“You should be able to see Founders’ Fortress about now,” Anna remarked.
“That castle at the very top of the mountain?” I asked.
“Ha, yes. Nice, isn’t it? It’s home to governors, and many of the most valuable members of our nation.”
I frowned at the term ‘valuable,’ finding it an odd descriptor for a person, but pushed it aside to focus on her former statement. “You said Founders,” I replied. “Who are your Founders? How did Fairwell come into being?”
“That’s a bit of a long story, which I don’t have time to tell in full, but suffice it to say that our Founders were a very clever bunch indeed,” she replied with a smirk. “That building was the first they constructed after they claimed the ocean, several centuries ago.”
“Claimed the ocean?” I asked, confused.
She shrugged. “Well, so to speak. They were the first in history to make a true home on the water. And even now, after centuries, nobody else has been able to lay a stake in it the way we have. So essentially, yes, we have claimed it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t really follow. You’ve settled on a large archipelago, which looks fairly lush with natural resources, from what I can see.”
As I looked at her, her lips stretched into a grin. “Ah, but you see, itwasn’tan archipelago before our Founders arrived.”
“Huh?”
Her grin broadened, as though she enjoyed watching the confusion on my face. “There was only the main island,” she replied. “Those outer islands you see, they’re all manmade. Built on ingeniously stable platforms that adapt and flex with the ocean’s current.”
“Whoa.” I gawked closer at the outer islands, studying them in a whole new light. Now that I looked at them again, they did look oddly uniform.But how was such a thing even possible?“What if there was a really big wave? Or a hurricane? How on earth would they withstand it?” I asked.
“Good questions,” Anna replied, resting her hands over the back of an empty chair. “That’s what that glass building is for, at the top of Founders’ Fortress. We have developed expert means to avoid storms over the years, such that now we are able to detect them and drive them away before they reach our vicinity.”
I stared at her. “Drive awaystorms? How… How on earth can you do that?”
She smiled like a cat who got the cream. “Our engineers have developed means, as I said—special technology whose workings, to be honest, fly even over my head. What I can tell you is that it involves a fleet of large, manned aircraft called diffusers that are equipped with apparatus which—you guessed it—diffuse turbulent storm activity. It’s a constant job of monitoring and heavy on resources, so it’s not something we could easily scale for others. At least, not yet. But, as you can imagine, that’s extremely important for us out here in the ocean. We could all be in trouble if a major hurricane came along, especially those on the artificial islands.”
“So, I guess you developed ‘diffusers’ before you built out those islands?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “We’ve been studying the weather for a long time. Ever since our Founders arrived, averylong time ago. We’ve had to.”
“How did you even build the islands?” I asked, looking back out at them, still feeling baffled by the sheer feat of technology. “Where did you get the materials, the knowhow?”
“Our Founders were prepared for the Last World War,” Anna replied. “Much like I imagine yours must have been, to have built the kind of infrastructure that you had back there in the jungle. Our Founders were a large group of tech-savvy visionaries, with immense wealth and resources—the ‘millionaires’ and ‘billionaires’ of the old world—who banded togetherto establish Fairwell and equip it with everything it needed to not only survive but thrive in the future.”
I paused, trying to digest the information. “So, these artificial islands are centuries old?” They sure had lasted well if that were the case.
She shook her head. “No. The islands are fairly recent, as we didn’t have a need to build those out until recently. Our native population—or “founders” is the general term that we use, for all who are blood descendants of the original Founders—have lived quite contentedly on the mainland for centuries. It’s only in the last decade or so that our outreach activities have expanded, due primarily to the increase in awful weather. Don’t get me wrong, nomads have played a role too, but when riled up, Mother Nature has her way of causing more chaos than any pesky group of humans ever could.” She chuckled. “Anyhow, we found ourselves with the proposition of either finding a way to house people who, for one reason or another, could no longer survive where they had been living, or essentially leaving them to die.”
“So, you built these islands for them?” I asked, wondering why she’d made out yesterday that they hardly had any space here. By the looks of it, they had plenty of space. I found it hard to believe that all the buildings on these islands were filled to the brim. Plus, it seemed they had the ability to build more.
“Yes,” she replied. “For those we save from the Old World, who wish to become settlers of our thriving nation.”
“I see,” I murmured, once again scrutinizing the smaller islands.
They looked pleasant enough from up here, with lines of uniform buildings and the occasional green spaces. They also definitely didn’t look filled to the brim, unless everybody was inside their homes at the same time. On at least one island, there was nobody at all on the streets.
“How many, uh, settlers are currently part of your population, then?” I asked.
“About eight thousand, currently,” she replied.
“So there are fifty-two thousand founders?”
“Roughly, yes. Founders all live on the main island, which is rather conveniently named: Founders’ Isle.” She rolled her eyes amusedly. “Then, we also have about seven hundred new guests, currently—the group we brought here just the other day…Zina’sgroup, right?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding my head and instantly brightening at the prospect of seeing my cousin again.
