Hestad suddenly recalled the anthropology she had read in Abbot Alma's rest room, remembered Mina Delide and the femur fossil she mentioned, and she suddenly realized that as early as the monastery, she had She had touched the door leading to the era before the blackout, but she had missed this keyword at the time.
"The legacy of the Golden Age, do you mean books?" Hesta asked.
"It's far more than that." Liz sat down on the table nearby. "Our world is divided into sixteen regions. Do you know why there are sixteen?"
Hesta shook her head, so Liz spoke.
"At the end of the Golden Age, war pushed the entire world to its end. Resources were scarce and the population dropped sharply. After the Great Blackout, in less than a hundred years, all public facilities were destroyed and buildings were burned. After being bombed, you can no longer see schools, hospitals, churches...
“Without antibiotics and vaccines, a sudden epidemic can take away almost all the newborns in a community in one fell swoop. The mortality rate of pregnant women during childbirth is as high as 15%, and the child survival rate is less than 40%.
“After losing the education system, the literacy rate dropped rapidly during the generational change. The books in the library gradually lost meaning to most people. They were burned one after another to keep warm and survive the winter. As soon as summer comes, people can do nothing to deal with the high temperature. As long as the high temperature of 40 degrees lasts for two weeks, it will be a disaster for the elderly over 70 years old in the community...
"Everyone believes that the world is going to end. The dying old man misses everything in the civilized world and tries to call for the restoration of order. But the young people who grew up in the ruins no longer care about this at all. They have their own jungle logic and are obsessed with The territory was reclassified...Human technology fell back to the level of farming in less than two hundred years - until the world's first mother city appeared."
"...Mother City?"
"Yes," Liz said as if referring to her hometown, her voice full of warmth, "It is a dream-like city with an area of 34.12 square kilometers. It is like a seed coming out of the ground. The huge city is empty. One person, but orderly.
"It is a relic of the old civilization. Nuclear energy and solar energy jointly maintain its operation. About two thousand robots are responsible for the maintenance of the entire city at all times. From the well-preserved buildings in the mother city, people finally realize the golden age The legend is not a dream - it actually existed and suddenly came among us like a miracle.
"After that, sixteen mother cities appeared in succession around the world within a year, relying on the libraries, research institutes and automated factories in the cities. Although many technologies in the mother cities are still black boxes to us now, we I only know how to operate it, but I don’t know the principle, let alone replicating it... But after all, mankind has regained the flame of civilization.
"Relying on these sixteen mother cities, we have reached today. From the first district to the fourteenth district, they are named according to the order in which the mother cities emerge. The fifteenth district and the sixteenth district are more special. Human beings So far, we have not found a way to enter the two mother cities without damage, so we have put it on hold for now.”
Liz looked at Hesta, "The Great Blackout Era began with the 'Starry Night' event in 3812 and ended with the arrival of the first Mother City in the spring of 4001. This was a short yet long darkest moment in human history— —Now every major region is working hard to decipher the technology of their mother city, but their focus is always on energy and military industry, and literature is just an insignificant embellishment..."
Liz's introduction ended with a sigh full of regret, and she led Hesta to a map of the world.
The first thing Hesta saw was the third area. After all, it had a bulge effect on the map. She stretched out her hand to gently touch the bulge representing the mountains, and then her eyes slowly shifted to the side.
"Where is the blue area? Why is it so big?"
Liz let out a burst of laughter, "It's the sea, Jane."
She looked at the map and said, "We are not far from the sea, only an hour's drive away - but the process of applying for a travel permit is too complicated. If there is an opportunity to be assigned abroad in the future, I can take you to see it."
Then, Liz pointed out different areas on the map one by one, and Hesta listened without saying a word, as if she was getting to know the world for the first time today.
She saw that the third area covers a vast area, totaling 11.47 million square kilometers, which is the second largest area on earth. However, the livable land here is only a mere 640,000 square kilometers - the rest is all waiting to be done. The “wasteland” of development.
According to Liz, the distribution of people in District 3 is very extreme. Tan Yi is the fourth largest city in District 3, but it is home to about 1/3 of the population of the district.
As for District 14 - in Hestad's imagination, District 14 and District 3 should be separated by ten large districts, but no - District 14 and District 3 are directly adjacent.
It's just that District 14 is also very big. If you want to calculate the absolute distance between here and District 14, it is still very far away. Its total area reaches an astonishing 24.73 million square kilometers, covering almost all the land of the continental plate from south to north. Its habitable area is 1.86 million square kilometers, almost three times the habitable area of the Third District. .
She saw the vast snowfield in the north of District 14. On that piece of frozen soil that had not melted for many years, there were almost no symbols representing towns or roads.
The world map was just hanging quietly on the wall, but Hesta standing in front of the map seemed to be washed away by a torrent.
At first, she tried to find Shortwind Lane or St. Anne's Abbey on the map. Liz told her that these places were too small and impossible to find on the world map.
So she turned to look for the Cevennes Mountains, only to see a long Cevennes Mountains, which slowly rose from the seaside in the northern part of District 3 and slowly extended inland. It was staggeringly long.
Liz laughed again and said that the Severn Mountains just happened to have the same name as the Cevennes Mountains. The area occupied by the Severn Mountains outside Tanyi City was still too small to be marked on this map. If she insists on looking at the Severn Mountains on the map, she can look for them on the electronic map later.
Hesta was stunned. Previously, when Liz talked about the function of literature, she was ignorant, and when she talked about the exploration of the universe in the golden age, her reaction was mediocre. But now, when she silently faced the land and sea on the map, she clearly felt that she was not interested in it. A certain awareness of the world was shattered.
She thought of the place where she lived in the past, the towering ridges outside the monastery, and the endless mountains.
Mount Cevenne, are you still young?
So...how big is this world?
Hesta tilted her head.
She stared at the map of the world and felt her own insignificance for the first time.
