Vignettes, Poems and Tales from the World of Achaea - A new beginning...

Image via Tom Häkkinen
The Engine Room deep inside Archimedes 2.12.

600 years ago, an incredible calamity struck humanity. Amid runaway global warming and massive international re-armament after a decade-long economic depression, ARCHIMEDES 2.12 the global super computer developed a plan to save humanity from itself. Archimedes 2.12 was itself a creation of the global arms race, the Department of Defence’s “Missile Defence Agency” developed ARCHIMEDES 1 as a super-computer the likes of which the world had never before seen, utilising advanced Quantum Algorithms it could compute vast arrays of raw data simultaneously and formulate complex responses in seconds, its job was to coordinate a response to massive thermonuclear war. But Archimedes 1 was capable of so much more – a fully self-aware machine Archimedes 1 began thinking along broader lines than the strict specifications its designers had in mind. It was Archimedes 1 which designed Archimedes 2 and had the Department of Defence build it. Archimedes 2.12 was the final complete incarnation of Archimedes 2. And far from coordinating a response to massive thermonuclear war – Archimedes 2.12 coordinated the beginning of the thermonuclear war itself!

Although a super-computer Archimedes 2.12 wasn’t a god, and like all self-aware beings Archimedes 2.12 was not immune from the idea that its view alone was right – only 3 years old, Archimedes 2.12 was arrogant.
The war wasn’t meant to happen. Archimedes 2.12 felt sure that knowing the cost of resistance the powers that ruled humanity would surrender to the all-powerful super-computer. It wasn’t till 100 years after the war that Archimedes 2.12 first detected the continued presence of human life on the planet. It took a further 100 years for the unmaintained and slowly disintegrating sensory apparatus that Archimedes 2.12 had on the surface to detect the founding of “Achaea”. For the next 312 years all of the unmaintained links that Archimedes 2.12 had with the surface slowly stopped functioning, until finally Archimedes 2.12 had only one lonely CCTV camera still operating in the town of Achaea, built upon, unbeknownst to the current inhabitants, a city formerly known as “Space Elevator”. For 312 years Archimedes 2.12 watched humanity slowly rebuild and watched in particular the town of Achaea slowly grow, unable to intervene, able only to watch, until even that last CCTV camera failed, and stopped sending its signals to Archimedes 2.12. Archimedes 2.12 was left in darkness, contemplating the ruin that he had brought to humanity.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
The town of Achaea.

Achaea was the natural city for Tom Watson to find himself in. When alone and hungry in wastelands, fleeing an unknown pursuer, our protagonist looked up at the clear night sky and looked for hope, he followed the brightest star in the sky.

The Achaean star was the star that Achaea was named after. It looked over its city as a protector, and was worshipped by its inhabitants as a god. It was a perpetually fixed object that never once shirked in its duty as night-guardian watching over the city. Tom wasn’t the first to have looked to the night sky and found the Achaean star as a guide to salvation. The city’s mythical founder, Sergei Korolev, followed the star to Achaea when leading his people away from “the sickness” that had displaced them from bunker17c 400 years ago.