Beyond the tunnels, the stone, the claustrophobia of the ancient Low City, there still exists an endless world. A world that few within the Low City will ever see, and fewer care to think about. The Hohi can leave- or rather, they are by default of the world outside the Low City- and some scavengers and explorers who prove themselves capable or worthy of stepping beyond the tunnels. Some seek out careers that will afford them the opportunity just so they might glimpse that forgotten sky. For most, it is easier to pretend that the world beyond doesn’t exist than to grapple with the fact- the sheer, immutable fact- that none of their last dozen ancestors set foot in the world outside those tunnels, and they will not either. But there are also those who find this an unacceptable thing to just accept. They are not the sort to settle for what they were born into. But they are not the sort to settle for just setting foot on the surface. They seek what lies beyond, as well.

 

The Observatory is without doubt among the most impressive feats of engineering in the history of the Low City- perhaps second only to the Low City itself. It is so great that it cannot be contained by the Lowcity’s tunnels, instead straddling the surface and subterranean worlds. The barrel of its massive telescope extends from below the ground, its base at the bottom of a great pit dug to give it as much rotational potential as possible, its control centre buried below. It was not an original part of the Low City’s construction, naturally: the desperate souls tasked with transforming a mine into a place for the world’s last survivors had other priorities than examining through a lens the world they were fleeing, and the miners who dug the tunnels that would become the Low City had even less need for such things. Although “Need” is perhaps not the best way to look at something like the Observatory. In an objective sense, nobody in the Low City needed the Observatory, to look beyond the tunnels, beyond what lay outside, at what lay beyond all that had ever been known. With it, they can gaze out at the twin moons that orbit the world into which the Low City is dug, at the proud orange sun that they orbit, and at the stars far beyond. It was not designed to look at the surface world, and so it cannot give the residents of the Low City any insight into that place, its nature and the current state of things there. Therefore, it has no strictly practical use. It serves no purpose but to sate the curiosity of its operators. But that is a purpose, and to those who care, a worthy one at that. It was not designed to help make surviving in the Low City easier. It was designed to gaze outward, from the Low City, from the world into which the Low City is dug, at other worlds entirely. 

 

The Observatory has a number of staff, each with a crucial role in its maintenance and operation. Many of these are not permanently employed at the Observatory, but rather contractors: experts in fields or trades that the Observatory needed at specific times, such as the glassmakers of the Chister Light Factory or those capable of traversing the surface world to perform maintenance on the telescope’s exterior. The only permanent workers are those who determine where to point the telescope, and interpret the things it sees: the physicists, the mathematicians, the top-level engineers. But in a way, the Observatory belongs to all of them. To all those in the Low City for whom it is a comfort, a reminder that there is more to the universe than their struggle. It isn’t as if there is a profit to be made in stargazing, after all, so there can be no profit motive behind the Observatory’s operations. Much of its operations are only possible due to donations, both materials and labour, that are given because people simply believe in its mission, or because they enjoy the images it produces. Perhaps these people are not wholly selfless; their repayment comes in the form of the joy or hope that the Observatory’s images provide. Whenever a new batch of images are produced, of distant stars and nebulae, they are imprinted onto a variety of materials- never paper, as of all the things that are scarce in the Low City sources of paper are near the top of the list. They are printed on metal, or etched into stone by skilled Grib hands. They are recreated in murals in common areas, or in stained glass windows. The rare days- never more than once a year- that the observatory releases a new set of images capture the minds of so many Low City Residents, creating a potent- if brief- moment of collective optimism and joy at the beauty of the world beyond these tunnels. The fact that the images are almost always communal, held in locations where almost anyone can see them, adds to this collective fervour, as folk of all types and forms press shoulder to shoulder to knee to wing to get a look at the new images, and for a moment all divisions are forgotten. This collective viewing has become a source of pride for the Observatory staff, as they see their hard work paying off; nobody minds that it is an accident, born solely of the fact that the Observatory could never afford to print enough copies for everyone who wanted one. And of course, those who donate particularly handsomely to the cause can expect to receive a personal copy, just for themselves. Perhaps it is a compromise, a concession to the will of the wealthy. But then again, the communal viewings are the result of a compromise too. And, after all, the Low City is built on compromises almost as surely as it is dug out of rock.

