Boomtown

 

Boomtown is the city in and around which the story is set.

Geography

The city is nestled in the foothills of the mountain range which runs North to South from horizon to horizon. Surrounding the city in an imprecise perimeter - perhaps as little as one mile and as many as three miles wide in various places - is the frontier, a dusty and sparsely fertile area of land separating Boomtown’s immediate vicinity from the Wilderness that covers the rest of the known world.

Layout

The immense Black Pyramid stands at the base of the mountains, surrounded by skyscrapers. The entire area sits off-center within a large circular wall and appears to be a relatively modern example of industrialized society.

Surrounding the wall is a thick crescent of additional cityscape, itself enclosed in a second, more expansive wall that converges with the first and terminates in the same location between the pyramid and the mountains.

A third area - a thinner crescent of cityscape - sits within a final perimeter wall surrounding all but the most Eastern point of the city where it is incomplete. This is Lowtown.

On the Eastern side of the city outside the gap in the incomplete wall, a large and dense shantytown that acts as a buffer between the city and the Wilderness. This is the Annex.

Government

The institution is named as a governing body and seems to answer the question, “What did the Founders found?” So far we have learned about two types of Institutional Officers - Makers and Keepers.

Ricky refers offhandedly to Academy, where citizens learn the history of the city (a curriculum the printer’s apprentice suggests is incorrect or incomplete).

The society appears to operate under authoritarian rule given the strong and threatening presence of Lawkeepers, the checking of papers and giving of oaths a gates between localities, a bodeful banner reading “Census is mandatory,” and the lionizing of the city’s fallen hero - not to mention the city’s recent history as Ricky tells it.

The Institution are presented as indifferent to the quality of life of those who live in the Annex.

History

What we know of Boomtown is provided by Ricky as he collects his thoughts for an anti-Institutional pamphlet:

At some point, a viral outbreak prompted Boomtown to build its walls to quarantine the segment of the population nearest to the Black Pyramid. Those left outside the final wall (in the slums now called The Annex) struggled without direct access to the city’s infrastructure and services (despite the implementation of a system for Work Passes into the city and vouchers for goods) and their vulnerability to the dangers of the Wilderness was exacerbated by the wall separating them from a city to retreat into.

Six-Gun, an outlaw from the Annex, took some action against the Institution in response to the disenfranchisement of its population. The Stranger arrived in defense against Six-Gun. We do not know of their exact fate.

The following generation, a woman named Narissa organized a movement called The Children of the Revolution. They petitioned for expanded rights for the inhabitants of Lowtown and the Annex, but their activity ceased without explanation as far as Ricky knows.

Shortly after this detail is given, Ricky asks Holman,

“The humanitarian petition? Is it getting close to a vote? Is… is she coming?”

If the reader connects that last bit of history Ricky shared with his question to Holman, they may infer a rough estimate of these events’ proxmity to the present day.

 
 

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