New here? Welcome. The Archivist runs on two voices: Eshal, who keeps the city's records, and me, the person who wrote the city. Read both. They don't always agree.
PART ONE: THE ARCHIVIST'S RECORD
04:44. Every morning, Vehl's Reach rises.
Ten thousand feet unless there is an existential crisis. The rise is for the survival of the city and everyone who lives on it. Beneath the city, the surface climbs to temperatures nothing living survives by sunrise.
Above it, two suns. One yellow, young and bright. One a red giant, swollen and patient. The city survives between them by one rule.
It never misses an ascent. Ever. Because, the day it misses one, is the day it ceases to exist. The city is divided into two groups. People who think 10k feet is ‘very high’ and those who think it is not high enough. There is no record as far which says how the height was decided in the first place.
A city can be wrong about many things and still be standing in the morning. I have yet to find one that survived being wrong about this number.
[Archivist's Footnote: "Very high" is what people say about a height they have never had to feel.]
PART TWO: FROM R.R. PANWAR
The One:
My first draft had Vehl's Reach rising 1,100 feet every morning.
That number wasn't random.
A few years ago I did the CN Tower EdgeWalk. 1,168 feet up. Outside the building. It is the highest hands free walk you can do. There are no railings. Just a harness, and Ripley’s Aquarium very, very far below. The moment you lean out and see the ground far below is when you feel the enormity of it all.
Even though it was perfectly safe, and not very high as far as the heights go, I remember it as an enormous experience. And I wrote based on that.
Rising the city to that height would have been fine. The story worked, the class divide in the city worked. No one would have challenged if that number hadn’t changed. But it didn’t sit right with me. That was the problem.
The Jump:
I wrote the first ascension scene. A city climbing for its very survival, to outrun the death by chemicals and heat. And I felt nothing.
The atmospheric mechanics were not adding up. I kept feeling that 1,100 feet is not high enough to make a difference. But that view, the feeling of near panic mixed with exhilaration I felt when leaning out of the CN Tower stopped me every time.
So I did the next logical thing. I jumped out of a plane.
10,500 feet.
Somewhere between the free fall, the terminal velocity of 120 MPH (~193 kmph) and the ground returning, I understood what I'd gotten wrong.
At 1,168 feet, height is a number. You can still see cars, the shape of streets, and still feel part of the same world.
At 10,500 feet, height stops being a number. It becomes a completely different environment. The ground stops being a place you had just left 20 mins ago, and turns into a map. You can see the curve of the earth.
I'd been writing height as a measurement, when it needed to be a pressure point. A way for the city to commit and stay committed for the rest of the day. Something high enough that surface and the height felt like two different worlds.
I rewrote Vehl's Reach when I got back on the ground.
1,100 became 10,000 for regular operations and 18000 or more for existential threats.
Why It Matters?
The edit in the manuscript was small. Just one extra zero. But it changed far more than the number.
The ascent stopped being a pretty scenery. It became a cost that the city paid for dearly and daily. A brutal daily climb with a surface waiting below, and a sky above that offers the city no mercy for slowing down.
Every character in the book is forced to live by that number. They live and die by it. I almost shipped the wrong number, and the book would probably would still have been fine.
Fine is where stories go to die quietly.
And I am not here to do that. I'd rather write the version that scares me. Even when I have to jump out of an airplane to find it and fix it.
For now, I'll leave you with a question.
What's something you only truly understood once you were physically there? Something no amount of reading or research could have taught you?
Reply and tell me. I read every one.
R.R. Panwar
BEFORE YOU GO:
The Infection Protocol, Book 1 of The Parasite Wars, launches publicly November 7. Twenty-five days.
WHILE YOU'RE HERE: EXPLORE A SHELF OF ADVENTURE, FREE
A collection of fascinating stories from epic journey across a hostile landscape to a pitched battle in deep space!
This month, a group of science fiction and fantasy authors have put a collection of great adventure reads on one shelf, and every book is free through October 31.Next issue: a Signal, from inside the city.
Until then: the number in the record is not an exaggeration. It is where the Vehl’s Reach is taking you Nov 7th. Hoping to see you all there!
— Eshal & R.R. Panwar
THE ARCHIVIST | Free. Weekly, most Tuesdays.
Records of worlds the city would prefer you didn't find.