Even in ancient times, just about anyone who had ever been on a boat could tell you that the world was round. The Asendavians had figured out you could sail east off the edge of the map and arrive in Novaris and Gondwana in the 1300s, and the Norvians had been sailing in just about every direction a thousand years before then. No, the world being round was never the question, not exactly. It was just about in what way it was round.
You see, plenty of people had sailed across the world from east to west. No one, however, had ever attempted to circle the world from north to south. Or at least, no one had ever succeeded. In ancient times, the myths and legends said that it was dragons or beasts or something that killed you if you went too far north or south. The lupines of Vesienväl told stories of a massive wall of ice that stood at the end of the world, guarded by massive, frightening giants that were the progenitors of humans, elves, and dwarves.
As science and reason took hold among the civilizations of Urth, though, the old folklore was replaced with the strict, reasoned, scientific method. There was no ice wall, there were no dragons, it was just so cold at the poles that people who visited couldn’t survive. The Urth, of course, was a sphere. Just like all the other planets and stars the scientists could see through their telescopes. It was only a matter of time before society would advance far enough for sentient-kind to reach the poles and live to tell the tale.
It did not happen in the 16th century, though, or the 17th. By the 18th, people were beginning to wonder. By the 19th, people were bound and determined to figure out the answer, no matter the cost. Still, none of them returned. Not the Morst, who weren’t really that far from the South Pole; not the Asendavians so close to the North Pole; not the Tavari or the Salovians or the Vistari or the Durdneelians nor anyone else who ever tried. For all of recorded history, the world ended at 75 degrees of latitude away from the Aequator.
The atmosphere at the poles reached temperatures cold enough to freeze lamp oil, scientists theorized. Or torrential circumpolar currents tore boats apart before they could even land on Sempiterna. Navigation was hampered by unpredictable magnetic behavior at the poles of the planet’s magnetic field, almost assuredly. There were plenty of ideas. But none of them, none of them could have ever prepared them for what the people of Urth discovered once they had learned enough to send a person beyond their world.
“We, uh… we have a problem,” were the first words broadcast to the surface of the Urth from orbit.
It was 1961 when Morstaybishlia sent a man into space, but they were only the first to find out. The Ethalrians and the Salovians were quick to respond during the heat of the Auroran Space Race. Of course, the Auroran Imperial War was a significant distraction, and after the Kevatuul disaster, going into outer space was the last thing on the minds of most people on Urth. But the astronauts remembered what they saw, and the governments did too.
They kept it a secret. Secret beyond top secret. Some countries didn’t even tell their heads of state. They focused the public’s attention elsewhere. They “discouraged” university faculty from researching the poles. They said outer space was full of debris and wasn’t safe. They fabricated textbooks, they lied to school-children. They lied to adults. But they also made plans. Plans for expanding their borders beyond the wall.
The Internet and the global tech industry, however, were not part of the plan.
It takes a lot of infrastructure to build a global communications network, you see, and eventually the slow pace of the various governments in launching internet-capable satellites began to annoy industry titans like Cluster and Serenitech. By the turn of the third millennium CE, they, too, discovered what had been kept secret from them. But they had different plans for what to do with the information.
The year is 2020 CE, and while watching the latest Cluster product keynote, you have been informed that the world is a cylinder, the sun rotates around the Urth, and your entire life has been lived in a tiny fraction of an infinite world, sandwiched between two massive walls of ice, on which your government lied to your face to keep it all secret.
Now you have the information. Now you know the truth. So what will you do?
