Avalon. City of Dreams. The last and first resort.

The year is- Well, I am not entirely sure what year it is. If you go by the original Gavian calendar, this is the year 1780 counting from the raising of Mayor Gavius. But we are supposed to be using the new Cyclic calendar, which puts today in the 23rd year of the First Cycle. According to the Foundation calendar, this would be year 2056 FE - more than two thousand years since the founding of the City. Some cultists will tell you that it is actually the year 3500, counting from the supposed destruction of Earth. You can see how the whole year thing can become quickly complicated.

But we are here today. That is more than most can say in this dustball of a planet. To step out of the City is to die. Any child will tell you that the air Outside is so saturated with microscopic dust that a single breath can rip out your lungs. Even if you did manage to survive with the help of breathers and filters, even if you did strap water reclaimers on, you will certainly continue your inevitable march towards death Outside thanks to the searing heat, the freezing cold, the sulphur blasts, the sand dogs, the starvation, the sandstorms and any number of other nasty things.

The City is my home. Me and a few million others. This city, with its towering apartments and squalid slums, with its perfumed quarters and stinking garbage piles, with its powerful technology and powerless people, with its wide boulevards and narrow minds - this is the only home we've known. We'll take it, warts and all. The alternative is a quick and painful life.

The official name of the city is Avalon - a name dredged up from some forgotten legend. But we all call it the City. A band of brave survivors in our wandering years laid the first foundation more than 2000 years ago. They were simply marking a relatively safe spot for them to die as the world churned around them. But they soon realized that their tomb could also be their salvation - for it housed the last of the great nuclear reactors of lore. The reactor was built in a massive complex that stood like a mountain, and around this massive source of power, civilization began to take root.

We are children of the Core. With the power from the Core, we terraformed our immediate neighborhood. The Core enabled us to develop stack farming techniques. With our microfarms, we are now able to support a larger population. The Core is the only source of power in the City. He who controls the Core controls the City. So it is a good thing we have the priests.

The priests were once called physicists. They were the elite few who knew the inner workings of the Core. And they knew better than to let that kind of knowledge become public. They closely guarded their secret, teaching only a very few, passing it down from priest to priest. What was once science became religion. What was once technology became magic.

The priests quickly set up a working democracy in the City. Councilmen and even the Mayor were elected by the people. The Avalon Constitution was laid down during this time - a set of rules and guidelines governing all systems in the City. We evolved out of a need to persist. Survival was, and still is, the Prime Directive.

But governments are only as good as the people that make them. We exist for the State, and the State exists for us. But there comes a time when the State takes precedence over the people. Mayor Salvor Gavius, later Gavius I, was one of the many who saw democracy as a legacy system that had outlived its usefulness. It may have made sense in a world of plenty, but ours is a world of scarcity. The State had to take absolute control of the resources. The State had to assume total control of the populace if it desired to thrive. So the State did. Mayor Gavius I ushered in a new era when he added the Genetic Directive to the Constitution. Genes, and not popular opinion, will determine who rules and who serves. Advances in the field of biologics enabled such a change. Ballot boxes were replaced by sequencers that predicted life choices based on protein strands. Every individual was assessed for his or her value to the State. Every thread of life was analyzed for 'compatibility with the system'.

This was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we had a far more efficient society - one where the individual cogs knew exactly what was expected. On the other, we had an entrenched governing elite - one that would practice a careful process of breeding to ensure its supremacy. But the real winner of this system was undoubtedly the priests - the ones that came up with the algorithm in the first place. None but the priests knew the intricacies of the sequencer. People accepted it as Divine Word. The sequencer says I am worthless to the City, so I must be. That's the way we think.

That's the way we have thought for nearly two thousand years now. We owe a lot to the priests - longer lifespan, healthier life, food, water, order, peace. This City was built by the priests and no matter what the current Mayor Gavius II thinks, it is still controlled by the priests. If the priests want to sequence individuals, the individuals will be sequenced.

That's not to say the priests are without opposition. Even in a perfect police state, there are rebel elements. The White Army is perhaps the strongest of such elements. Formed originally by supporters of the last democratically elected Mayor Duncan White, the organization has since then become a rallying point for opposition against the government, the priests, the police, the sequencing and any other discontent. Naturally, members of the organization are hunted down mercilessly whenever they are found. The White Army soldiers are equally ruthless in their campaigns of terror against the government. The infamous bombing of the Council Hall comes readily to mind, when the White Army managed to catch the entire police high command under one roof during the Annual Passing Out Party. Even after a decade, the police force is still recovering from that attack.

But even the possibility of a democratic government or a transparent system is only a pale dream. Next to the huge chasm of isolation, these are childish hopes. Everything outside the City, we call it Outside, like it's another realm from another planet. It very well could be. The death penalty in the City is a simple process of stripping you naked and sending you Outside. The Action Entertainment Network made its first million accepting bets for the number of steps an inmate would take Outside before dying. The current record is 73.

Not just inmates. The Outside is also the place for Undesirables - people who have been judged useless by the sequencer. The only consideration shown to them is that they are given a water reclaimer and a breather and they are not stripped naked. That's not to say we are ignorant of what is out there. We built powerful sand vehicles to explore Outside. We have explored as far as either pole. We know how the planet looks though we may not have satellites. We know that we are the last enclave of humans. There is NOTHING out there but dust and death.

So, I guess a welcome is in order. Welcome to the City. May you find your worth in your sequence. May you find what you seek. But then again, may you first know what you seek.

Notes on Technology

In the City, all the technological advancements come from the Temple. The Temple of the Core is the headquarters of the priests and is home to the Patriarch (or Matriarch, as the case may be) of the Temple - head of the order of the priests. The Temple predates the City by at least a thousand years and very little has been added by successive generations. Apart from housing the last of the great nuclear reactors, the Temple also boasts an extensive library, numerous laboratories, testing stations, assembly lines and vast banks of sequencers.

Nearly everything in the City needs power. And every last joule of power comes from the Core. It must be a matter of technological marvel that a few tons of mythical matter can produce power for three millenia without a break - but to the people of the City, it is just another religious miracle that they constantly expect from the priests.

Despite all their power and authority, the priests are a secretive lot. They do not interfere with the workings of the civil government - at least not overtly. They do not concern themselves with crime and punishment. They spend their days studying and researching, testing and developing. They are also constantly fine-tuning the sequencer algorithm, determined to create the perfect society.

Notes on Government

The highest political power in the City is the Mayor. Since the time of Gavius I, the position has become hereditary thanks to the genetic breeding program carried out by the royals. The current mayor is Mayor Gavius II, simultaneously the grandson and great-grandson of Gavius I. His father-brother Calinan II was the longest serving mayor in the City's history, dying at the ripe age of 120.

Technically, the Mayor is answerable to the Council. The councillors are all products of such breeding programs too, and constantly try to outbreed the reigning Mayor. The council divides the civic responsibilities among the council members. But ultimately, all of them are answerable to the Mayor. Only in the time of a civil emergency, however, does the Mayor exert absolute control.