Tales from the Trails - Unuo 23, 126 PM
Mikaelo reports on the conversations he had (and overheard) while traveling on the Federelo along the Golden Coast.
FEDERELO #313 - UNUO 23, 126 PM
Out each side of the eastbound Federelo 13:00 service from Nova Espero City to Puerto Blanco lie great, unending expanses. Out the south-facing windows, the Great Southern Sea forms a blanket of choppy blue waters, interrupted only momentarily by the crane of a crabbing vessel or the sail of a pleasure yacht. Even in the dead of winter, the climate here is sufficiently comfortable to entice the nautically-minded to take to the waves.
To the north, the waves are much more violent in their height and ferocity. Waves of stone and dirt form vast, unending torrents across the landscape, as sheep graze lazily on the hillsides. The hilliness of Nova Espero and its borderlands with West Ferria leads many to believe that this is not a plateau scored by the receding glacial ice, but a mountain range. Smooth breezes lightly brush the tall grasses that thrive here, and send a brief chill up the spine of the watchful shepherds. This region is a vast rural empire, intermittently interrupted by the dense, crowded industrial cities of the southwest.
This train is fully booked, with many from the cosmopolitan centers of business along the Golden Coast going back and forth for the first time following the vacation-heavy holiday season. Here are some of the conversations I had – and overheard – while aboard the crowded train.
Roberto, 51, is a single father of two returning home to Puerto Blanco. He gives an air of confidence based on his appearance, though one could tell after just a few minutes of talking with that he has deep, unshakable anxieties about his children specifically and the state of the world more generally.
“We’re at peace now – sure – but I still remember how it was when I was a kid. We’d have these drills at school because one day, any day, the Ylrikians could come hopping over the border. And then there was the civil war. I got drafted and sent to boot camp right when it was ending, thank God. Not to disrespect those who died but, what use was there dying at that point, y’know? They wanted to leave, most of us didn’t want them around – why should we bleed ourselves to death to bring those racist inbreds back? The civil war, that awful war in Erachnia. That insurgency in the Crescent Islands, those revolts in Ylrikia – the 90s were rough. It felt like the world was falling apart.
“There’s something in the air right now, I can’t quite explain it. It feels pretty similar to that time. There aren’t any horrifying wars, but something feels too… static? Not like unmoving, but like the zap you get from a blanket. There’s too much energy. Things are boring, seemingly. But that’s how it felt in 90. All that energy was just building up though. Then history happened. It feels like that now. Like history’s about to happen.
“Thankfully my kids are too young to get drafted into whatever history’s about to happen. I don’t believe in any of the propaganda. There isn’t much worth dying for except the person lying next to you, and the kids sleeping in the next room over. Simple as that.”
Violeta, 21, is a student at the National College of Art in Nova Espero returning home to her small, West Ferrian town for the weekend. She shows me a number of sketches, urban scenes drawn from the vantage point of some of the innumerable benches in the city’s public spaces. She shows me Libero Square, the Lankolay Promenade, a street market scene out of Little Ferria. She likes to add fantastical elements to real-life situations, such as elves lining up to purchase fish sandwiches from a food cart, or a dragon clutching the belltower of the Nova Espero House of Wisdom.
“I think I’m proudest of this one, I call it ‘Dumbstruck.’ It’s exactly how I felt when I came to Nova Espero. When you get here, the train doesn’t do a good job of showing how the city is. You kinda sneak in from the north through a tunnel. So you get off the train and the first thing you see is this giant hall, with all the flags of the commonwealths on each side. There are these massive murals, showing folks surviving after the War, farming the land, rebuilding the cities. And you’re just like – WOW! Puerto Blanco is big, but this is CRAZY.”
Violeta shows me “Dumbstruck.” It depicts a stuffed bear wearing a beret, much like the one she is wearing now. The bear is looking agog at the splendor of Federal Station, and its massive arched ceiling, stained glass windows, and bounties of flags, murals, and schedule boards.
“I’m going to give it to my mom for her birthday,” she says. “She’s the one who pushed me to go to art school. I think she’d really like it.”
Peter, 29, is a commodities broker on one of his many business trips between Nova Espero and Puerto Blanco. Born on a corn farm in a part of Libero that even natives would call “the sticks,” Peter always had a fascination with agriculture. Not the typical fascination that comes with driving tractors or breeding cattle, mind you, but a fascination with the logistics and numbers and spreadsheets involved in the complex world of industrialized, capitalized agriculture. After going to Libero State University to study the economics of commodities, he soon found himself at the Pierron Board of Trade, the largest commodities exchange in the country.
“It was wonderful, you know. They always talk about the northern lights up there in those parts, those flickering lights that go off in the night sky. They were beautiful. But nothing beat the lights on the trade floor of the P-BOT. The courtiers scurried across the floor, shouting orders. “Achetez du maïs!” one would shout to buy corn futures, another would yell, “Vendez de l’acier!” to sell steel. Everything was in Lacaise up there. You have to learn it to earn your triennium at LSU.
“I got tired of the cold, though. The Puerto Blanco Board of Trade is smaller, but the weather’s better. Constant sunshine versus those godawful winters. There’d be two feet of snow on the ground, and those courtiers would still be on the trading floor. I still get to work out my Lacaise muscle though; the Puerto Blanco BOT also uses Lacaise for business.
As we pass through the borderlands between Hegelion and Ferria, Peter points out the massive stands of cortezada trees spreading out over the hillsides. The brown, curled bark from these trees is harvested each year to support the habits of the 80% of Uniguitans who regularly chew, smoke, or drink cortezada and its derivatives. Peter, with a pack of Piolek Slim cortezada sticks poking out of his pocket, sees dollar signs in those trees.
“Each one of those trees, debarked, is a year’s worth of corty for the average user, right? At forty cents a pack, three packs a day… that’s over 400 notes a year! And there’s millions of those trees out there. Corty trading is the big ticket item in these parts, it’s definitely the most valuable crop in the south.”
He shows me his fresh copy of El Manual General de Agricultura Sudadera - 126 PM, the farmer’s almanac published each year by the Campesino Press in Puerto Blanco.
“‘Buy into an index fund and let it ride,’ is that advice everyone gets, right? People try to overcomplicate finance, but for most people, that’s the winner. Day trading is for idiots. But this book? There’s something magical about it. I buy it every year, and the long-term weather forecasts have yet to fail me. I make bank off of this book. I don’t even care that you’re going to publish this, because everyone – everyone! – thinks I’m nuts when I talk about it. Buying this book is like buying an index fund. It’s a sure bet. And this is looking like a good year to buy corty futures.”
Two older women with thick, Old City Nova Espero accents discuss Anton Korczak, the hard-scrabble, working class Populist councilor who is widely expected to seek the mayor’s office in 126 PM.
Woman 1: “Tony ran last time, he lost.”
Woman 2: “So what? You can be anything in Nova Espero. If you’re a loser, you can be a winner too.”