Rob Chilson - Refuge

In the enclosed cities of Earth’s future, citizens rarely travel beyond the city of their birth, and almost never go outside. Agoraphobia is so widespread as to be the norm of human behavior.

St. Louis, like the other enclosed Terran cities, is connected to the rest of the world by its communications systems, airport, and the highway system traveled mostly by robot-driven, or remote-controlled trucks.

Travel within the cities is accomplished on the expressways. There is some use of small trucks for transport of goods within the cities, but most freight is sent over a system of moving slidewalks. Personal vehicles are almost unknown, and are basically the prerogative of the very rich and powerful.

The city scene shown here is late at night. Normally, the streets and escalators are clogged with people.]

[EXPRESSWAYS: This is the average citizen’s primary means of transportation in Terran cities. The expressways move at varying speeds, with the slowest ones at the outside to make it easier to enter, and the fastest lanes in the center. There are expressways to all areas of the city.

To accommodate rush hour crowds, special rules go into effect, restricting access to certain lanes to the citizens with the highest ratings.

For Earther’s, using the expressways is as natural as breathing, and Terran babies learn to use them as soon as they learn to walk.]

[LOADING DOCKS: The loading docks are one of the few areas that connect directly with the world outside of the city, and even then, the entryways are slanted at oblique angles to prevent the people working on the docks from gaining a potentially debilitating view of the outside. The trucks are mostly remote controlled or robotically driven, though some are driven by hardy truckers who can tolerate the open roads without being crippled by their agoraphobia. Truckers willing to make hauls between cities are highly sought after and very well paid.

Once trucks enter the loading docks, their cargo is transferred to the smaller inner-city transports by loading vehicles known as handlers.]

LAMBERT FIELD: Although air travel is rarely used by the average citizens of Terran cities, every city has an airport. The airport itself, like the rest of the city, is totally enclosed, including the runways. The airliners are windowless, to avoid traumatizing the agoraphobic passengers. Each seat on the airliner is equipped with a viewing screen that provides a constant feed of news and entertainment to occupy the thoughts of edgy air travelers. Sedatives are also provided for those passengers who wish to sleep during the entire trip, thus minimizing their trauma.

SPECIAL AGENT DONOVAN: Donovan is the agent in charge of the St. Louis office of the Terrestrial Bureau of Investigation. The TBI is the global investigative force, which is charged, among other tasks, with keeping tabs on all Earthside Spacers in order to avoid any unpleasant incidents between the Spacers and the less-privileged Earthers.

TBI agents are a tough, well-trained corps of policeman. In common with his brother agents, Donovan is athletic, intelligent and relentlessly efficient.

A Kansas City area writer, Rob Chilson has lived in Missouri since the age of nine. He began writing at eleven, and was part of the last generation of authors to be trained by John Campbell. His first sf story was published in 1968. Among his novels are The Curtain Falls , The Star-Crowned Kings , and The Shores of Kansas . He is currently working on several series of stories in collaboration with such writers as Robin Bailey and William F. Wu. He is also doing another series, for Analog , about pocket brains.