Robert Silverberg: The World Inside

And look, look there! The neighboring urbmons! The wondrous row of them! Urbmon 117, 118, 119, 120. The fifty-one towers of the Chipitts constellation. Total population now 41,516,883. Or some such. And east of Chipitts lies Boshwash. And west of Chipitts is Sansan. And across the sea is Berpar and Wienbud and Shankong and Bocarac. And more. Each cluster of towers with its millions of encapsulated souls. What is the population of our world now? Has it reached 76,000,000,000 yet? They project 100,000,000,000 for the not too distant future. Many new urbmons must be built to house those added billions. Plenty of land left though. And they can put platforms on the sea.

To the north, on the horizon, he imagines he can see the blaze of a commune’s bonfires. Like the flash of a diamond in sunlight. The farmers dancing. Their grotesque rites. Bringing fertility to the fields. God bless! It is all for the best. Siegmund smiles. He stretches forth his arms. If he could only embrace the stars, he might find god. He walks to the very edge of the landing stage. A railing and a force-field protect him against the vagrant gusts of wind that might hurl him to his death. It is very windy here. Three kilometers high, after all. A needle sticking into god’s eye. If he could only spring into the heavens. Looking down as he coats past, seeing Chipitts below, the rows of towers, the farmland surrounding them, the miraculous urban rhythm of verticality plotted against the miraculous commune rhythm of horizontality. How beautiful the world is tonight. Siegmund throws his head back. Eyes shining. And there is god. The blessman was right. There! There! Wait, I’m coming! Siegmund mounts the railing. Teeters a little. Currents of wind buffeting him. He has risen above the protective forcefield. It seems almost as though the whole building is swaying. Think of the body heat that 888,904 human beings under the same roof must generate. Think of the waste products they daily send down the chute. All these linked lives. The switchboard. And god watching over us. I’m coming! I’m coming. Siegmund flexes his knees, gathers his strength, sucks air deep into his lungs. And sails toward god in a splendid leap.

Now the morning sun is high enough to touch the uppermost fifty stories of Urban Monad 116. Soon the building’s entire eastern face will glitter like the bosom of the sea at daybreak. Thousands of windows, activated by the dawn’s early photons, deopaque. Sleepers stir. Life goes on. God bless! Here begins another happy day.