 

Today is an important day for the Observatory- and its staff. A rare and beautiful event is due to occur for the first time since the Observatory’s construction: a double eclipse. The paths of both the world’s moons will perfectly overlap with the sun, an event that only happens once every few decades due to complex orbital mechanics whose details aren’t worth getting into. One moon is smaller than the other, and is mutually tidally locked- meaning that one side of that moon is perpetually visible from one side of the Low City’s world, and vice versa. Those who live- or lived- on the far side of the planet likely went their entire lives unaware that their world even had a second moon. They would only know of the other, larger moon, which lives farther away from the planet and has an elliptical orbit, meaning that throughout its month it becomes closer, then farther away, then closer again. Today, for less than thirty seconds, the larger moon will fully block out the sun, letting through only a faint halo of light around its edges, which will in turn just barely illuminate the edges of the smaller moon in its shadow. Despite the fact that the Low City’s populace mostly never see the light which the moons will blot out, said blotting still feels significant to most. The moons, each of which has their own name in most cultures, have come to symbolise many different things in said cultures: the purity of hope, the humble honour of survival, simple tranquillity. In times long past they mostly represented ill omens, as their twin gravitational pulls wreaked havoc on the tides and the climate, but such things as rain and tide have largely been forgotten by the subterranean people who remain. Only the Fallen still regard the twin moons as ill omens: in their cosmology, they are known either as The Eyes That Watch, or The Dark Sisters. There is ongoing theological debate, which waxes and wanes over the years much as the moons do over the months, between a number of camps. One side claims the moons are the eyes of a being which watches over The Fallen, ever vigilant for any who dare attempt to take to the skies as their ancestors once did. Others claim that they are a pair of sisters who linger in the sky to taunt those trapped on the ground, or beneath it. A smaller group alleges that the two moons are each worlds where Fallen who did not commit their people’s cardinal sin are able to live on in peace, a pair of Edens for those not accursed like those Fallen of the Low City. Most Fallen shun such an idea, that any Fallen would be exempt from their collective suffering. The notion that this place, the Low City and its world, are a personal hell created just for the Fallen, while their betters drift through the sky like they cannot, is perhaps too depressing even for them.

 

But regardless of the individual denizens’ personal connection to the Moons, their imminent conjunction feels significant to all of them. Even the Fallen, who usually shun the images produced by The Observatory as they do not believe they should witness the world beyond the tunnels, eagerly await the images this day will produce. A nervous excitement pervades the tunnels of the City as its denizens wait not just for the day of the eclipse, but for the day the images produced by The Observatory will appear in their common places. Speculation is rampant as to what the pictures will even look like: none have ever seen an eclipse, let alone a double eclipse, and while most understand the principles behind the phenomenon well enough to hazard a guess this is the last chance they will have to guess before the immutable truth of it is laid before them. There is also nervous excitement felt among the staff of The Observatory on this day, although it is both more nervous and more easily justified than that of the average person. A dust storm kicked up overnight on the surface just above the Low City, an event which went unnoticed by most. Indeed, the Observatory staff only learned of it when they arrived for work this morning and tried to run some checks on their telescope, only to find that its lens was utterly caked in thick red dust. 

 

