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The public record · as the belt knows it

The Fall

14 March 2094, 02:17 UTC. Seventy-two hours of falling sky.

For thirty years a ring of steel and solar fields circled the Earth six hundred kilometres up and sent power down to half the planet. Then, in one night, it stopped holding itself up. This is what happened, as far as anyone outside the Consortium has been allowed to know.

Built2041 to 2064
Fell14 to 17 March 2094
Elevators lostThree of four
Official cause“Cascading system failure”
Pages withheld300 of 4,000
Before

The world with a ring

2039 to 2094
The Meridian Ring at its height: a bright band across the night sky above the Earth

A closed orbital ring, six hundred kilometres above the equator. Steel composite, solar fields, habitats. It did not hold itself up: a network of magnetic accelerators kept it in orbit, and if they failed, it fell.

The Meridian Consortium, an alliance of space, energy and construction companies, built it between 2041 and 2064 under an accord signed in 2039 that made every component theirs, forever. It collected sunlight and beamed it to the ground as microwave power. Four space elevators connected it to Earth. Orbit became cheaper than a plane ticket.

It worked for about thirty years. The Consortium grew richer than most states and paid energy dividends instead of taxes. Governments came to depend on it. The anchor cities at the foot of the elevators, in East Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, grew into megacities directly under the Ring.

Port Meridian, East Africa, was the largest of them. A gleaming coastal city with the lit cable of Lift Three rising out of its centre to a point straight overhead, where it met a thin bright band of lights crossing the whole night sky. Nadir stands in its crater now.

Port Meridian, the anchor city, with the elevator cable rising from its centre
The night

Seventy-two hours

14 March 2094 · 02:17 UTC · 05:17 in Port Meridian
The Fall: burning fragments across the whole sky

“At seventeen minutes past five, the stars began to move.”

Imani Wekesa, Speaker of the League, who was seventeen and on the night shift at the foot of Lift Three
  • 02:1714 March · UTC

    The accelerators fail over the Indian Ocean

    One section loses lift and begins to sink. It drags its neighbours. The chain reaction runs around the planet in both directions.

  • Hours14 March

    Three elevators come down

    Lift One, Lift Two and Lift Three collapse with the sections they are tethered to. Their anchor cities are wiped out within hours. Only Lift Four, on the artificial island of Halcyon in the Pacific, survives.

  • Days14 to 17 March

    The sky keeps falling

    Debris comes down along a belt from the Atlantic across Africa, the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia into the Pacific. Hundreds of millions lose their homes. The microwave power supply for half of several continents ends.

  • After2094

    One fifth stays up

    About a fifth of the Ring’s mass remains in orbit, broken into thousands of fragments on decaying orbits. It is still coming down, thirteen years later: from bolts that burn up to habitat modules the size of a city district.

The cause

Four thousand pages

Three hundred of them black
Meridian Consortium · Final Report · Orbital Event 2094-03-14Sealed

Section 7.3 · Cause of accelerator failure

At 02:17 UTC the accelerator array over sector eleven and twelve reported a load excursion. The control hub authorised the shutdown sequence under protocol, after which the neighbouring sections lost positive lift within four minutes. The cause of the initial excursion is known to the maintenance system and was logged at and remains under review.

p. 2,417 of 4,000 · 300 pages withheld

The Consortium’s final report runs to four thousand pages and names the cause as a cascading system failure. The three hundred pages that would explain what cascaded, and why, are withheld. Engineers inside the company have asked for them. So has every government in the belt. Nobody has seen them.

The report in the archive

Since

Thirteen years

2094 to 2107
  • 2094The year of the Fall

    Who owns what falls from the sky?

    The wreckage is worth more than anything mined from the ground: composite steel, superconducting cable, fusion cells, intact factory modules. The Consortium says every piece is theirs by the accord. The people it fell on say otherwise. States outside the belt seal themselves off. States inside collapse or merge.

  • 2097Nadir

    The Nadir Charter

    After years of militias, city councils and salvage crews fighting each other, their representatives sign a charter in the crater city. The League of the Fallen Lands: states, cities and free communities along the whole belt, from West Africa to the Pacific.

  • 2101Nadir

    The Salvage Accord

    The Consortium and the League agree who may cut which field. Both sides honour it when convenient.

  • 2105Nadir

    A new speaker

    The League elects Imani Wekesa, thirty, a survivor of Port Meridian and thirteen years a salvager. The youngest speaker it has had.

  • Spring2107

    Node Zero is sinking

    Both sides’ orbit tracking report the same thing: the largest intact fragment, the Ring’s former control hub, is losing altitude. It will come down somewhere in the belt within a year. Everyone wants it.

  • May2107

    Impact Field 41

    A Consortium salvage team and a League crew both claim the same field under the accord. A shot is fired. Nobody knows who fired it. The Consortium’s drones open fire. Two weeks later the accord is dead and the Salvage War has begun.

The Meridian Consortium The League of the Fallen Lands The Belt