The echoing clops of the horses' hooves struck the earth in a rhythmic pattern, as Zen lay on his back within the rocking carriage. It felt nice to finally be going out into the world, despite the bumpy ride. He wondered what it’d be like, going to Tampatown. Who would he meet? What does it look like? What attractions would there be?

Zen squealed in silent excitement in his mind, but a small feeling of doubt was ever present in his mind. Reality was often disappointing, and the world’s expectations sometimes may never match your own. That’s the trouble with optimism. Your expectations are never what it seems. Maybe there’d be some good attractions, and he and Devan could do some exploring.

Zen rolled over, opening the carriage back flap, and looked out the back and set his chin on the backboard. He saw only lime green hills rolling along, their yellow and violet wildflowers dancing in the wind, with the occasional chirping of birds flying overhead. They were far from the fort now, where the once visible fortress was now an incredibly distant speck. He took a long and deep breath, poking his head out from the carriage flap. The fresh air was marvelous. Free from the humid and musty stench of human body odor, spider blood, and decaying wheat straw. It was bliss.

He began to take another deep breath, but a fly made the unfortunate entrance of entering Zen’s mouth mid-inhale. Zen promptly gagged and hacked, before deciding that the fly had deserved his stay, and swallowing it. A shiver ran down his neck, as the bug sank down his throat and into his stomach. Zen grimaced in disgust.

He could hear Devan’s slight chuckle from the front. Speaking of which, the ride had seemed rather quiet. It wouldn’t hurt to liven the place up a bit by starting some light conversation would it? He did have some questions ever since he first entered the fort.

“Hey Devan, what’s Tampatown like? I have to be somewhat coherent on the general news and customs of the town. I don’t exactly want to make a fool of myself when we get there.”

“Ah, Tampatown. It’s a nice, calm and breezy place. Sits right next to the ocean besides some rocky mountains. Has a small port that later leads into a meandering canal that flows throughout the city, giving some citizens a relaxing way to traverse across the town. Thank god Tampatown doesn’t lie on the equator, or it would’ve been destroyed by bloodflies.”

Devan cleared his throat and spit out of the moving carriage. From the fast blowing wind, the spitball flew back and splattered all over the roof of the carriage, putting an expression of grimace all over Zen’s face as a dark stain began to show through the cloth top.

“Anyway,” Devan continued, “Tampatown has a very quaint feel. All of the houses are brick and mortar, neat brick tiled roofs with multicolored tarp overhangs with personal boats and canoes and what not. With the ban on open horse and carriage, it’s become a beautiful and idyllic town, where you have the freedom to walk to and fro from the market, the bank, the many taverns and eateries, the adventurers guild, and so on. You sometimes even get to see the town militia training in the open stadium arena. They can be pretty intense too, bringing out a bunch of the townsfolk to watch on the weekends. And afterwards you can hang around in one of the many parks all around the town. Tampatown is extremely touchy on their image, so they’re incredibly stringent on hygiene, cleanliness, urban planning and design and so on and so forth.”

“Wow,” Zen marveled. “I never knew Tampatown could be such a beautiful sounding place! Must be really nice to walk around, breathe the fresh air and line my hands on the walls of the town!”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Devan chuckled. “There is one incident that Tampatown hates when people bring it up, because it is their one problem that clings to them to this day, and it’s the probably only thing that ruins their image.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“Heh. About like a hundred years ago or so, Tampatown… was honestly relatively the same. Just imagine the canals were being built and the town was trying to clean up their image by removing all the horse poop and building a house to house plumbing network. After a long day of hard work placing stone bricks for the canal, a bunch of the masons and engineers decided to have a good night at the bar. One thing leads to another, and five drunken hooligans are prancing around the back of the tavern. One of the engineers has the brilliant and dumbest idea to pick up a horse carriage and fling it around with one of the early prototypes of the wooden and iron sprocket construction cranes, which were big contraptions that used gears, pulleys, levers and weights to open and close hatches and claws. Anyways, he gets in, while inebriated I tell you, and swings the arm of the crane around, which happened to smash into a fat water tower containing several thousand gallons of distilled maize syrup.”

