Dry Planet

            I dreamed I was in a city that was on a planet that had almost no surface water, very "Dune" like. The city was on a huge spike of rock in the middle of an otherwise featureless desert. The ground wasn't so much sand as it was cracked rocky surface. There was a road out of the town that went across the wasteland. I could see several dozen stone bridges across the various chasms in the distance. Nearly to the horizon was another city, also shaped a great deal like a giant termite mound.

            I was in the city, making repairs to my aircraft. As I was taking a break from the repairs, essentially being done, I was looking out over the plains towards our nearest neighbor, a streak of light descended from orbit and landed, possibly crashed, about half the distance between our two cities. I spoke to my companion about renting a ground vehicle. We needed to get there before the salvage crews started out in the evening. Even though it was uncomfortable to travel in the daylight, I figured I could rig my solar wings to provide extra power and shade at the same time. We would be able to reach the site while there was still light in the sky. I would use the aircraft to shuttle survivors and equipment to the ground vehicle.

            There was really not a way to go off-roading any distance due to the numerous deep chasms. I also knew I had an advantage in that I had one of the only aircraft on the planet. (Most people didn't really travel as being out in the waste was uncomfortable in the extreme.) The only trade was really for luxury type goods and to move the population around. To that end children had to go to college in another city in the world, they could then choose to return home, but many would settle where they ended up. It was a fairly painless system to keep the genetic diversity going on this very sparsely populated world.

            I'd be surprised if the whole world's population was greater than a million. My job was ferrying mail and occasionally passengers from city to city. I also did some runs out into the waste to recover meteors and the like. I'd once found an uninhabited water site at one meteor strike. That find had made me independently wealthy. They didn't name the city after me, though; I was a little sore about that still.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF