there’s no one looking over my shoulder. Integrated oversight is scheduled to come online sometime next year. If you’d gotten here nine months later you’d have been screwed.”
“Thanks,” said Adamus quietly. Back in the academy was scrutinized by algorithm and social AI. He smiled a little, it was… nostalgic to be able to do something under the table, man-to-man, without some sergeant or HR bureaucrat pounding on his door. Things were been when he was a child. He handed over a set of coded Dominion chips. He hoped that they’d lift enough cash for wherever he ended up. Easier to do it now than wait. The further he traveled away from his claims, the less they’d be worth.
“I got you.” The clerk said. “Where are you taking off to anyway?”
Adamus shook his head, “Staying for a night or two, look around the old town, after that, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll head out through Cicada. I had a friend from the war who always wanted to go that direction. I don’t like those big circuit cities. I thought there’d be space left for me here, but…” He gestured around vaguely.
“Changed a lot in the last few years,” the Clerk said. “Skipped right through the neon development phase in only half a decade. I think they’re speed-running this place into an apex world on purpose if you ask me.”
There was a brief pause as the man typed into his computer. Adamus handed over all of his twelve claims chips. He’d received them upon discharge a week ago. He’d at first been so eager to get home, and now… now he was just trying to get the hell out. Everywhere, heavy vehicles tore up the old streets for pre-fab factories. This wasn’t the world he’d grown up in twelve years ago. It was so fast that he could almost feel an economic bubble forming. Next, they would build infrastructure to digitize, then a few years later it would span most of the planet… another apex world for the Dominion… and then…
“Hey…” the pudgy man waved his hand in front of Adamus’ face, returning him to the present.
Adamus blinked and looked at him.
“How do you want that? We usually do cashable cheques, but that’s only good locally. If you’re headed upstream, there’s a branch there that you can transact at with an encryption key. If you’re headed downstream, well… there’s bullion and keyed chips. That’s mostly it, though.”
“I’ll go with metals, thanks.”
The man nodded and counted gold and platinum bullion into a complimentary locking case. “Be careful out there. Streets aren’t as safe as they used to be. It’s getting damned crowded here.”
After watching him count out the coins, Adamus shoved the case haphazardly into his old rucksack. “I’ll keep an eye out, thanks.”
Having lived through the Highline, Adamus wasn’t concerned about a few lowlifes here or there. Adamus had seen three battles, two with real Ballistic Mobile Drops. Big battles, not the occasional skirmish. Maybe he was overconfident, but he felt he’d earned at least a degree of arrogance.
As Adamus stood and shook the teller’s hand, the clerk asked a final question. “What did you do anyway? In the service?”
Adamus lifted the sleeve of his shirt, displaying the tattooed MOS code ending with an N-4. “I was a navigator for a Behemoth. The Excelsior Dawn.”
…
The epilocomotive shuttered. Adamus absently looked out the window. Occasional slivers of sun winked between neighboring cars on the adjacent rack. There was a knock on the cabin door, and it slid open. A man stood there and looked at Adamus. He entered wearing a heavy old waistcoat.
The arrival spoke with a light accent. “Oh, excuse me, sorry to bother you.” He moved to sit down.
Adamus didn’t appreciate the company. His new companion was more of a boy, a younger guy in his early twenties. Dark eyes and hair. The sunset cast vivid shadows on his face during those moments when light shone into the cabin.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” said Adamus.
The guy fiddled in his jacket pockets. The gigantic coat looked comical on the lad, and didn’t match his small build or scruffy half-kept beard. He seemed fidgety and nervous. “Hang on a minute,” the kid said.
Adamus removed one of his earbuds and spoke irritably. “I’ve got time.”
In the distance, Adamus could feel the epilocomotive closing in on an aligned conflagration; a sensation he’d never quite grown accustomed to. It was a sensation in the back of his mind, slowly intensifying from a subtle teasing to an intense static. Conflagrations made everyone uneasy, especially navigators. The talent and curse of a trained navigator: a connection to the ebb and flow of the true void. There was something out there. Adamus could feel himself and his young companion rushing towards that uncanny, not-quite-empty.
This one was subsector scale. A big one. He knew that due to both the sour tinge on the edge of his consciousness and from having read the ticket information in his pocket. Back when he’d been a dominion navigator, he’d passed through numerous unstructured conflagrations, a tenuous and at times, terrifying process. There were things in that void that gnawed at the frayed edges of space. He could swear it. Every time his link tickled the back of his mind, he could feel them sniffing and growling. There wasn’t a single navigator he’d met who hadn’t grown superstitious about conflagrations and the void-space between. Though for different navigators, the nature of that superstition varied wildly. Adamus took a deep breath, readying himself for the upcoming plunge.
