Our Letters of Ovelia series is starting to draw to an end, but there's still a few letters in our imaginary mail box. This time, an important figure of a sky city (!) urges the people to rise up in the ongoing civil war.
Denial.
It is what the civil war has been about from the very beginning, and the only development has been the spread of it, its poisoning of all we have left. The Isolationist government was always in denial, since a full century back, believing that this city could stay aloft indefinitely without outside help. I remember being told as a child, by parents who no doubt meant well, that the Skycity floated on the dreams and hopes of every child in it. Perhaps it was supposed to sound more beautiful than a thorium reactor, but it belied an important truth I think all children of this city deserve to know from an early age; that we were from the very beginning working our way through a limited supply of fuel. Without outside help, we would fall.
But this denial was not just a fairytale told to calm the innocent. It was part of the Isolationist dogma which doomed this city to its current fate. When did it first become obvious to those in charge that the thorium supply was waning? When did the people who elected them first begin understand that the stockpile couldn't have been infinite on any Skycity, let alone one which was meant to be supplied with new thorium on a regular basis? When did the public opinion begin to shift? With the blatant electoral fraud and political smokescreens, we may never know.
What we do know is that it is not just the past which is being denied. The Isolationists deny us the present. They deny our children a future. How much further will the "energy-saving" measures be expanded in what will eventually be a futile effort to make the thorium stockpile last? To what length will they continue to abuse our patience?
This is not about the old post-Breakdown conflict between Isolationists and Interventionists anymore. That debate was always framed as whether we should aid the people on the ground - a people who had, it appeared, lost everything. Moral sentiments aside, the time of that debate is long past. We are the ones who need their help, and we can only hope that they forgive us for not extending the same sympathy to them in their time of need. The Isolationists know this, and yet they still talk of the people below as if they have nothing to offer.
We have the truth on our side, and it shall be our only weapon. Taking up arms against our oppressors has only given them further excuses to strengthen their hold on the city and preventing us from contacting the surface. This is not a war that can be won on the battlefields, which only serve to further tear apart what infrastructure still remains.
No, if you truly wish to see the Skycity Guanbao as a place for your children and grandchildren to grow up in, rather than debris on the face of the Earth, I ask this of you. Cease your denial. Mothers, fathers, don't lie to your children about hopes and dreams. Tell them that this city floats with the power of the cloven atom, and that without thorium, it will fall. Tell them that we are not alone. Tell them that we need to make contact.
Marcel Chen, 24th April 2261
For more Letters of Ovelia, read Part V: Lift or Part VII: We Call Them Wakes What would you like to see from us after this series? We always read, and often answer, comments made here or at one of the social networks below.
