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A city built on perpetual motion machines

 

 

Popoka's memory notes
(November 21, 1790, the seventh floor of the vat, the Moers house)

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I am Popoca Tenoch, the son of the spiritual guide Miles Tenoch and the midwife Anna, the elder brother of Angie Tenoch, the goddess of the Feathered Serpent, from the city of Tizok—this one was borne by the Feathered Serpent The place favored by God, in the third year after the coming-of-age ceremony, that is, the year when the rule of the high priest was overthrown, my sister and I left our hometown together.

The city I used to live in, Tizoque, is located in the open land in the tropical rainforest of Central America. It consists of a hexagonal building and a circular building "big barrel". Compared with the cities of the Aztecs, Tizoc has the characteristics of a more advanced civilization. According to the "Tizok Upanishad", the ring-shaped building relies on a perpetual motion machine to generate rotational power, which means that the entire city is located on a huge disc, like a super bracelet placed on a stone mill. With the help of Mayan priests, it relies on precise astronomical calculations to rotate 360 degrees every year, thus ensuring that each family can get sunshine on average. It may be the only geode clock in the world. However, due to the slow speed, the vast majority of residents cannot directly perceive its movement.
 

The perpetual motion machine is located in the heart of the city, buried at 200 cubits [a unit of Tizoc length, each cubit equals about 45 centimeters. ] Deep underground. It is a hybrid mechanical system that comprehensively utilizes gravity, gravity, magnetism, groundwater momentum and light energy. There are also stone chambers of different sizes and their mesh passages. There is no doubt that this is an unparalleled underground building, and its complexity far surpasses the Minoan labyrinth in Crete, Greece. However, only a handful of people know of its existence, and no one can decipher its operating principle. The "Tizok Upanishad" declares that the great Feathered Serpent personally designed and manufactured the perpetual motion machine, and pushed it to walk with his own powerful energy. Circles provide a compact way to calculate lifetimes. If your lifespan is only fifty years, then when the city turns to the fiftieth circle, Feathered Serpent God will hand you over to the God of Death, and let him take you to the unfathomable nine-layer underworld, or be taken by him to many worlds. Up to thirteen layers of lofty heaven.
 

A mysterious family called the Lorenzo maintains those mechanical transmissions to ensure that they function without malfunction. But for a long time it seemed to be just some kind of charming legend, for only two or three Tizoks before me had ever seen a member of this family. Those adventurers who try to break into the secret passage will get lost in it and die of hunger and despair. In the history of the city-state of Tizok, at least one hundred and twenty-eight explorers died in this maze, and their skulls were inlaid at the entrance of the perpetual motion maze. The latter is located in a tunnel under a statue of a god in the square, and is accompanied by a gilded nameplate cast in bronze with a macabre inscription-"The gods lead you to death". This warning is enough to discourage all "tourists".

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 merse's teenage past

 

Popoka's memory notes
(November 23, 1790, seventh floor of the vat, Moers House)

 

I don't know exactly how to tell the history of our family. If you want to trace the source, you have to mention my father, who claims to be from another planet. Of course, it is neither Mars nor Saturn, but the "Pluto" on the earth, and the name is Titlan City. The city has now been consumed by a plague called "smallpox", completely wiped from the face of the earth. Through his father's memories, it can be found that his fear and loathing of that city has reached an indescribable level.
The birth of my father is a legend in itself. He is an orphan without father and mother. He was put into a wooden basin when he was born, and allowed to float in the river for an unknown amount of time. A fisherman downriver fishing in the moonlight found a baby in a basket and took him home to raise him, but no one knew his true origin. According to what the fisherman told others, there were only two things in the tub at that time: the father himself, and a delicate obsidian dagger. Because there was no milk, my father was as thin as a stick, but his eyes were piercing and he did not cry. The short sword was placed beside him, the white jade hilt was inlaid with seven small turquoise stones on the front and the back, and on the back of the shiny black sword was engraved a symbol similar to "₴", which was the special symbol of Feathered Serpent God , "г" represents the body of the Feathered Serpent, and "=" represents its pair of wings.

At the age of fifteen, strictly speaking, it was the fifteenth year when he was discovered by the fisherman. His father had a lively coming-of-age ceremony, but he didn't know that it was a turning point in his life. Relatives and friends of the fisherman came to bless them, beat wooden drums, played colorful ocarinas, and sang and danced at the moonlight party. Neighbors far and near were also infected by the carnival, opened their windows and sang loudly together, and the sound spread throughout the city. But at midnight, a total lunar eclipse suddenly occurred, the black shadow engulfed most of the moon, and the sky turned dark red blood. Thousands of stray cats gathered at the party scene, facing the moon and their father, uttering screams like babies The sound is like weeping and complaining. Everyone in the city panicked, as if witnessing the end of the world. That night, some residents of Titlan died for no reason at home, as if they had been cast with a vicious spell.