Adamus’ unwelcome traveling companion continued fumbling and eventually sat. He seemed jittery.
The adjacent epilocomotive finally passed, revealing an enormous power station silhouetted by the sunset. Mighty black spires drew upward, belching nitrous oxides and carbon dioxide into the air, powering the Dominion port authority gateway. A structured and powered conflagration; a gate through the void.
Adamus considered the enormity of it all; the vast web of civilization required to power such a thing as the rail network. Astoundingly enormous. In comparison to that, was the Highline war an important affair? Notable even? Maybe. Notable for him certainly. The Command Board seemed to think so, too. The boy across from Adamus sat a pack down on the floor and opened it.
Adamus looked over at the boy sidelong and asked rhetorically, “There weren’t any other cabins open?”
The kid pulled something out of the bag. Adamus wasn’t sure what it was. Before he knew what was happening, the kid crossed the intervening feet between the two. A glint of metal in oblong sunlight. Adamus threw up his hand before he could think. In training, Adamus had always enjoyed physical combatives; he was no Mobile Infantryman, but he could hold his own. Compared to most lieutenants in the naval career path, Adamus was considerably skilled in hand-to-hand combat. Years of training for a fistfight that never came, until today, when it did.
By the time his mind caught up to his body, Adamus was already on his feet.
“Fuck.” He said simply.
The kid was wiry and fast. Something metallic was held in the kid’s right hand. Adamus went for a takedown. Too close to the window, he succeeded only in slamming his shoulder into the cabin window with a dull thud. His mind was still overcome with a nervous anticipation of the upcoming skip-gap. He wasn’t thinking clearly about the fight here and now. Of all the times he could get in a fight, this was probably the worst.
A momentary look at the metallic object revealed some kind of an injector. A device that had been waiting for weeks bite him. It had been carried back and forth along the 10-07, patiently for its wielder to find the correct quarry. The injector was hungry, yet it barely nipped at the hem of Adamus’ sleeve, flesh just out of reach.
Adamus had no idea what was in the object, but anyone attempting to forcibly administer a medical procedure was best assumed not to be performing a benevolent service. Adamus held the kid’s weapon arm with his left hand. He reoriented and grabbed it with both. He received a knee to the gut, knocking the wind out of him for the trouble, and nearly lost his grip. The kid fought like his life was on the line, which ultimately, it was.
The two of them hit the floor. He could feel the kid attempting to squirm his body around to take his back. Adamus rolled and slammed the kid into a cabin bench. He could feel the kids off-hand grasping around for something, but focused on the injector. There were generally self-defense laws in cities that reached this level of development. Adamus was trying to estimate what limits they might impose until the kid punched him in the face.
Hell with it, Adamus thought.
Adamus managed to roll to the top and place a knee across the kid’s belly. He reached down and attempted to wrench the injector out of the kid’s hand. Adamus didn’t have enough leverage. The hum of the conflagration grew louder and more incessant. It was coming up fast, and Adamus had trouble focusing.
Focus, Focus. Adamus thought to himself. He felt something punch him in the leg and looked down. While he’d been distracted, the little fucker had pulled a knife with his off hand. Adamus growled and grabbed for it, still struggling with the injector. The kid jerked the weapon back, and Adamus missed.
Cool steel punched out the back of Adamus’ right hand. The old blade scraped against bone between the pointer finger and middle finger.
Close enough. Adamus thought. He clenched his hand into a fist. He was bleeding from the wound in his leg, but didn’t feel pain, yet. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. The two men struggled on the floor of the cabin. Adamus could barely think due to the rushing static in his mind overtaking higher functions. If he could just hold on for another few seconds, he thought.
The shadow of the power station outside the window vanished. Bright evening sunlight once again filled the cabin. “Hold still you little shit,” Adamus growled through grit teeth. The kid thrashed under his weight. Sparks appeared along the body of the epilocomotive, and the gnashing grew louder and louder until that’s all he could see or hear or think. A series of shadows flicked past, and then silence. Ghosts in the void. The engine, the cabin, and the two men on the floor evaporated into the skip-gap.
