Inspiration from the droughtlands [part three]

It’s 1993.

Only thirty years ago for us, but the American Human Interference Task Force (as a side note, an amazing name) and The Sandia National Laboratories are grappling with a problem that will last for at least ten thousand.

How to stop stored nuclear waste from being tampered with by civilisations that are well beyond our own? People that won’t be able to interpret our language, our symbols or even find what’s left of them?

The report they produced has served as one of my inspirations for how I’ve approached the remains of what’s left by those-of-glass, the extinct people that once occupied the Droughtlands. (Before it was named as such, that is.)

The aim was to communicate a series of non-linguistic messages to any future visitors who would visit a waste site, giving this wording as the general idea of what they wanted to evoke:

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

But let’s take a step back. I should tell you why this is important.

I’ve referred to it previously in other blog posts about how I draw the allegory between the mysterious magic left by those-of-glass and the impossible-to-perceive danger that comes with radioactive waste. An idea that an invisible, incomprehensible force could be a danger that cannot be prevented or blocked except by avoiding it all together.

The produced report explored and provoked concepts from scientists, authors and physicists that were aimed at dissuading future civilisations from habiting the sites. They ranged from physical markers, religious sects, and even a combination of glowing cats and catchy tunes.

While I didn’t take inspiration from the latter, I do want to outline some of the ones I did find myself drawn to.

The report itself suggested a range of physical markers. Features that could mark the land and give an impression of “shunned land.”

In essence, they were trying to build bad vibes.

I drew the parallel between these and the modern architecture of skyscrapers and city skylines which did end up turning into the ruins left by those-of-glass. I wondered what that said about our version of human advancement, and whether we were subconsciously creating our own warnings away from our own legacy.

Personally, I find my hypothesis feasible, because I actually had crafted the unnerving ruins of those-of-glass to resemble these two elements of the report before I’d even learnt of it! It certainly goes to show a common human understanding of what we think of as unsettling.

However, as I ventured further into the Droughtlands, taking my characters on deeper explorations of ruins left by those-of-glass, I had to sit down and come up with a few more guidelines to make sure these types of markers would survive.

If a future civilisation was going to go through a period of scarcity and life on the brink, they’d likely turn to scavenging whatever they could find around them. The real life example comes from history’s attempts at building large bordering or defensive walls, such as Hadrian’s Wall or the Great Wall of China. Large portions of the latter and nearly the entirety of the former have, over time, been torn down and coopted into other structures by local peoples.

You could even see this with the walking fortress of Revance in Molten Flux, for it’s an entire construct of scrap metal, therefore any markers that were to be constructed would need to be composed of inert, worthless, or difficult to repurpose materials.

Another requirement I made for myself is that this warning couldn’t entirely block access to the source of danger. Doors have always been rather inviting objects, especially locked ones, which I see as invitations to attempt to open. I doubt any future civilisation would be able to shake this instinct, therefore these warning could not be blockers, but instead roadside omens of ill.

The other argument against doors comes from the jewellery thief Bill Mason.  (A fantastic last name considering his philosophy of burglary.)

To cut a long (and potentially apocryphal) anecdote short, he eventually figured out that the challenge of a locked and well-guarded door was merely a distraction created by the architects of the building who assumed that any potential thief would play by these same rules.

He wrote in his memoir:

“Surely if someone were to rob the place, they’d come in as respectable people would, through the door provided for the purpose.”

Of course, this line was dripping with sarcasm, as a thief is already breaking the law, and as such, would have no issue with using a small drywall knife and simply hacking their way through the half-inch of plaster next to the barrier, effectively creating their own door.

My last stipulation was that a physical marker should imply uncertainty. It should assume that all meaning has been lost from symbols such as deathly skulls and bones, radiation and chemical hazard signs or every letter of our language, so in a bizarre way, it makes sense to lurch in the complete opposite direction.

Imagine, for a moment, a stretching tunnel that burrows into the earth, not in a straight line, but with a constant, spiralling curve. It is only possible to see twenty or so metres ahead, and also the same behind, with surroundings designed to make it nearly impossible to tell how far along one has ventured. At some point, any adventurer would give up or get the idea that they shouldn’t be there.

I won’t say more, because it might spoil a few features in future books, but if you have any ideas along these lines, make sure to send me a message!

Last of all, I want to take a moment to explore some of the less physical markers that were proposed, particularly by one Stanisław Lem, a polish science-fiction author. (Who I’ll need to write another post about on his own!)

One of his suggestions was the biological coding of a message into the DNA of a plant that would only grow near the radiation of storage sites. Effectively, an atomic flower. While he did concede that this idea wouldn’t be so effective, as it would be very unlikely that a future civilisation would think to decode the genetic material of a particular flower, let alone understand it, I was still taken by the idea.

It grew to be the symbol of the name I publish under, Helixic books, representing a DNA flower of my own. I won’t tell you what it means here, however. You’ll have to read The Hytharo Redux for that.