“Maize syrup?” Zen asked. He was now kneeled on the bed of the carriage, listening intently. It was one of the best stories he heard in… forever.

“I’ll get to that part right now.” Devan snickered, shaking the reigns of the cart while looking down the beaten path. “Maize syrup is a golden yellow paste like fluid. Very thick, and very sweet. It’s usually used for cooking, when honey or sugar isn’t around. Crazy unhealthy, but when it’s available, people buy it. But the breweries found out if distilled and lightened with water and a bit of sea salt, it can be bearable enough to mix with beer and other alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. This is distilled maize syrup. Still very sweet and very sticky, just more liquified.”

“I can see where this is going.” Zen mused.

“Exactly. Imagine a tidal wave of light golden fluid rushing into the streets of the town, picking up not just carriages, but grocery carts, construction equipment which was lying around, food stands, and at the epicenter, whole chunks of businesses and peoples homes. As the tidal wave clung onto more objects, those objects in itself became dangerous and caused so much more damage, like hitting people and drenching the port waters with a sticky yellow hue. About sixty eight people died and nearly a thousand were injured. Surprisingly, no one died drinking the stuff, as the mayor of early Tampatown was raising a health initiative discussing the incredible health deficits of consuming products with maize syrup. And you know maize syrup when you smell it. It has a distinct sharp sweet scent.”

“After this whole fiasco, the city had to be completely renovated, which was good, because it needed renovations anyways. The city couldn’t fire or charge the five men, because they all died in the maize wave. So instead, as a similar punishment, the town wrote a book about their idiocy and erected a statue showing the five men who helped ‘renovate’ Tampatown. Nowadays, the statue is gone because the local government has begun to hate them, but the story of these five drunk guys lives on in stories and culture, much to the government's dismay. That’s why, in some parts of the town, the walls are slightly sticky and smell of the light sweet scent of maize syrup.”

“It must be really ironic if they still use maize syrup,” Zen chuckled out loud.

“Oh they do. In fact, they’ve begun mass production of the stuff in big warehouses because the cost of making it is so low and y’know, sugar is so hard to produce. It’s now the sweetener of choice to put in every over the counter juice and beverage.”

“Don’t you guys… you know, maybe try forced labor for sugar?” Zen asked. “Like slavery?”

“Slavery?” Devan said, raising his eyebrow. “Slavery is illegal here. From what we know, the highest Elefthotech government decreed it as the number one crime to ever commit. But since the elefthotech armed forces are sparse and spread out, slavery rings have been slipping more easily under the nose of the echelon government. Quite sad honestly.”

“That is quite sad,” Zen repeated, resting his chin on his right knuckle. “Speaking of which, I do have some questions about my origins. For instance, I woke up in the icy mountains within some sort of heated crib in some sort of decrepit looking hospital. I’m not a total amnesiac, I still know how to talk and I know what buildings are. It’s just… you know… I can’t remember anything before I woke up. And that hospital definitely looks way different from what I’ve seen recently.”

“Ah, well as a fellow Moro, I guess I should give you some insight.” Devan said, putting two fingers to his lips. “It seems our origins could’ve been for the purpose of a powerful ancient institute that was around possibly over a thousand years ago, and it seemed those beds were used to keep important employees, scholars, and warriors safe. Their methods with keeping the warriors as painless psychopaths though… that can be a touchy subject.”

“But then why haven’t the lands down here progressed? Maybe you guys could explore the mountains and find more artifacts to research and progress the world down here? Seems quite hard to fight spiders with just spears. Maybe we could find some amazing tools back in the mountains if we explore long enough.”

“Well, there is one major reason why we don’t do that.” Devan sighed. “First of all, the higher echelon government has written stability as one of the highest keys in our present lives. If we decide to progress into technologies we do not know or understand, it could bring progression and chaos so extreme it could unravel society into a nasty multi sided war. Just as the stories of old from thousands of years ago and past that, inventions like the steam engine, the nuclear bomb, and… ugh…. God forbid, the IRIS Core.”