INTERLUDE
By the account of ALDA-7 and the Parsectum 4 Command Board
Parsectum 4, Perisectum Aleph-0, Sector Novos
Subsector Sedona, Stratum Novos-1, Substratum Cassandra, Terrestrum Rigel
Apex World Thimble, North Anca, Complex 00-4-1, 39.12781-84.53341:654408
Behemoth Officer Training, Introduction to the Penrose
Two hundred and thirty-seven years ago, the Dominion began its second major wave of expansion, swiftly spreading across thousands of potential worlds1. Expansion into the Penrose is the manifestation of ingenuity and focused determination. The economic growth uplifted the diverse peoples of the Dominion. At its most basic level, the Penrose is often assumed to be the byproduct of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, compactified into a 6+1-dimensional null-space.
The Penrose is the semi-finite totality of potential worlds separated by a gulf of null-space and accessible via gate transit per the Port Authority. Mapped stable conflagration points permit regular travel at varying intervals depending on the null-distance between worlds. Those that are “close” may align once every few hours or once a day within a given substratum or stratum. Those that share a terrestrum are perpetually aligned. Worlds that are “far” in relative distance align annually, and thus belong to separate Parsecta.
The heroic explorers of the Dominion have mapped 4 parsecta within the Penrose, each containing multiple individual perisecta, dozens of individual sectors, and thousands of individual worlds. There has been no reported contact between the Dominion and any potentially adjacent civilization within the Penrose. Experts believe this to be a matter of probability, as potential worlds that don’t develop civilizations are nearly infinitely more numerous than those that do develop complex civilizations.
The Dominion maintains active settlements on an estimated 54,000 individual worlds, while an additional 15,000 worlds are subjected to licensed prospecting. Mapping points of conflagration requires dedicated scouts, navigators, and teams licensed through the Bureau of Resource Acquisition (BRA). The Dominion maintains active citizen engagement across multiple industries, ministries, councils, administrations, command boards, and senates. All communications within the Penrose utilize the network rail system, subject to inspection by the Port Authority. The network rail occupies stabilized gates at mapped conflagration points, using independent, redundant, power-generation. Gates are opened during an alignment, and the Epilcomotives of the Port Authority carry goods, passengers, and valuable information. The process is colloquially referred to as passage via skip-gap.
Each sector maintains independent regional maps of the Penrose as the dimensionality and scale of the Penrose make organization extremely unintuitive for human governors, senators, councilmen, and even experts. Monthly alignments between sectors permit the regular exchange of communications, goods, and passengers, but the infrequency means information is often outdated. Newly mapped conflagration points and stabilized network rail junctions are updated quarterly by the Port Authority, the Bureau of Resource Acquisition (BRA), and the Institute of Transdimensional Cartography (ITDC).
Behemoth Officer Training, Sector Novos:
Sector Novos lies within Parsectum 4 and Perisectum Aleph-0. Sector Novos was charted 96 years ago by Lord Henry Cantos. Sector Novos contains 4 charted subsectors: Cicada, Novos-1, Vicarus, and Lendisfarn. Within Sector Novos are 32 stratum, 127 substratum, and 396 individually settled worlds. Another 41 potential worlds within the sector exist as frontier worlds where licensed prospectors may identify and stake claims on natural resources.
Sector Novos includes 19 Apex Worlds with dedicated intelligence centers that manage the efficient use of resources and corporate interests across Cicada, Novos-1, Vicarus, and Lendisfarn. The sector maintains a Regional Sector Court and Council that oversee 47 Municipal Domain Administrations and three hundred terrestrial authorities. In the last 50 years, there have only been four incidents of overwriting in world and property claims. This is worse than average.
The sector developed rapidly in four major expansions based around particularly hospitable worlds with favorable ambient environments and long coastlines. Due to the rapid expansion, the Municipal Domain Administration was frequently working with outdated geospatial information regarding recent discoveries and praxis on prospected claims. The cultural development of Sector Novos followed relatively standard trends within the Dominion. An accidental cutoff resulted in culinary and artistic deviation in subsector Cicada for 12 years until a new stable conflagration alignment could be mapped, and the territory reabsorbed.
The Port Authority of Sector Novos maintains 47 regional network rail lines that can efficiently transport goods and passengers across all 396 individual worlds. Within the sector, network lines are mapped based on accessibility and resource type. By convention, the 01 network line series occupies the bottom of paper maps while the frontier 47 network line series is placed at the top, earning it the colloquialism, The Highline.
“Try asking it about the Kernel World.” Adamus glared at his friend, who was wearing a shit-eating grin.
“You’re trying to get me into trouble again.”
Dorian rocked back and forth in his seat, “C’mon, aren’t you curious?”
