Having turned the corner, Pride stops short, taken aback by the size of the building she now discovers to her right. She goes:

„Wow. What a veg rack. Never seen one that big.“

And it is big. Huge, even. Totally unlike the row of low houses in the first street of ArcheoTown. This was a pretty unimpressive sight that had sent Pride wondering about what exactly was the point of visiting. Whereas the landmark she discovers now runs is higher than any contemporary structure, and runs the full length of a block.

Turning towards Star, Pride tries to get a grip on the monster:

 „That’s sure to be ten… No, let me count: Two, four, six, eight, twelve. Twelve! This beast is a full meaty twelve storeys high! Must have taken a whole forest to build, and just to grow veg. What the hell were they thinking, in those days? What a waste of wood.”

Star shakes her head in active dissent and retorts:

“You’re getting this so wrong, Pride. And using foul language won’t hide how clueless you are, about the past. Didn’t you pay attention, in history class? The ancients, they were all sickly. Walking too little, breathing bad air, eating tons of all the wrong foodstuffs. Those guys were a mess. Our life skills tutor, she used to say the worst of the ancients spent more time looking at screens than getting massages. That was of course an exaggeration, impossible to survive on less than two hours of massage per day, you’d go brain spike. But the ancients were sickly, that bit of my life skills tutors tale is true. It said so in an immersion tutorial, too, and those are fact checked by both the lieless and the bragimpeded, as true as truth gets. Each and every single ancient had to munch through tons of greens, to make up for all the unhealthy. No wonder they built multistorey veg racks. It was like temples to them…”

Staring at the huge relic of past madness, Pride squeezes her eyes in an effort to recall more than faint shadows of her own history class. Star has a point, but something feels wrong, in her tale. Pride would so love to be better at this knowledge thing.

She does recall her own life skills tutor, Merit, a bloody good looking number. Tall and bulky, he wore his aggressive makeup with impeccable style. Merit made boys half his age, and dressed up for a beauty contest, look bland. All girls wasted fortunes on his kind purple lipstick, to hopefully attract Merits attention.

His name, his looks, his vanilla perfume, that much Pride recalls as if they had parted ways minutes ago. There was this one instant, when his eyes rested on her for that all important additional split second of appreciation. Still makes her shiver. But what the steak did the target of her teenage phantasies talk about?

Merit had such of lively way of describing past ways of life. Pride recalls how his anecdotes made her feel like having been there, with him. All smiles, a nice contrast to the gory conditions he was describing, his eyes gleaming through bright orange contact lenses that contrasted exquisitely with the smooth darkness of his skin, Merit instilled real passion in her. For his person. Whatever he had been talking about is gone.

The enormous grey mass of the big building just sits there, unimpressed by their presence. No pop-up ghosts to tell the story of the past. ArcheoTown is one of the innumerable sites that where created in the frenzy of historical interest after the meteor near miss, too minor for any fancy technology. The locals just opened a gate into an area that had been fenced off for decades, added the sign ‘ArcheoTown’ and claimed the federal bonus.

Star is still waffling about the sickly people of the past. She’s very much on the slim side, not looking all that healthy herself, no wonder this is such a big topic for her.

Whereas Pride’s body is in perfect shape and health. If only her brain could be of the same caliber. Something is wrong, she’s so sure this silent mass of grey wood doesnt’t fit Star’s story and would protest, if only it could talk. But dead wood can’t talk. Nor is it grey!

Excited to be doing the intellectual thing after all, Pride goes:

“Shut up, Star, will you? Just listen to yourself, talking about wood and forests. Never heard of legacy buildings? Can’t you see? Just come with me an touch this so called wood!”

Pulling her friend by the arm, Pride forces her closer to the high building, to give her the chance to feel that this structure isn’t made of wood at all. Loudly and proudly she goes:

“This monster is made of synthetic stone, my dear. Because the ancients, sickly or not, their health not the point at all here, they built their veg racks from tons and tons of synthetic stone. All the wood, and more stuff, like former wood turned petrol, had to be burned, in those days, because there was too little carbon in the atmosphere. Not allowed to use wood, the ancients had to manufacture stone, for their veg racks.”

Star, always the doubter, knocks on the wall, only to discover it really doesn’t feel and sound wooden. She nods, but still finds a way to deny Pride the confirmation she deserves:

“Concrete, it’s called, or sand, cement and water mix, not artificial stone, but you’re actually right for the rest, Pride, this veg rack isn’t made of wood. Pretty impressive, to what lengths our primitive forebears went, to increase atmospheric carbon. Glad we came here, Pride. Seeing and touching such a lot of concrete is far more impressive than a full immersion lecture…”

Pride quietly smiles at herself. It’s going to take Star at least half an hour of waffling, to make good for her initial mistake. But it won’t change a thing. Pride got ArcheoTown first. Perhaps she should reconsider her aversion against further studies? Lots to think about, for the rest of the visit.

A couple of meters back, Joy longs for the two ladies in the matching chameleo outfits to get moving. Or to shut up. Anything that makes very sure she never has to listen to them getting everything all wrong again. What the blood are they doing here, if they don’t even know the difference between an authentic veg rack and a repurposed office building? Why visit ArcheoTown, if they have no clue whatsoever about its main exhibit? Joy would so love to go aggressive witty on her fellow visitors, but she’s lousy at both. Joy shuts up and waits.

Finally, the two know nothings are done knocking on concrete and walk off, not to make sense of the next exhibit. Chances are they will misinterpret the bus at the stop down the road as a tank. Not wanting to listen in again, Joy takes her time at the entrance of the former office building, wondering what it was like, to he a brain worker in its the glory days.

It must have been tedious, to shuttle back and forth, often daily, between housing and brain work compounds. In ArcheoTown, it’s just as three minute walk, but that wasn’t the rule. According to the records she’s studying for her thesis, two hours of commute were considered acceptable, in the early digital era. Tedious, certainly, but also exciting. Incredibly, breathtakingly exciting.

So many opportunities to meet strangers, in person and really close up. Unsafe, of course, to encounter unvetted people, especially in a public space that might not even have been surveyed by cameras and personal space infringement detectors. But also thrilling. 

Joy would love to spend just one day in the past, to find out what it was like, to walk into an office building, sit in a cubicle, eat in a canteen. ‘Office’, ‘cubicle’, ‘canteen’, for her these are not just terms of reference featuring in the glossary of her thesis. Those are the sounds of adventure.