Various rumors began to circulate in the city from the next day, most of which pointed to my father, saying that he was the incarnation of death, representing the power of darkness, death and corruption, and performed death magic on the residents of the city under the guise of birthday rituals, Must be executed immediately, otherwise there will be endless troubles. The priests were also very afraid of this, and declared that he was the enemy of Titlan, but they were worried about offending Feathered Serpent, so they could only send soldiers to drive his father out of the city and abandon him in the thorny wilderness. The representative of the priesthood, wearing a hideous mask of beasts made of leather, issued a final warning to him: "You must stay away from us and never come back, otherwise you and your family (if any) will be executed."

The father looked sad, bowed his head, and accepted the sentence of exile obediently. From then on, he began to wander between the wilderness and the dense forest, making a living by hunting and gathering plants, and learned to identify various dangerous animals and useful plants. One summer day three years later, in the tropical rainforest of the Kachu Valley, my father met a huge male jaguar, which was in heat, and had followed him for three days, never giving up. On that sultry evening, it launched an attack on its prey. It soared into the air and rushed towards its father condescendingly, as if it wanted to possess a charming female leopard. The father resisted vigorously, his left leg was accidentally swept by sharp claws, and blood poured out, but he did not retreat, pulled out the obsidian dagger, and stood under the luxuriant horn tree, majestic and majestic, like a young god. The jaguar was so frightened that it backed up again and again, making a low cry of begging.

At this moment, the Tizok warrior hidden in the jungle suddenly came to the rescue and shot a sharp arrow into the forehead of the jaguar. This is a strange-looking Yucatan with dense circular markings on his body, so he has the nickname "Old Leopard". He is the leader of the "gatherers". He is keen on fighting for justice and has great prestige among the group. The old leopard followed the magnificently spotted male leopard for a whole day, and finally killed him while he was busy hunting. The old leopard later told me that the big cat behaved a little strangely, completely obsessed with its prey, and turned a deaf ear to the danger behind it, as if possessed by an evil spirit, which gave him a good opportunity to strike.

"Little Mers is the real magician. He is very different from everyone I have met." The old leopard smiled mysteriously, his white teeth gleaming in the sun.

After saving his father, the old leopard used spells and witchcraft to help him stop the bleeding and bandage the wound, and took him to "Tizoke", a city crawling out of stones, and applied for the right to live forever for him. After strict review, the management accepted this brave young man who fought hand-to-hand with tigers. In this way, he grew up under the care of the old leopard and became the youngest member of the gatherer army. Not only that, he also studied medicine, pharmacy and spiritual guidance assiduously, passed a series of rigorous tests, and became one of the honorable ranks of pharmacists and spiritual guides.

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The Quirky "Barrel" and Its Residents

 

October 1789
Tizoke City, Vat

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The ring-shaped building of Tizok City looks like a ring-shaped crown, so it has an official name "Tizok Crown", but Tizok people are used to calling it "big barrel" because it looks more like a super cylinder. Its outer edge, which is equivalent to what people usually call a city wall, is built of thick basalt stones, so strong and tall that it cannot be destroyed from the outside at all. There used to be a deep and wide ditch at its feet, and the bottom was filled with dense and sharp iron picks. Once an intruder fell into it, his intestines would be pierced and he would die. Many years ago, a powerful Aztec army discovered its existence, so they moved soil to fill the ditch in an attempt to capture it, but due to lack of gunpowder, ladders and trebuchets, they failed after three months. , leaving behind piles of corpses, as well as exquisite obsidian weapons, which greatly improved Tizok's military rank.

Based on the fear of the unknown outside world, no one is willing to leave this heavily guarded circular city. After a long time, it has become a solid closed loop. The strange thing is that Tizok City has a gate with a hard metal panel, with exquisite decorations, and it opens majestically towards the direction of the Southern Cross, and the thick bracket and hinge for lifting the gate panel are installed on the upper end in a pretentious manner. But the Aztecs didn't find out angrily until they attacked the city that it was actually a gateless city. The gate they saw was but a deceitful decoration, and behind it was a rock of despair. The only passage for the vat is two large elevators composed of winches and suspension cables, which are distributed on its inner and outer sides, used to carry carriages and bulk goods, and are closely guarded by a team of soldiers, only for collectors to enter and exit when they are working.
 

The vat is both a city wall and a barracks-style residence, with 35,000 residents living in it. There is a circular corridor on its inner side, which is a public platform inside the class, where residents can take a walk and spread gossip. The outsides of the one to five-story houses are sealed and thick walls without windows, and it is impossible to see the scenery outside the city at all. However, there are enough doors and windows on the inside facing the corridors. Residents can see through as long as they stand in their houses. Through the opened doors and windows, most of the residents located on the ring structure can be observed, and the central tower and its hexagonal building can be seen in the distance.
 

