About VRMLN

Vermilion was meant to be a prosperous place. The prosperity it enjoyed was very brief.

VR-ML-N was conceived not as a utopia exactly, but as a carefully planned, interconnected community. When it was built, must of the cities in the world were still relatively unplanned. Perhaps their downtown was planned, or the roads. Some had a more organized layout than others, but all were in the end sprawling, mismatched metropolises. While this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, there had been a growing concern about the growing population of the planet and urban sprawl, which led to a popular idea: rather than introduce any regulations on population growth or peoples’ consumption, why not simply plan more efficient cities, with future growth in mind?

Of course, they could not have forseen the sharp drop in the region’s population. They planned for explosive population growth, a truly forward-thinking city block.

New Alexandria wasn’t the largest city, but it was notable for a few reasons.

One, it housed the world’s largest server hub, a building which also served as a multicultural library of sorts, called the Athenaeum. Essentially, a great portion of the internet was physically housed here. Of course, the physical location of websites had little effect on their use, and since server maintenance was automatic, it didn’t generate many jobs either. The only practical effect was unusually fast internet service. It seemed to have a cultural effect, however. The city, and the Athenaeum in particular was a meeting place for intellectuals and technology enthusiasts.

Two, New Alexandria was the home of Valhalla, the most successful android company in the world. Originally a prosthesis company, Valhalla later learned to corner the market on non-sentient androids for practical and entertainment use.

Third, the city is the origin of THESIS, and by extension, of artificial intelligence. Aside from Minerva, this is also where most sentient constructs now lived. So New Alexandria has the distinction of having the most sentient AND non-sentient androids on earth.

Much of VR-MLN was destroyed during the war. Well, while it wasn’t physically destroyed, most of its people were killed by a nerve agent released into the ventilation. Despite other acts of violence during the war, this initial incident accounts for almost three quarters of the human death toll.

As a result, the VR-MLN block, and to a lesser extent New Alexandria in general, was a place built for a much larger population. And since the previous population met such a gruesome end, no one was eager to move in and fill the space, despite official assurances that the security of the ventilation system had been greatly increased so as to prevent such a catastrophe in the future.

This left VR-MLN with a strange vibe for the residents. It was, if only in a local sense, a post-apocalyptic place: a region where the vast majority of the population had been killed, and yet not by bombs or invasion, but by a silent poison leaving the physical structures intact. The area had since looked more damaged, almost war-torn, but this was almost entirely disrepair given a lack of maintenance. This was especially pronounced in those systems which must be maintained by experts who were all killed at once. For example, the power grid had nearly 100 workers, and as they were mostly in the same building, they all died. Residents since got it working again on low capacity, which worked well enough for its small population, though residents were encouraged not to waste power.

Level 4 The top floor of vermillion was essentially the roof. In the center was the elevator and the terminal. Further out were restaurants, hotels and gift shops, and tourists traps of various kinds. Beyond that, hydroponic farms growing a reddish, rice-like grain called “stick” which served as the most common base for cooking meals.

Level 3 Below the top floor, the “real” neighborhood began, beyond the tourist nonsense of the top. Residents largely ignored the businesses on Level 4. Those were for tourists. On Level 3 were practical businesses, mostly clustered along the main, brightly lit strip, but there were others further out as well. Cybil’s diner was one of the furthest from the main strip, out in an area where there were no longer any lights, beyond which were rows of empty business fronts and homes, long abandoned by their deceased owners. These areas were a bit spooky to even to residents. Besides the darkness, empty places were a reminder of what happened.

Like the levels below it, Level 3 had very high ceilings so as not to make people feel cramped. The buildings did not extend to the top. Some had no roofs, since it was not really necessary. Others had a roof either as an aesthetic preference, or because they wanted a flat roof to use as a second floor. Despite the high ceiling the lamps were only about 15 feet high, so that one could look up and see the barely illuminated ceiling of the level.

Level 2 While tourists did frequently go to level 3 for the “authentic experience” of visiting VRMLN, almost nobody went to Level 2 except residents. Level 2 was where most of the residents lived, just below their businesses on Level 3. Here, apartment complexes spanned the level from top to bottom. Even within level 2, there were two or three-story apartment buildings with low ceilings and narrow hallways. Perhaps more than the other floors, this level was something of a maze. Rather than one wide open street like level 3, level 2 was a seemingly nonsensical network of stairwells and hallways. This strange layout combined with the more confined spaces caused anyone who was not used to the area to feel a bit anxious. It didn’t help that the lighting to was weaker here.

Level 1 Level 2 was thought of as the basement. That’s because level 1 is a place no one went. It was off limits, declared as unsafe by the government. Though the elevator button “1” still existed, pressing it didn’t do anything. Most of the stairwells were blocked off so that you couldn’t descent beyond level 2. It was a place that, for all intents and purposes, no longer existed.

But it very much did exist in the minds of its residents. Level 1 was the reason Vermilion had managed to make itself into a sort of sad tourist trap.

Mischievous teens were known to sometimes rig an elevator or break open a stairwell door in order to explore the bottom level, despite their parents’ warnings.