The City is the primary setting of Blame!, a continuously-growing construct that occupies much of what used to be the Solar System. The weight-supporting scaffold of the City is the Megastructure, which is made out of an extremely durable substance that divides the City into thousands of different, habitable layers. The Megastructure also runs the Netsphere, the virtual reality from which the City's growth can be controlled by those possessing Net Terminal Genes. Killy is embarked on a quest by the Governing Agency to find a human with the now vanishingly rare Net Terminal Genes, so as to stop the City's uncontrolled growth by accessing the Netsphere.
By the beginning of the manga, most of the City's layers are filled with empty buildings with nonsensical features. Despite the layers being largely uninhabited, Killy routinely encounters human tribes and even confronts hostile Safeguards and Silicon Life.
History[]
While it is never explicitly stated when the City came to be, it is generally acknowledged that Blame! takes place many thousands of years after the City's growth became uncontrolled and chaotic, resulting in the chaotic and pointless architecture that makes up most of the strata visited in the manga.
In the past the City served as residential space for the native humans, who interacted with the Governing Agency via the Netsphere using their Net Terminal Genes. Humanity controlled the City's growth directly, building new strata according to their needs and desires.
However, at some point an unknown "infection" swept through the City, and the Net Terminal Gene seemed to vanish entirely. Since humanity could no longer connect to the Netsphere, the Governing Agency was powerless to stop the Builders as they continued to expand the City without rest. Humanity gradually became entombed in their respective strata, abandoned by the Governing Agency.
As time passed, and with no new instructions, the Builders' construction became erratic and nonsensical. Entire strata composed of nothing but columns, corridors, stairways, masses of pipes, doors to nowhere, broken machinery. Vast gulfs of empty space became so common that very few strata are distinguishable by the time Blame! begins.
Structure[]
The City is divided into huge layers collectively known as strata. Strata are stacked on top of each other, with each stratum being separated from the ones above and below by a layer of Megastructure. Strata vary in size but are extremely large, as it can take up to a month to climb the distance between two strata. Assuming that the City is spherical, it would mean that each successive stratum is quadratically larger than the previous one, which is a strong possibility.
Size[]
Tsutomu Nihei suggested that the City is analogous to a Dyson sphere, with the approximate diameter of Jupiter's orbit, or about 1.6 billion kilometers.[1] However, the City is different from a Dyson sphere in the sense that it is filled with buildings rather than being hollow. When the City began to grow chaotically, at one point it incorporated the Moon, which would indicate a minimum diameter of 768,800 kilometers.[2] Another indication of the City's size is that Killy at one point encounters an empty, spherical room 143,000 kilometers in diameter, roughly the size of Jupiter.[3]
References[]
- ↑ Blame! And So On, p. 82
- ↑ Noise, Chapter 6: "Holy Place", p. 144-145
- ↑ Blame!, Chapter 57, p. 20
Terminology
| |
|---|---|
| General Terms | Base Reality * City * Factory * Language Matrix * Megastructure * Net Terminal Genes * Netsphere * Temporary Access Authentication * The World * Unofficial Megastructure |
| Creatures and Professions | Carriers * Dismantler * Exterminators * High-Level Exterminator |
| Technology | Anti Magnetic Cocoon * Electric Barrier Generator * Food Ration Bar * Forwarding * Gravitational Beam Emitter * Structure Conversion Towers |