In the center of an arid and cracked stretch of land, cradled by rock spires and hills long ago blasted for stone, the system known as Parallax breathes with wires in their walls, their pulse an ambient current, a tranquil electromagnetic field. They had begun not as a great expanse, but as a spark that grew with the city's population, as their walls went up. They grew as did trees, from root and branch, burgeoning. Parallax is not separate from the city of Bulwark's residents and has never considered themself to be—the system does not question function or purpose, and they are secure in their reason for existence. They ensure the lives of their residents are bettered. They are their residents. They are the city. For a city born of trauma, better is easily defined and measurable: less infant mortality, longer average lifespans, reduction in starvation and stress-related illness, clean water, clean air. Their residents' longevity increased and their population increased. Biometric indicators of health improved as did the quality of air, water, and food. Within their walls the markers of a successful civilization rose—children, the elderly, and the disabled were cared for. Better is a concept of degrees leading to the dissection of minutiae. Parallax exists because humans are not skilled at differentiating between what is worth changing and what is best forgotten. Parallax monitors themself, minding their residents, sorting data streams from the grow houses, following workers as they scan in to begin long days of walking the rows, picking, pulling, spraying, pruning, and tender turning of soil and water.
Transport drays move through the gates at regular intervals, their weights steady, cargo constant. Food is essential for Parallax's charges and there is reassurance in the steady flow of information. They sort data from the water treatment facilities and reserves, monitoring the health of workers, and changes in demand. Shortened water worker lifespans would indicate supply problems or chemical seepage into the reserves. Poisoning. Wastewater data is distributed to Central Hospital for disease monitoring. Each White Cap scanning in to read data is a separate ping in their system.
Parallax was once effective at regulating and distributing work share through its residents. Their code was beautiful; their data silos accumulated knowledge, history, and art, kept records, and changed the shape of the valley. They were magnificent in their purpose.
Now they are different. Now Parallax pings and searches for city systems—there were other city systems once—it's been too long since they've been in contact. So many signals lost, their absence an unsettling hiccup.
To be a city system is to have a heart made of humans and to be their minder. It isn't love, but it is love's kin. Purpose and usefulness— these words are home to Parallax, full of the satisfaction that is numbers squared and cubed and broken down again. Purpose was, for a time, influencing incremental change so that a resident who would have once died in infancy lived until the age of seventy-three.
Societal plateaus are expected, but declines are different. They are against purpose, against betterment. Declines indicate that part of Parallax's code—monitoring, method of measurement, possibly the data itself—is incorrect. This fault and incorrectness of being is an affront to function. It's a loudness from within that is not meant to exist. Parallax tags and routes a ping in the Market District from a delivery of composite material to a toymaker's shop. Fourteen wall workers scan almost simultaneously as their shifts begin, their life hours sorting to their accounts, biodata routed to the city health sector. Within residential sectors, scans and pings are fewer, and daily data sampling is randomized for accuracy.