Aero scaling

  “A brief history for the Outsiders,” Googol announced. “Zeropolis has been built twice before. Originally, long ago and far from here, Zeropolis arose with much less advanced technology. Innovation eventually made the first Zeropolis obsolete. The foundations were all wrong to welcome the new tech. It made more sense to start again. So a new Zeropolis, the second Zeropolis, what we now call Old Zeropolis, was established not terribly far beyond the northern boundaries of this city. That city fell when Aeronomatron took over. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost.”

  “Who took over?” Dalton asked.

  “A machine,” Googol said. “A supercomputer that would dwarf anything your society has produced. Most people just call it Aero. This was in my grandfather’s time, and I’m older than I look, thanks to my shaping skills slowing the aging process. After much bloodshed, the City Patrol managed to seal off Aero. Had they failed, this entire kingdom might have become uninhabitable.”

  “Crazy,” Cole said.

Chapter 10