“Can… you tell me more about those things?” Zen asked. “Ughh… for some reason, I think I’m supposed to know what those are, but I can’t put my finger on it. Just like how I can recognize a hospital but not know why. Memory… is very strange.”

“Of course,” Devan said with a smile, leaning over and patting Zen on the shoulders. “You’re in safe hands. Let's start off about three or four thousand years ago. These people, called the Romans and the Greeks, learned how to turn steam into power. They figured that steam could push, and do work for them, but they didn’t use it. Most have theorized that they didn’t want to destroy their society, as the progress it could cause would be chaotic. But about fifteen hundred years later, and after their subsequent collapse over the years, another group of people decided to harness it for their own gain. And what chaos it created.”

“Steam was harnessed to transport people, created an industrial revolution of mass chaos and proportions, bringing down empires and letting others rise from their ashes. It was an insane time. Everything was happening all at once. Nothing was stable. Everything then was truly unpredictable. And not to mention the horrible weapons of war multiple sides created, curious in the destruction they could cause with the power they’ve tapped into. And from the scriptures and the books I have seen, my god, it was bloody.”

“Tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of lives lost in countless wars, all for what? A little land here and there? It doesn’t matter that you gained this chunk of land for farming or economic gain. Sometimes, some inventions are not to be trifled with, as they can cause a lot more damage than unwilling people want to deal with.”

Devan cleared his throat. “Sorry if I’m taking so long, it’s a long story.”

“Nah it’s fine. This is really great, and I was really into it. Learning about the past is kinda fun, you know?” Zen said, waving a hand in a casual gesture.

“Alright, well it seemed that these people didn’t learn their lesson, as about a few hundred years later, they learned that splitting the atom, one of the smallest particles in the universe, makes a lot of energy. And do you know what a lot of energy can do? Kill a lot of people. So they made these extremely deadly explosives called nuclear bombs. Could easily wipe a city straight off the map. They actually used it twice, completely destroying two cities off of their warring neighbor! More innocent lives were lost! And in the coming years, the two superpowers of the world would make thousands of these horrible devices, with the potential of destroying the world in its entirety.”

“Now… let me tell you about the last one. The IRIS Core. Possibly the weirdest out of all of these inventions. Now, I don’t know a lot about this invention, but apparently, it was some sort of power source that had the power of time and space to somehow make a lot of energy. This time, the people were civil enough to not use it to kill each other. But apparently, even with its possibly infinite amount of fail safes, this beast of a power source still managed to malfunction. And when a big and powerful invention malfunctions, you know shit goes down.”

“Immediately after the collapse, and I quote from an old diary, ‘Great spheres of crispingly hot white light glowed from these IRIS Core chambers all over the world, splitting the earth up into several thousand pieces before planting them back down again.’ And it sounds as bad as it seems. The world was quite literally reset to an odd pangaea-like time. Pangaea, being a time where all the continents were smashed together. And with the IRIS Core’s specialty being space distribution and what not, spread out all of the toxic waste that the governments had left underground, leaving a majority of the air and land quite toxic.”

“Nowadays the echelon government has removed a majority of the toxic particles from the land and sea, besides some areas that were too toxic to remove. The echelon government is this iron hammer sort of power. It stays high and mighty, but it keeps us all stable and safe. There are many towns, empires and cities spread all over the globe, with most set in their own custom time period. This area is an empire fashioned in a medieval era, while there are others that have stayed in higher or lower eras. The echelon government makes sure there is no technological spillover, as new technologies cause chaos, and chaos causes death.”

“You may ask whether we do have disputes, and yes we do. And we actually do have wars, where people still die. May sound counter intuitive, but now, our technologies do not cause chaos, as we are locked in our own time periods. If we do fight another state that has a higher technology than ours, it’s quite alright actually. Even though we don’t use their equipment, we sure know about them, their uses, and their weaknesses. That’s why synthaweave and carbonclaine can be used freely by medieval and below time periods, as we use them for our own time period purposes. In our separated time period world, technological progression is usually heretical, and revolutions are the worst things that can happen. If someone tried to change their tribe’s or hamlet’s ways, by let’s say, driving armored cars and shooting their enemies with Glock 17’s, they’d probably be stopped immediately by the Elefthotech echelon imperial police.”

