How is Hellsborough different from here?

So, Pip, I hear you say, what do you see? After arriving at the junction, I pass through The Hinge. It’s only moments, and mostly, I feel nothing at all. But sometimes, it can feel like hours. I think that is dependent upon The Murk.

The weather may be identical to that I left behind, especially on a foggy day on the off-world – the difference between the fog and The Murk can be extremely subtle. On other days, on a summer day in the off-world, if The Murk lies heavy in Hellsborough, it can be like walking through a swirling flood of carbonated stout.

When you arrive, you’ll recognise the buildings, the shops, the bars. The ones at ground level at least. You could easily pass through The Hinge and never know. The folk, they look like you or I, regular people doing regular things, going about their everyday business.

There is a big difference, but you’d struggle to see it. These men, women and children, pretty much all of them, unless they’ve come from the otherside of the tracks – and by that, I don’t mean your off-world, I’m referring to those that reside in the crosslands – the natives of Hellsborough, they’re content in a way that you’re not.

When I say content, maybe I mean distracted. Much like you might be distracted by the comings and goings of daily life, by the pressures of work and family, so the residents of Hellsborough are distracted by the chitter-chatter of the hive mind – an internal world that they carry within their faces, that services their every biological, physiological and psychological need.

They wear psycmasks. These days psycmasks are nanoengineered, so you’d never know anyone was wearing one. I of course, have to wear a government issue one, since I don’t have the biological adaptations of a native. I feel I look out of place, but no-one else cares, and wearing a mask these days in the off-world isn’t as unusual as it was before the pandemic, wearing a psycmask in Hellsborough has the same connotations, no one notices or cares.

What else is different?

You may notice the odd street sign that differs, doesn’t make sense somehow – take a walk around the park, for instance: You’ll see references to barkers, smelting, chits, slipping – with the accompanying signage, the wording will make sense, it’s just different, that’s all. Maybe like visiting a slightly foreign country.

Traffic signage is similar, speed and parking restriction, tram gates, bus lanes – all of those things will be familiar to you. The biggest difference, has always been the transport itself.

It’s quiet.

The roads exist, but with the exception of the trundle of wheels, the electric cars lack noise entirely – the internal combustion engine has never made an appearance in The Dark Peak. All vehicles that you would assume have an engine, do have an engine. It is usually located under the bonnet (or hood, for our US visitors from the off-world), but when you pop that hood, you don’t see a gas guzzling 4, 6 or 8 cylinder petrol burning engine, you see a smooth, sleek, bundle of muscles, a bioengineered locomotor muscle engine.

Locomotor muscle fibres resemble bundles of thick electric cables, but when injected with nutrient solution (found in filling stations, naturally), they expand and contract at different frequencies to generate power, not dissimilar to the pistons in a conventional engine that you’re used to in the off-world.

Coal has been mined and is used to fuel the most important of industrial needs, the humidity plants, which contribute to the filth of The Murk, but oil has never been processed and so that noisy messy machine, the motorcar (or bike) wasn’t ever conceived. In The Dark Peak they have solar, wind, water and muscle flex energy sources: Power generated from the great goodness of Dunlockslyn.

From that point of view, you could say that Hellsborough is more advanced than the off-world. The design ethic of these vehicles, don’t share the boxy Eurocar design that you’re used to. They are streamlined, modelled on the sleek shapes of birds and fish, with armoured panels like the exoskeletons of insects or the bark of trees. The aesthetic is very organic.

The trolley buses (trams) exist, follow the same routes as the supertrams in the off-world, and are powered by electricity (locomotor muscle generated), but these versions are as sleek as eels, the same organic design aesthetic as the cars. Skateboards, scooters – electrically and mechanically powered, bicycles, tricycles, mobility scooters, pushchairs and prams, they’re all here.

So the hustle and bustle does seem very familiar.

What about laws and public services? They’re enforced by more than one organisation, like in the off-world, but here, there are only really two classes of enforcer, the Dark Peak District Council, who deal with the municipal laws, and The Nascenti enforcers known as exacids.

The former roughly equates to your off-world city council – they deal with fixing broken benches, installing new benches, emptying rubbish bins, traffic management, slipping permits and all that sort of thing. Their role is subservient, or at least that is to be understood; their job is to keep the wheels of industry running, nothing more. Unlike in the off-world, the removal of bureaucracy is their remit, not the creation of it.

The latter are the equivalent of your off-world police service, but with a wider remit and a license to kill and destroy where necessary; that tends to keep folk in-line in this otherwise largely lawless world. Alot of things go here, there are no rules imposed on enjoyment or making an income for oneself, and if The Nascenti don’t disagree with it, anything goes, yet wo betide anyone who attempts to do anything disagreeable. Nacenti consider jellyheads as valuable slaves, and do not tolerate any form of abuse.

