Story: Dead Towers
A short solarpunk story using some elements and ideas I've been chewing on for a while.
The city had been abandoned so long ago that the green had come back. Grasses and trees had slowly, tentatively crawled out of parks and fields to reclaim this hard place of concrete and plastic. Birds now flew through the vine-entangled bones of dead towers; windows, walls, wires and plumbing had long been stripped away to be redigested by humanity.
Tendal sat atop one such forgotten skeleton and looked over the strange hybrid forest. People still lived here, of course, but they numbered maybe in the hundreds where the city must have once been home to hundreds of thousands. He wondered why the people had completely abandoned the old places; they had new capitals now, but none had been built on the bones of the old. Instead, they had killed these old cities, dismantling them and leaving nature to reclaim them.
From his perch he could see forgotten symbols and signs made of plastics nobody wanted, barren plazas of brick or asphalt too wide to rewild, and the vague shapes of long abandoned suburbs. Some of those old houses might be occupied now -- by wanderers like him looking for a temporary shelter or banished folk that couldn't get along in the communities, or by hermits that just wanted to be left alone. He breathed in clean air as the breeze ruffled his loose clothing. A bird cried out somewhere below, but nobody called back.
To his left he had propped up a para-sol to soak up the sun's rays, jamming them through a thin silver thread and into the small sunbox he wore at his hip. He didn't care what anybody said, it was obvious that things charged faster this much closer to the sun. It was a hill he was willing to die on -- and he was confident he'd die at the top of that hill with a fully charged sunbox.
High up was the best place to recharge one's batteries in more ways than one. He was at peace up here alone, and he let his mind float and swirl aimlessly like the film of a soap bubble. He wondered at his next steps, the city, people.
He pondered the things unique to humanity: fire, math, music. There was a dividing line somewhere between humans and the rest of nature, and the people who had built this city had leaned too far into that human side, losing themselves to it, building cold and unfeeling things for the sake of efficiency. They had built at odds with the planet, but you couldn't win against nature in the long run. Mankind had devised many ways to build and many ways to kill, but nature owned creation and death itself.
Tendal wondered why those people had been so stupid. Then again, he supposed people were still pretty stupid. He fancied himself pretty clever, but he was pretty sure he was probably stupid as well.
The thin film of his reverie suddenly burst as a shadow stirred on the building down and to his right. He was pleased with himself for not flinching, but decidedly off balance and suddenly flustered. A figure stood on the opposite roof looking up at him quietly within a stone's throw across an impossible gulf. How long had they been there?
The other person was draped in loose clothes like his own, but the cut and colour were markedly different. They were thin but sturdy with long black hair that flowed with the wind. The sun at his back lit the other person's face, but he couldn't see much through the glare except that they wore a bone or clay half-mask with two thin slits staring back up at him. Most likely another youth on their wandering like him, he judged, and instantly hoped he had looked wise and thoughtful before he'd been spooked.
He called to them, but when they called back it was in an entirely different dialect; this person must have wandered far. They both immediately drew their flutes -- his a long thin thing made of copper pipe with a heavy patina, the other's some kind of round ocarina. Many dialects were spoken across the communities and cities, but everyone learned the simple musical language called "wintung" as children. He pulled a hair-thin strand of wire from his sunbox and plugged it into the small amplifier he'd added to his flute.
"hello" he chimed across the distance, the notes ringing clear.
The other person hadn't had their flute modified, so he had to strain to hear the reply.
"Hello wandering friend" came back the call, an octave lower than his own flute, deep and woody.
"Have you found a bed in the clouds to rest in?" they continued on the ocarina. He blushed, but the other person probably couldn't see with the sun behind him. It was an old joke mocking young wanderers' tendency to climb tall buildings.
"No, only nosey bedbugs" he teased back. The other person laughed out loud and the tension Tendal had been feeling left him.
"Do you know of the wanderer's dance tonight?" the other person called. "Would you like to come dance?" Their posture was still confident, but somehow momentarily shy.
Tendal was honestly getting a little too old to keep wandering -- four years afield was more than most, but not unheard of. It was getting time for him to find a place to settle down. He knew he wasn't going back to the sleepy community he'd grown up in, but perhaps one of the research towns he'd visited. Or maybe he'd keep wandering forever; for all his time astray his feet still weren't sore.
If he ever did settle, however, he'd miss the wanderer dances. When a few dozen wanderers made it to the same place they were capable of a terribly good time. There was a degree of raucousness made possible only by big groups of aimless and untethered youths who may never see one another again.
He got the coordinates from the other figure -- a little north of the old city -- and they said their goodbyes, declaring they'd meet at the dance. Tendal unwired his flute and double-checked his charge levels before packing everything tightly into his travel pack. He stepped to the edge of the roof then, already feeling a rush. At the departure party for his wandering his mother had gifted him a small, compact parachute she had helped develop during her years as a researcher. It was a huge annoyance to re-fold and pack correctly, but in this case it would be worth the effort.
The other figure leapt back in surprise as Tendal hopped off the edge of the roof and casually saluted. He grinned knowing he'd just gained back what he'd lost when they'd caught him off guard.
He fell, a feeling of increadible freedom enveloping him along with the wind.