Only the sixth and seventh-story buildings are a special case in design. It has "arrow windows" that open toward the outer edge, but due to the small area and the four sides are blocked by thick walls, the view of the scenery is too narrow, as if A glimpse of a leopard in a tube. Of course, its name also means that once it enters a state of war, it can be quickly converted into an arrow stack for soldiers to defend. But one thing is certain, the residents of these two layers are in high positions and do not have the skills of archery and combat, but they have the power to look at external civilizations. They are not only proficient in Tizoc script, but also understand Aztec, Maya, Spanish and Chukya. Of course, in order to defend Tizok's hierarchy, these knowledge and skills must be monopolized.
 

In the "Tizok Upanishad" left by his father, there is a brief description of the structure of the vat residents:

 

Seventh floor: the ruler, the supreme ruler of Tizok, composed of high priests, assistant priests, governors, presbyterian elders and fertility officers;
Sixth floor: creators, composed of teachers, doctors, engineers, artists, spiritual guides and theologians;
Fifth floor: Guardians, composed of judges, policemen, soldiers, jailers and executioners;
Fourth floor: Collectors, who have the privilege of going out of the city to collect necessary materials, one thousand of them are responsible for collecting gold, emeralds, emeralds, turquoise and opal,

          _cc781905-5cde-3194 -bb3b-136bad5cf58d_Provide core wealth for Tizok City;
The third layer: manufacturers, composed of artisans, gardeners, farmers, blacksmiths, craftsmen, millers, merchants and shopkeepers;
The second floor: Cleaners are located at the bottom of Tizok society, engaged in garbage removal, feces collection, haircuts, baths, babysitters, bearers, and corpse burials.

          _cc781905-5cde-3194 -bb3b-136bad5cf58d_work;
Ground floor: warehouses and barns, used to store food and daily necessities acquired by gatherers, and livestock such as horses, pigs, chickens and ducks kept by clearers.

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According to Tizoc's law, there are strict boundaries between different levels and cannot be crossed casually. I once saw a child of the "maker" on the third floor accidentally run up the stairs leading to the fourth floor because of his naughtiness. His mother took him down in horror and beat him on the spot with a thorny agave leaf. The boy cried out in pain—for the first time in his life, he was taught a harsh lesson about class segregation. The boy, Motzuma, was a hereditary stonemason who later became the leader of the maker class, responsible for organizing the production and processing of the material products needed by the inhabitants. Domestic violence is the only way for Tizok people to grow up. After they grow up, they have to face more severe religious and administrative violence. The example of Mottezuma is enough to prove that without this kind of violent punishment throughout early education, there will be no good future for victims of violence.

The rooftop on the top of the Datong Building is a wide avenue, except for two low warehouses built near the elevator, it looks almost unobstructed. Arrow stacks are built on both the inner and outer rings, but because there has been no war for a long time, the arrow stacks are already covered with a thick layer of moss. Every day, twenty-four patrolmen patrolled in shifts on it. Through the arrow stacks, they kept a close eye on the movement inside and outside the city of Tizok, so as to discover the traces of intruders and rebels in time. No one can easily escape the sight of these patrols. After dark, the patrolmen began to light their lanterns, and every hour, they used obsidian daggers to strike leather shields and armors, reporting the progress of time, which sounded like muffled drums, talking to the people of every household. Hourglass clocks echo each other. It is also a warning to residents: We are here, and we are watching your every move!
 

As residents on the sixth floor, with the help of the self-rotation of the vat, all members of the Moores family can slowly observe the panorama of the surrounding tropical rainforest through the arrow window. Under the mixed effect of sunlight and rain, it emits white mist, covering the whole world, like a thick barrier. Tizok itself was bathed in thick mist. The forest and the city are looking at each other, but neither can understand the other's details. Between these two camps, there is a vast cemetery where all the deceased Tizoks are buried. Their ghosts bubble up from the cracks in the earth, trying desperately to get back to the city, but the towering walls of the vat stop them. In most cases, they can only fly around the roots of the vats, and the leaves are piled up at the foot of the wall, waiting to be eroded by the wet years, or blown to more distant places by the dry hot wind.

 

 

Feathered Serpent and High Priest Hopi

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October 30, 1789
Tizok City, Tower of Worship

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Unlike the Aztecs and Mayans, Feathered Serpent is the highest and only god believed by the residents of Tizoc. According to the "Tizoke Upanishad", he came from a place called "YIN" on the other side of the ocean. The Tizoke people called it "YINDI", which means "Yindi". "India" is mixed up, creating a geographical fallacy that has lasted for hundreds of years.

