Tesla is supposed to be the city on the hill, social experiment of total freedom, open up the human race - yes? Yet all we see from outside is preformed concrete walls and guard towers like a prison, and that damned lightning spewing disco ball in the center. They demand tribute for entrance, and focus on their Dr. Moreau Experiments rather than the real human beings outside. Some bright future it is surrounded by shanty-towns.
People come to the "Free City" because they think its safe - few reanimates, some remaining government forces, and over the mountains from Citizen territory. Damned irony is, its not the city that makes it safe, but all the hopefuls. So many of us are around we can have proper patrols, and work gangs fulfilling jobs from sanitation to fortification. A functional city outside the city. It tough to feed that many, and there is no proper sewage yet - but from barbers to X-ray technicians, we have everything else.
Sometimes we think about storming the walls. If they were just people, I'd give us better than a fifty-percent chance of doing it. But we aren't sure if its just people at all. They have military drones by the swarm, and a bunch of other advanced military equipment the actual solders had left behind as too maintenance intensive. Even the citizens know better than taking on tanks! And the... inhuman stuff spoken of in whispers. Some say its cyborg super-solders, some say genetic modification. I even heard that they can reprogram the berserk nano-vac in reanimates - that's why they're so rare around here despite all the people.
Maybe its worse than that. They do trade some food and medicine to outsiders. What if there is controllable vaccine in those things? God, they could turn us against each other with a flip of a switch! I was wary of the damned stuff when it came out and the government had a hand in it - now now its a bunch of crazy techno-wizards with no government supervision and I know it turns people into monsters.
Others are a bit more trusting. They point out the city does trade, provide some health services, and does equip at least some outsiders as a de facto police force, and keeps drones aloft to assist people during resource gathering missions. Might be sincere, might be playing us against each other.
Not much to do about it in the short term I guess. Though I have to wonder why they want so much useless junk. Titanium aircraft components for instance - steel you can reforge easily enough, sections of wing not so much. Industrial wastes, chemicals, coal - they want toxic stuff other city-states would pay you to get rid of. That makes things a lot more dangerous than trading with other towns. A lot of people prefer long term health issues to short term beaten to death by the undead.
You know, maybe this whole city-state thing is overrated. We just need enough people in one area, and not worry about salvaging a power structure That survived the Event. Could work. Doesn't mean we're leaving though - Tower Reversed loves to prey on people emigrating to Tesla. I wonder if they work together, TR gaining wealth and forcing people to stay here. Hmm. You'd think the end of world government would mean less conspiracies, not more huh?
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