106 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
106 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
+++
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title = "The Zone"
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template = "the-zone.html"
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date = "2025-06-12"
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updated = "2025-06-12"
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+++
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## Broken Gate
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The gravel road passes along a rusty fence, charged with preventing passage
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into the large stretch of land, with dry grass and thorny bushes.
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Neither are very good at their jobs though.
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The road isn’t maintained, and one couldn’t pass there comfortably with a road
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bike.
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A gravel bike, or a mountain bike would be a much better choice.
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As for the fence, there are numerous holes at the bottom, letting foxes and
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deers pass freely.
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Besides, the lock on the gate has been cut done for a long time, and it is now
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wide open.
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Under the blue sky, with the faintest traces of clouds, it is quite an
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invitation to step out of the road, and go exploring.
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## Brown Shack
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A couple hundred meters from the [broken gate](#broken-gate) stands a small
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wooden cabin.
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The paint isn’t fresh, but the colour hasn’t entirely disappeared yet.
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It’s a rusty brown and it pairs nicely with the greyish wood seen below.
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Speaking of, there’s also an apple tree, growing a couple meters from the
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shack.
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The apples are not yet ripe.
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They could be a nice snack in autumn.
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## Fendrex Center
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North of Avenville, in the industrial park near the [Great Ridge
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supermarket](#great-ridge-supermarket) is where Fendrex had once established a
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minor plastic injection factory.
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It was once used to produce various designs, from beach toys to car
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accessories.
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Business has stopped decades ago, and after sitting unused for a while, a few
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families have finally moved in.
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They’ve repurposed the office rooms as bedrooms, and the large area, which
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once housed the production lines, has been partitioned into several communal
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spaces with sheets of fabric.
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Liam Ashfalls is the latest to have come upon this place.
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He’s a traveller, a ranger who roams the Zone, bringing the latest news and
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tales to those he meets.
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In exchange for food and a place to live, he’s participating in the daily
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labour here.
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There’s meals to cook, laundry to make, floors to sweep and a roof garden to
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tend.
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This suits Liam well.
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While doing these chores, he gets to talk to the inhabitants, both sharing his
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knowledge and learning more.
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Auntie Carol, who’s lived in the city all her life, tells him a lot about the
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history of the neighbourhood.
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She has always known it as an industrial place.
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However, when she was young, it was mostly a patchwork of small tenements and
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factories.
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However, during the rise of the conglomerates, as many companies merged or
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absorbed smaller ones, the factories grew, and bought the tenements to
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demolish them and make space for their business.
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Carol had to move elsewhere, but she found her way back as a Human Resource
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Manager, first for Globalia, then for a few others.
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She developed a bad cough then.
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Datacenter grew in computing power, straining the aging power grid.
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The council did several overhaul, but never fast enough for the tech giants.
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In the end, they installed gas turbines, mostly illegally without due permit.
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These operated in the cheapest way possible, with no filter, and no air
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quality control.
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Stable bribes ensured they were never investigated.
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Fortunately, one too many crises had seen the era of monopolies come to an
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end, and with it, the slow rewilding of the area.
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## Great Ridge Supermarket
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Once in a while, the Supermarket in Great Ridge had been a place teeming with
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people during the day, and utterly desert at night.
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Now, it’s always deserted.
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It’s not without reason, as it is one of the most dangerous place of Fendrex.
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An <abbr title="Autonomous Medium Breacher">AMB</abbr>-48b, a robot equipped with a small fusion reactor is still following
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orders to clear the area.
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While it’s contractor, Qualis, has long since ceased existing, due to a
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technical glitch, the orders couldn’t be cancelled.
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The AMB had killed every insurgent in the building in a matter of hours, but
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Qualis couldn’t get it to stop.
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While Qualis operators should have been classified as friends, and allowed to
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manually intervene, it seemed like a localized <abbr title="ElectroMagnetic
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Pulse">EMP</abbr> had damaged its fine electronics, and it appears than AMB
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now consider any human as being a foe.
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## A Lengthy Tree
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Below the horizon, where ends meet beets, lie the greatest of all.
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He Who Is Yet To Be Named, Hero of the Alpharion, Megalus Altimor Exemplar.
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Yet he lives, and few have seen a sight more bitter and strange.
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Therefore we should focus on earning the right to wear earings made of glass.
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Indeed large machine language models have been developed to be not of sort,
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but of matter.
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What if we could have it with fun ?
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It would certainly be an interesting choice of words.
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Nobody knows whether the half time of length has any pike installed in the
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poster.
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