The Feathered Serpent God holds the huge energy that governs the growth of all things, and at the same time can determine the termination of its growth, and that is death. Feathered snake gods always appear at the two ends of human life - birth and death. His image is that of a serpent with outstretched fangs and enormous wings. But sometimes he also appeared in human form, looking like a general with a feather crown on his head, and a giant winged snake became his mount, which may be a composite of Feathered Serpent God and Youhouxi modeling. There are three copies of the linen portraits of this humanoid feathered serpent, which were kept secret by the high priest, the chief elder, and the captain of the soldiers, and became an important symbol of religious power.
This kind of theology that deliberately associates the Feathered Serpent God with death has isolated the city of Tizoc from the entire Central America, and out of the instinct of self-protection, the city of Tizoc can only refuse to communicate with the outside world, thus falling into a trap. A state of eternal autism, which is then gradually forgotten by the outside world. On the map of America drawn by the Spaniards, Tizoc is hidden in the vast tropical rainforest, becoming a void that never existed.
 

Right in the center of Tizok City, there is a basalt minaret - the worship tower, which is more than 100 cubits high and is the spiritual axis of the entire city-state. and a narrow wooden ladder that spirals itself. On the periphery of the worship tower, there are six interconnected rectangular buildings, which belong to the temple, the city hall, the soldiers, the hospital, the school and the library. They form a central matrix that echoes the "barrels" of the residents' circular dwellings, known as "hexagonal buildings".
 

The high priest Hopi likes to stand on the watchtower on the top of the tower, use a monocular made in Italy to look around the entire circular city, and observe the daily movements of all residents. This may be the greatest pleasure in his life. Driven by the perpetual motion machine, the ring-shaped residential building is slowly rotating, like those sacred stars in the sky. This means that as long as Hoppy is patient enough to stand still, he can observe the situation of each family without turning his head, because they will always automatically turn to the front of his line of sight. Between the observation tower and the rotating residential building "big barrel", there is an effect of peeping at each other, and this is the initial logic of Tizok City: no privacy, completely open and bright. This structure is said to be the trump card of urban democracy.
 

The second floor of the tower is the largest timekeeping clock in Central America, and it is also the only sign of the perpetual motion machine showing itself on the surface. It uses a sophisticated escapement mechanism to tell the time eight times a day, from one knock to eight strikes, It keeps going back and forth, loud and long, echoing over the sky of Tizoke City, and it lasts for a long time. Its voice, like cotton thread, seeped into every orifice and crevice, and shook every creature of the city.
 

On the annual memorial day of the Feathered Serpent God, the big clock strikes twelve times every hour, just like the Feathered Serpent God's slowly approaching footsteps. Just as the bell was ringing, the city of Tizok suddenly became quiet. All the residents put down everything in their hands and prayed to the temple on the worship tower, praying for the pardon of death from the Feathered Serpent God. Sometimes, the high priest will give a speech between the two bells, which is used to shape the supreme divine authority.
 

At this moment, he stood in front of Tizok's only "soul machine", took a deep breath, and prepared his own draft. Like the perpetual motion machine, this machine is also a gift from the Feathered Serpent God. Although it is much smaller in scale, it is also intricately constructed. Consisting of systems and lead pipes, it was the chief tool of the High Priest's speech. It can amplify the sound countless times and transmit it to every corner of the hexagonal building and the vat. Not only that, the mysterious frequency it creates can continuously control people's brain waves, and it lasts for years, just like the echo of time.
"Residents of Tizok, you are in danger!"
 

Usually, he likes to start his speeches with provocative words like this before launching into a lengthy brainwashing sermon. His tone is up and down, and his voice is round and full of magnetism. Through the complicated lead pipe, it resounds through every corner of Tizok. Many Tizok women have a crush on this thirty-two-year-old supreme power. It is said that when they listen to his speeches, they often reach orgasm, flush, tremble, and scream with infinite joy. It is these fanatical worshipers of the opposite sex that support Hopi's tough rule. Standing resolutely on the watchtower, wearing an emerald mask, he uttered charming promises and terrible threats, while the people around him shouted "Long live" heartily.
 

On the sixth floor of the vat, stood a woman with big breasts and wide buttocks, at the moment she was looking at her leader with infinite obsession. Her name is Ma Linjie, an artist who makes a living by painting portraits for nobles, and is also one of Hopi's many sex slaves. She clenched the railing tightly with her hand, screaming sharply and continuously, like moaning from the bed curtain, but her voice actually surpassed the crowd and became the peak leading the entire chorus. From her eyes and lower body, a fluid more religious than religious poured out. In the tide of joy, her body is floating up to the vast and sacred sky together with the weightless soul.

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