Memories of Chrysopolis

Nilankha

Lupercal 22, 233 AC

As we approach the beginning of a new year, I look back on the important events of 233, at least the events in the scholarly world. The opening of the Siran archives to the general public in 232 was a major breakthrough in the remembering of Noantri life on an Other-human settled world only a few years before the Crossing. The Siran other-humans were quite a diverse lot themselves, with plenty of different races and ethnicities on which to vent their prejudice, but they never missed a chance to harass and persecute the Noantri who lived among them. It was an easy choice for the Noantri of Sira to vacate their old home and go through the Gateway to the New World. Meanwhile, the Other-humans, to put it anagrammatically as we say, the "Antri-Noi," left behind a vast internet planisphere that our archivists copied in its entirety before they went through the Gate. It's a treasure-trove of culture from a civilization that was slowly losing its higher technologies. By the time of the archives, interstellar travel was almost lost, and fusion power had also begun to sputter out.

This year we received another archive, this one more incomplete and much older, from a world named Anta-kabiri. This world was settled by genetically engineered other-humans, who had terraformed a planet orbiting a red dwarf star. It would seem unlikely that there were Noantri there, but according to the personnel records of various engineering and scientific establishments, there are some recognizable Noantri genomic, visual, and textual records. Their lives were lived in a vast industrial complex, lit by the fiery gloom of the red star. An interstellar spaceport orbited the planet, as big as a small moon. It is the kind of thing that we may never see again here in this far-off sector of the Galaxy.

I spent some of my younger years, along with my then-husband, working on salvaged planispheres at Chrysopolis. This is the duplicate of the Great Library at Eridu, and it is the repository of all the media salvaged from the Old Worlds whose formats can not yet be deciphered. The founder of Eridu, the legendary Nouergist Redon IV, decreed that a duplicate library be founded at a safe distance from Eridu, lest the single Library be somehow destroyed. We Noantri historians take the long view, and did not blink at the prospect of a project that could take a century to achieve. Generations of informaticians and antichronologists worked to unlock these ancient collections of texts, images, media, and whatever scientific lore survived the great destructions.

Chrysopolis was, and is by design a place of almost eerie serenity, set in the deserts in the eastern part of Khemi. It is a resort for a certain type of person who has no taste for partying, gambling, or carousing. Text stores, theaters and concert halls, and elegant restaurants entice the wealthy and the intellectual. The city is made of golden adobe and eco-glass which shines like an unearthly mineral in the sun. In the central plaza, reached by vehicle-free walkways lined with palm trees, is the duplicate Library, designed by the famous Nouergist architect Apsou-Ari. Under its white arcades are building elements brought through the Gateway and now imbedded in the stucco wall. Some of them are said to glow in the dark, still charged with theophoric fire.