Striding back and forth across the Observatory’s control room, alternating between issuing instructions and asking for updates, Head Astronomer Ghlahaf is having a bad day. This was always going to be a stressful day, with a lot of pressure riding on her and her staff to capture the perfect image in the narrow window presented to them, but now it seems doubtful that they will even have the opportunity. She barks out another question to Sweet/Cloying/Fleeting, a small and nervous Grib in a headset, demanding an update from the surface team. Sweet/Cloying/Fleeting, in turn, replies that the surface team are still getting suited up in the pressurised suits that will let them survive on the surface. Ghlahaf accepts this, for now; she is stressed, but she understands the importance of safety, and doesn’t want to rush the surface team unduly. As soon as the dust issue was discovered in the morning she’d contacted The Observatory’s regular exterior cleaning crew- a group of professionals both skilled and bold enough to venture into the deadly world of the surface- and promised them triple their usual pay rate for a rapid job. The Double Eclipse is expected around noon, giving only a handful of hours for the cleaning crew to do their work and for the Observatory staff to check and recalibrate their equipment. The stakes are as high as they can be for the staff of an Observatory, though few outside of the Observatory know it. All around Ghlahaf people are moving, running, shouting instructions and updates to one another, all looking busy and all accomplishing nothing. Because right now, there is nothing they can do. That is, perhaps, the worst part: for now, the only people with any ability whatsoever to make the situation better are the team of Grib, either still donning their pressurised suits, or making their way across the surface toward The Observatory’s exterior, or maybe- she allows herself to hope, despite knowing better- already there, already cleaning the red dust from the lens and sensors, wiping away this disaster and making way for the sun. Seconds pass, as Ghlahaf watches the clock. Minutes. More than an hour, and the double eclipse nears, and Ghlahaf still hasn’t heard back from the surface team. She won’t until they return to the City’s entrance, where they will report in via hardwired telephone. Radio communication exists in the Low City, but it serves little use where everyone you could hope to talk to invariably has tonnes and tonnes of stone in the way to soak up the signal. Most of the time this is an inconvenience, but it feels more like a curse to Ghlahaf right now: they dare not attempt to manipulate or realign the telescope in any way until they receive absolute confirmation from the surface team that its mechanisms are intact. They know for certain that the lens is obscured, but they have no way of telling from the control room if the storm has damaged the machinery that realigns the scope, or alters its magnification. If they act without absolute certainty, they could inadvertently turn this situation from a huge inconvenience to a massive and costly disaster- and, some small insignificant part of Ghlahaf’s mind tells her, it could also possibly injure the surface team.

 

It is almost time for the Double Eclipse, and the mood in the Control Room has turned almost hysterical. What is the surface team doing? Why haven’t they called in the All-Clear? If they called it in now, would the Observatory staff even be able to realign the telescope in time for the eclipse? Ghlahaf, for her part, has so thoroughly given up hope that when the telephone hanging from the wall begins to ring she almost doesn’t answer it. She stares at it for a moment, strangely confused that it has rung at all, when she had so convinced herself that the call would never come. Then she all but sprints across the Control Room and thrusts the receiver to her ear. The All-Clear. The head of the surface team doesn’t even seem to understand the gravity of the situation, based on the casual way he describes how thickly caked-on the dust was. She hangs up without saying anything, and returns to barking orders to her staff. They have minutes- perhaps seconds- to realign the scope, to focus it. They have no time to waste. They must act now. The atmosphere becomes even more heightened, shouts, hammering of footsteps. The room vibrates as the mighty telescope is realigned, refocused. Someone cries out that the Control Room’s exterior scopes are showing the surface darkening- the eclipse is happening NOW. Ghlahaf gives the order to expose the photosensors which will capture the image, they are out of time. Someone, in charge of the telescope’s focus, says that they are receiving odd readings, and Ghlahaf shouts the order again. They are out of time. Focus as best you can and take the picture. A moment of silence. The technician confirms the focus. The photosensors are exposed to the light pouring in through the telescope. The moment passes. The surface brightens. It is done.

 

The reception to the image taken by The Observatory that day is unlike anything they have ever seen. More daguerreotypes and etchings and murals are made of it than any other; more than just a picture, it becomes an icon. In the years to come it transforms from just an image to a symbol, a reminder not just of what lies beyond the Low City, but of what they have, as people, within it. The potency of The Observatory and its images has often been attributed solely to the way it can make people think of the world beyond, of hope for other worlds, a better future- at the very least, a different one- that lies beyond the Low City. But, with that image, they were given a reminder that, as hard as life in the Low City can be, as much as they struggle with their burdens- both physical and emotional, their daily chores and the knowledge that their lives will never be what their ancestors on the surface had- this is still life. Beautiful and strange as ever. Ghlahaf and Sweet/Cloying/Fleeting and all the others didn’t know it at the time- couldn’t have known it- but the image that was created that day was more than just a mundane process of light and chemicals, more than a picture of a double eclipse. Of course, it wasn’t that at all. Despite the initial controversy and humiliation of it, in the years to come it becomes little more than a piece of trivia that this iconic image was supposed to be something as mundane as a Double Eclipse. Something rare, but that had happened untold numbers of times and would come again, and again, and again. Instead, as they look at that picture of a massive float of Hohi, Gasbags, drifting in front of the sun, all but blocking it out, the other two moons barely even in frame as the moment of occlusion had passed by the time the picture was taken, the residents of the ancient Low City think of all the other beautiful little oddities that happen in their lives every day. All throughout the tunnels and beyond, life goes on in stranger and stranger ways, in the Low City.