Chapter 0.1
0.
There was a tower in that city.
It was a gaunt iron tower, as tall as a building about 80 stories high.
Except for the first floor that touched the ground, there was no space suitable for human habitation. So, from a distance, it appeared as an utterly hideous structure resembling the elongated carcass of a castle.
No one knew for certain how such a tower came to remain standing all alone. According to common rumors, this tower was built by the dictator of a small nation, and it was created before the âCataclysmâ. The construction took about eight years. However, it was never completedâit was abandoned in the midst of being clad with an outer wall when it was swept up by the Cataclysm.
The designer of the tower was the dictatorâs mother. She was mute, yet a brilliant architect. Unfortunately, during the design process, she succumbed to madness and committed suicide. Her son took over the remaining work. However, the dictator himself was seized by a psychotic episode during the final phase of the design, and as soon as the towerâs design was finished, he beheaded many of those who was on his side.
It was not all that strange, for at that time the world was on the brink of destruction due to nuclear war and frequent meteorite impacts. The abnormal climate and the atmosphere filled with nuclear dust, along with lands and waters contaminated with toxic substances, slowly killed people over the course of several years. Medical technology had advanced to the point that the average human lifespan was extended to 150 years, but even so, it was utterly useless in the face of such a global catastrophe.
Whether it was a power-holder gripped by despair who built a tall tower in longing for that former world, or one who constructed a vast tomb, or manufactured an enormous spaceship, or scattered gold and money that had lost all utility, or fired missiles at the entire worldânone of these acts were considered strange. At that time, all such extravagances were regarded as ordinary.
Most records from before the Cataclysm were lost. The towerâs blueprints had long since vanished, and even the whereabouts of the dictator who built it became unknown. Because of that, it was only after the Cataclysm that people realized why the dictator and his mother had become so obsessed with building the towerâeven at the cost of losing their humanity. That tower was unlike the foolish edifices built to appease a doomed humanity.
There was a tower. More precisely, only the tower remained.
In a land where everything had vanished, there existed solely that one tower.
From the tower, a âsoundâ could be heard. A steady clacking of interlocking gears. Thousands, even hundreds of millions of gears filled the tall iron tower. On a land devastated by war and natural disasters, the tower moved on its own, producing the sound it so dearly missed.
Even when a dust storm harmful to living beings swept over, or when rain that could dissolve everything fell, not a single gear ceased turning. The sound of the smoothly, precisely hewn gears meshing endlessly was reminiscent of a marimba mixed with a vibraphone, which was an instrument that had existed in the world before the Cataclysm.
The clear and pure ringing sound led the few remaining survivors to the tower. Or rather, only those who had stayed near the tower survived.
Then, people experienced a miraculous phenomenon akin to magic.
There, the wind no longer choked peopleâs breath. Even water no longer melted or poisoned them. Even the polluted, boiling land was capable of nurturing new life. And this miracle extended as far as the tower could be seen. To be exact, as far as the sound of the winding mechanism emanating from the tower reached.
People came to see the gaunt iron tower once more. That tower was a tower that saved lives.
Around the enigmatic tower, people rebuilt human civilization. They quickly returned to their former way of life using the relics from before the Cataclysm.
Yet so many things had been destroyed, countless lives lost, and many records had vanished that a complete restoration was impossible. Moreover, haunted by memories of coming close to annihilation from war and environmental devastation, they felt an aversion to using that old scientific technology as it was.
Thus, those plunged into deep contemplation turned their attention to the iron tower. The gears that filled its interior had long since become a god-like presence to the people. Consequently, they reached a conclusion.
It was sufficient to possess only the technology necessary to maintain the tower and the technology to save lives.
Fascinated by the winding mechanisms and gears, people deeply studied the components that made up the tower and became specialized in those technologies. Other technologies inherited from the past were limited to fields essential for survival and social order, such as medicine, production, and public security.
Beneath the tower, vast and elongated devices designed for the gears had been buried, resembling tree roots. Using these as a foundation, people built a city. They connected winding mechanisms and gears to construct trains. They used the large gear at the towerâs peak as a reference point to create clocks. Around the areas where winding mechanisms were concentrated, they planted trees and grass and raised livestock. Then, in the remaining spaces, they built their homes.
Many years later, some individuals began studying the tower. Each time one of the towerâs secrets was unraveled, they struck the massive bell hanging from it. Whenever the bell tolled, people would stop what they were doing and gather below the tower, listening in hushed reverence to the scholars who spoke, treating their words like divine revelations.
The secrets of the tower that people came to understand were not particularly complicated. The tower and its gear-based machinery were made from meteorites that had fallen in the nearby desert, and the steady winding sound activated an unknown substance embedded in the meteorite. This alien material dispersed into the air and sustained their lives.
Amazingly, the dictator had realized all of this amidst the chaos of global turmoil and had silently constructed the tower. With this newfound understanding, people sought to uncover the towerâs blueprints and learn more about the dictator, but to their dismay, no records of him could be found anywhere.