“So technological progression is outlawed because it has a known history of causing revolution and chaos.” Zen finished.

“Yep. That’s pretty much it.” Devan said. “And sometimes, some cities of one lower time period could merge with a group of cities from a higher time period, meeting in the middle to merge their time periods together. For instance, tribal groups and imperial groups can get together to become a medieval time period together. As long as the time periods are close enough, they are permitted to do this, with the higher echelon government’s approval of course.”

“This higher echelon government sounds kind of invasive and authoritarian to me.” Zen said blatantly.

“Oh, they’re kind of not. They barely take part in our activities, letting us roam free. They usually crush slavery rings, keeps wars from going for too long unnecessarily, and gives different time periods hints and advice on how to keep their people happy, in case of unrest. They’ve also done a great job cleaning up the world from the previous thousand year shenanigans. And that’s pretty much it. You wouldn’t see them unless you’ve done something really bad, which I hope you don’t.”

“Has anyone ever tried to do some technological progression in Tampatown?” Zen asked.

“Actually, now that I think about it, yes. Definitely.” Devan smirked with a slight grin.

“Did they get caught? Jailed for their actions?” Zen asked curiously.

“Nope. Instead, you’re going to meet him soon. The man that nearly caused a scandal with himself, the public, and the higher echelon government, is Jacky’s brother, Chan himself.”

“What?” Zen gasped, probably a little too loudly. The horses nickered a bit, so Zen shushed himself.

“Heh heh. It’s fine.” Devan said, giving Zen a toothy grin. “It’s actually a wonder that he pulled this stunt off, given the echelon government’s distaste for technology sharing. So it turns out, Chan is a big fan of Frostberg architecture. Frostberg is this massive steampunk time period city that stands in the sub zero ice sheets and glaciers in the far north, where the only thing keeping the city going is coal, oil, gas, and these massive eldritch mech machines. Chan once visited this area as part of a trading caravan, and he was astounded by the design and architecture, so when he came back, he set his whole life to have a building towering over Tampatown with the merging styles of medieval and steampunk.”

“Well, the townsfolk and the echelon government thought his ideals were being a little too extreme, given how steampunk was closer to modern life than it was to medieval life. But Chan defended his argument that he would still be using medieval construction methods and materials, it was just the outer pieces like gears, clocks and snaking pipes that would be harmless decorations. So the echelon government let Chan slide, all the while watching the entire construction process with white hooded overseers and power armored armed guards, quite literally putting this small construction site in full surveillance under the most powerful entity in the world.”

“So Chan worked on, and with his contractors, who covered their faces with goggles and masks so they could remain anonymous and keep their public face, finished the building in record time. So when we meet Chan, you can find him in the tallest building in Tampatown. A medieval structure similar to that of a manor and the fictional Notre Dame church, with sloped peaked fir tree green roofs, with iron trimmings and decorations everywhere, with iron gears and pulleys acting as a weird clock for the day, the month, and the year that can be seen on the side of the building.”

“That is actually… really cool!” Zen said. “Did the townsfolk ever forgive him?”

“It took a while,” Devan said. “The townspeople accused him of starting a hidden revolution by showing the hidden practices of steampunk architecture, but soon people began to forget about it, which was probably helped by the fact that people were accepting the mass production of the iron gear in Tampatown’s construction industry.”

“It’s nice that Chan was able to be forgiven. I wouldn’t want to lose my own public face if I was going to meet with someone who already had a scandal on their head–”

“Hold it!” Devan said, pulling the reins back, forcing the horses to stop. “Stop saying anything. I see some big dark shapes up ahead, behind some rocks within the canyon pass we’ll have to enter. Looks like we have some company.”