The Range of Neglect

Immersed in precise photographic documentation of the ominously low reservoir water level, Rachel did not contemplate the ultimate source of the water whose scarcity seemed so threatening.

The standard school curriculum had taught her that the precious substance came from the mountains to the west, but like the vast majority of residents of the Associated Republic, she had no idea of the magnitude or the nature of those mountains, even though the range was responsible not just for the water supply of the entire megalopolis, but for the very existence of the desert that made life in Sprawn City fundamentally tenuous.

Paradoxically, the Brobdingnagian character of the range made it little known. Its height and ruggedness prevented easy or even moderately difficult access along its entire 2000 kilometer length and for a huge segment of the massif, completely forbade access to all but the lower, subsidiary ranges. The fact that Semiramideans had been forced to abandon aviation over a century ago, when it became clear that viral pandemics would virtually extinguish the species if such an effective means of transmitting and multiplying contagion were not eliminated, severely limited their ability to chart or even simply examine unknown territories Just at the time the associated republic was running roughshod over the original inhabitants into the Western half of the range.

From the extreme aridity of Sprawn City’s location and knowledge of atmospheric circulation, an astute and imaginative observer could have inferred the existence of a wide, lofty, and lengthy chain of mountains far to the west of the new city called Sprawn. Such reasoning would enable a visitor to predict the Sierra’s existence, but almost certainly could not prepare her for its magnitude. Moreover, she would never have the satisfaction of disproving any scoffers, for to verify her hypothesis, she would have to be undaunted by a journey as perilous as those braved by the explorers of old.

Although the view from Rachel’s lookout was chillingly desolate, it

would not be considered so by a completely hypothetical person who had visited the high interior of the Sierra Descuidado, which contained thousands of square kilometers where no human being had ever set foot. Rachel’s purview, by contrast, included major artifacts whose very purpose was to combat the desolation. But, to be precise, one micron beyond where the farthest reservoir-impounded water molecule wetted the first non-human-transported grain of soil began the true wilderness. From there, it roller-coastered league after mind-numbing league to the 10,000 meter crest of the Cordillera.

Along the way, instead of the aqueducts our lonely lookout monitored, there were watercourses that were lucky to hold water every 10 years. Instead of the lookout tower in which she was ensconced, with its elevator access to the lower two-thirds and the deliveries of freeze-dried foods and New Age “whole-being” coffee to make her feel humanoid (even in the morning), there were the exceedingly rare camps of the Ollatambos, the First Nation of the high plateau to the west of the divide. This still-proud, but now forcibly impoverished nation had been steadily pushed eastward in fits and starts by the plundering New People until they were forced to land so poor even the notoriously predacious interloper from the west turned up their collective nose.

If our hypothetical and intrepid adventurer found her or his way to one of the rare high passes through the divide, and was lucky enough to be traveling in one of the infrequent summers when they did not remain totally blocked by snow, and survived the traverse of the crest, which even in low-snow years was far more fraught than the term “pass” would suggest, 6000 meter plus elevation making supplemental oxygen highly desirable although totally unavailable on this planet, and topography declivitous enough to make technical climbing gear not officially required only because the was no authority to require it, they would then face the challenge of negotiating the western slope, which made up for slightly less vertical prominence by being outrageously steep, making the fabled East slope of Terra’s Sierra Nevada look like a plateau. If those foolhardy pioneers safely descended the precipitous and jagged western flank of the range, they would then be in a no-man’s land, marginally less arid but corrugated by ranges that would be regarded as world-class on all other continents, where they would not be literally in the shadow of the Sierra Descuidado.

In this barely-inhabited zone, a human challenge was added to that of topography. Remnants of the Ollatambos and other only slightly less intransigent nations of the First Peoples did their best to patrol the area, making up for their absurdly thin coverage of the land with their legendary fierceness.

If our party successfully ran this gauntlet, they finally had the chance of travel or communication by more modern means. They might find their way to a lonely frontier railroad whistlestop and possibly flag down a passing work train on its way from the northeastern mines to the West Coast power axis. If they succeeded in convincing the conductor to let them aboard in their doubtlessly flea-ridden and emaciated state, it was a mere two day ride to Kronin, the capital megalopolis, on the fastest substitute Semiramidean ingenuity had yet found for the unsavory airplane.

Rachel was an adventurous type, or she never would have let herself fall into a job that required her to perch 300 meters above the ground. It was an indication of the truly neglected status of the Sierra Descuidado that in the rare moments when her mind wandered to what might lie beyond Sprawn City Hydration Asset Five, she never imagined an exploration of the lands stretching almost endlessly to her west was at all possible. It was mental territory almost as forbidden as speculation about what might lie beyond the sphere of stars would be for a firm adherent of the Ptolemaic universe.

UPDATE: While the reader was being brought up to speed on the geography and history of Semiramide and the Associated Republic, Rachel was succeeding in focusing on the task she had set herself. She had plotted the current water-level line on her largest-scale topo of SCHAF, measuring its length on the map with the cunning little roller device, multiplying by 24,000 to get length on the ground, and then searching references for the all-important capacity based on perimeter: "... but don’t know the depth. Doesn’t matter... does it? Only need the ratio between now and when it was full to the brim-need to know its profile... angle of the sides-must be somewhere…”

We will leave her to her technical meditations and make a fiction-assisted jump to the lonely interior of the continent.