The two of them fell quiet as a sergeant's boots clacked past them in the hall outside.
“You remember what happened last time I started asking it your questions?”
Dorian smirked.
Adamus shook his head. “Dick.”
“Well,” said Dorian, “Do you think there was one? A Kernal world, I mean.”
“There’d have to be,” Adamus responded noncommittally.
“And what makes you say that?” Asked Dorian. He was playing devil’s advocate. The two of them had grown up in very different places. Dorian was a child from one of those circuit cities. Big buildings scraping the heavens, artificial stars flitting overhead in orbit. Very different from the industrial settlement that Adamus had grown up in. They’d both signed the same papers though, and because of that the Dominion Ranger Corp owned both their asses.
“One of my house parents used to tell me that if you can’t reason something to exist, it probably doesn’t. So what’s your reasoning?”
Adamus sighed, “OK. I know you like history, but there isn’t a whole lot from before about two hundred and fifty years ago.”
Dorian nodded, “Yeah, Expansion Wave Two, but before that. What do you suppose preceded the Dominion, the Kernel that all this came from?” His tone was hushed. People didn’t talk about the Kernel world. It was a sort of superstition or urban legend. A cultural taboo that neither Dorian nor Adamus understood. Adamus suspected that few people understood it; that was simply the way things had always been, and digital intelligences refused to discuss the topic.
“I dunno. Systems says the records were burned in a catastrophe. At the same time, all of our standards have been the same for centuries. Kilometer, foot, year.”
Dorian performative nodded with interest. “What’s so special about that?”
“Well, the year in particular.” Responded Adamus. “Parsecta align once a year. Maybe for a few weeks, allowing a smooth crossing. We only occupy four of them. Navigators say that they’re the most difficult type of conflagration. Geodesics all wrap around each other in weird ways for the big ones.”
“Off topic.” Said Dorian.
“They align once a year… almost,” Adamus said. “Plus or minus a few days. That’s because the year of each parsectum is usually off by a few days from a perfect 365-day year. None of our years correspond. Ours in Parsectum 4 is 367 days. The one in Parsectum 3 is 362.5 days. The closest is Parsectum 1, but that’s still not a perfect match.”
“So?”
“It’s stupid.” Adamus said, “Most worlds are at least an hour or two off-standard. A year should be a year. One full solar orbit. Easy. It’s not, though. That means that maybe there’s a whole other parsectum that was lost somehow.”
Dorian was a big guy with a barrel chest, but the smirk of a toddler. He’d arrived from Sector-Solaris along with about a quarter million other recruits. The suns in that sector burned hot, and the air was thinner than Novos.
Adamus paused to think while Dorian watched.
“A year. It’s most likely the year on whatever the Kernel world was. Where the Dominion first began. The Dominion hasn’t existed forever, it started somewhere.”
“Then why don’t they want us asking about it?” Asked Dorian. “Why wipe out the records?”
“Man, I don’t know what could’ve happened. It was a few hundred years ago and probably a full parsectum away. They probably wiped that information for a reason. The Dominion has a reason for what it does. Does it matter where we all came from? Progress is about looking forward, not back. The Dominion grows, and we’re all carried along with it. We’re just out here doing our own thing.”
“I’m taking interdimensional history soon,” said Dorian.
“huh… really? In school, they always brushed it off. Like the digital systems.”
“What did they say in your school?”
“It was mostly about the founding of our sector, and how the factories were going to be organized. Business stuff, and getting us ready for digitization. Trying to get us ready for the next stage of development. They didn’t teach a lot of history. Terrestrum politics, basic bio, stuff like that. Not ancient history.” Adamus made a conscious effort not to scoff. He liked Dorian and didn’t want to snub his bunkmate’s academic interest.
Dorian tapped his screen, writing. “Probably a waste of time in neon cities. Progress takes a lot of workers doing their jobs to keep on chugging along. Folks in the upper levels don’t have too many kids. Gotta rely on the provincial migrants.”
The sly way he said it irked Adamus. “Fine smart ass, what’s the story? They teach you about it in grade school in your fancy crystal ballroom? Or is that why you joined the service?”
That’s 237 T0 Standard Years
Oh, one more thing. I liked the omniscient narration. You even get into the "head" of a weapon. That's cool.
Less serious advice. More of a humble plea. Please don't make "terrestrum" the plural of "terrestrum." Please either go with Latinate "terrestra" or Anglisized "terrestrums." Same for the other "-um" words. Zero-suffix plurals make it harder to figure out what's going on.