Exploration of Tower 193 Floor 67

Tower No. 193 Floor 67 is Gesh’s favorite - “Hokulurian Exotics”. He always counted himself lucky, and deserving, to be surrounded by the explosion of color when entering from the grey dreariness of the East elevator of Tower No. 193. Gesh is a 5th generation tower farmer of the vast Garden Tower blocks of Nyumem Gardens. Tower No. 193 in the East-Forra Quandrant is just a short walker-ride from Nyumem University to the southeast. Gesh’s Basdori clan of the Nyu never owned a farm, but the clan has been farming various towers of the government-run vertical plantations for over 150 years; almost as long as the Nyumem Gardens have been feeding the burgeoning metropolis.

This time of the year is his favorite, when the plants are in full bloom just before bearing their valuable fruit; the brilliant vermilion of the beshil bush, the somber black violet of the trempa grass, and the ethereal fluffy pink seed pods of the takora plant. The atmosphere is balmy, just like what the seeders say Hokulur is like most of the year. Gesh dreamed of traveling to far-off places like the bustling colony just across the Shikaruum Sea. He knew those dreams would never become reality. Hokulur and Arfiy Bay were anomalies of the strict taboo against exploration embedded in the religious laws of the Confederation. Even those two colonies are an improbable hope. Only families of the shipping and agricultural guilds are allowed to live in what Gesh believed were paradises; one warm and the other, well he didn’t know, since Arfiy Bay was relatively new and very little was known about it, which made Gesh want to go even more.

This mini foreign world he could explore without breaking any punishable taboos was why he loved coming to Tower No. 193 Floor 67; his own world to explore. He always found something new to spark his imagination. One day I will come here every day to take care of this little paradise. He thought, walking around a particularly blossom-heavy beshil bush. He closed his eyes taking in its generous gift of a perfect mélange of sweet and spicy olfactory flavors. For now, I can do my own exploratory expeditions into My Hokulur, the name he gave the floor when he first visited it with his mother, just before she died. He was just a baby himself that day, just starting to learn the family profession under his mother’s tutelage.

He often was ambivalent about being a Nyu; your life set from birth to being a farmer of the ‘City’s Dinner Table’ as his elders often called the Gardens. Without the Table, the Confederation would starve into nothing, his mother and uncles would always say. They were proud to be the guardians of the Nyumem Gardens. With good reason, it was their traditional agricultural knowledge that put them into that position, gaining them a large amount of local power. They even convinced the Hud Ker of Shidou to change the Gardens’ name in honor of their people a couple decades back. The renaming of the university came soon after when several Nyu were elected to head various central district councils.

Gesh did not want to end up being an urban farmer. He loved farming but wanted to farm actual land, not some enclosed hothouse high above hardened cement and asphalt. He dreamed of smelling mountains and streams instead of the gaminess of smothered humanity with bottom notes of petrichor. His mother told him about how the Nyu farmed the empty flat expanses of what is today central Shidou where one could look out and see the nearby Western Border Cliffs instead of girders and clouded-glass scrapers. He was just glad that he could still see the Cliffs if he tried hard through the half opaque walls. He wondered how farmers up on the 100’s could stand not seeing anything but moisture-laden clouds that never seem to stop smothering the city.

He continued exploring the color explosion, dragging his hands on whatever reached out into the pathways. He imagined the condensation rubbing off on his hands as the cool morning dew clinging to his skin as he ventured through the lush foothills of the mysterious Bishtan Mountains seemingly floating on mist clouds west of Hokular Town.

He secretly picked the most vibrant beshil blossom and cupped it with both his hands. “Happy birthday mother.”