If Adam Smith built a model village to test his ideas on capitalism, this place or Hong Kong of the early twentieth century, would be the place he would build.

The unit of currency is the chit. Most payments are fully automated by the DPDC, parking, fines, that sort of thing – which can make it very difficult for a new incomer. Without a source of chits you are a nothing, and nothings are not tolerated by the exacids.

The first time I breached The Hinge, I nearly died. I didn’t, obviously, and I’m not going to go into detail here, it’s a bit depressing to think about it, but I did write a diary entry about it; that was me trying to come to terms with it – you can read it if you want.

In the Dark Peak, there is nothing like you have in the off-world like fire brigades or ambulance services. A health service, is an unknown phenomena here or hereabouts. There are GPs for hire, witchdoctors. The Murk is the equivalent, if you can call it that. Denizens, of course, being children of The Murk have regenerative abilities, as well as thousands of years experience in the preparation and working with natural remedies and rockcrust, but jellyheads and netherlanders – being human – have no such regenerative ability, and where rockcrust is unavailable or natural resources scarce, or skills not available, entering The Murk and taking your chances in the sink or swim is sometimes the only available option, especially for the old and infirm, which makes for a young average age of the population.

Want to know what’s going on when you’re here?

Apart from the ever popular chatting in a bar approach, which can yield wildly varying results depending upon who you choose to talk to, there are four main sources of news in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak.

If you are a denizen or jellyhead, then all of your informational requirements are served by the hive mind. Unless you wear a psycmask out of choice or because you are compelled to (like me), then the hive mind will remain silent to you. I have to admit that I find it a constant drawl which I struggle to decipher, but I’m sure that’s me, as I hear no complaints from anyone else; as I have noted before, your average jellyhead seems content yet distracted.

Secondly, there are the Dark Peak District Council information posters – referred to by some as the propaganda of the fungal network, but the examples that I have seen are mostly functional public information do’s and don’ts, pretty tame and lacking in any political message. You’ll also see DPDC posters advertising events in the area. I guess that’s a belts and braces approach by the DPDC’s marketing department in case you (as a jellyhead) miss announcements released via the hive mind.

The third source of news and information, is the informal network of individuals known as the clowns. The clowns are denizens, so they too have indigenous access to the hive mind, but they are also the couriers and spies of The Dark Peak. This method of finding out what you need to know is more direct, and will involve the expenditure of chits, but if you need your information fast, this is likely the best route.

Finally, The Hellsborough Heretic is a subversive publication by the crosslander resistance / netherlander alliance, and is therefore the main communications medium for the disparate clans of the nethermen who reside on the fringes of Hellsborough. Often hard to find and always involving venturing out of Hellsborough, the Heretic will advise you on developments within the resistance, usually without giving anything tangible away. If the copy you find is in date (about a 50 / 50 chance, in my experience), then you might be able to then track down details of a resistance meeting or some other gathering, if that’s your thing; good luck with that.

Language here. It’s kind of the same, but different, like everything else. Alot of my research (diary) notes are interpretations of the original, so it’s not the same, but similar enough to get by. The nouns are very much functional – take slipper for instance, fish, or barker for dog, or scratcher for your domestic cat. Of course there are some exceptions, but they’re usually easy enough to work out, wooltard for instance. Demonspawn is a strange one, until you listen to the context and that particular animals’ predilection to violence at certain times. But both of those, to give their full name are clovenfeet, which details their two-toed evolution. Ripperthroat and Ripperwing are self explanatory. Corvids – strangely – share the same Latin name as the same creature in the off-world (which is a pretty strange phenomenon, when you think about it – I mean, are these creatures so old that they pre-date The illimitable cleavage? It could be a possibility, especially considering that Milting have close associations with corvids)

Outside of the standard canon of the bestiary, Ripperthroats are the one exception to the standard off-world flora and fauna that I have come across so far. Barker, Scratcher, Honker, Ripperwing, Quacker, Demonspawn, Wooltard, Skewerwing, Screachwing, Scrufftail, Slyfluff, Flatface are all commonplace in both the off-world and Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, and the majority of them, as with the local dialect and nomenclature here, usually pretty much make sense without too much explanation.

Finally, the date system. The Dark Peak calendar does not count years in an infinite sequence, instead year names are repeated every 60 years, with the name being a weather-beast amalgam. In The Dark Peak, because of The Murk and the lack on penetration of either sun or moonlight, the calendar – although still the length of a year of 365 days, the months differ. There are 18 months in The Dark Peak (0-17), with each month consisting of 20 days (0 to 19), with 5 days at the end of the year for celebrations.

That’s what you notice when you arrive, maybe. Next, let’s spend a couple of chapters looking at how Hellsborough is very different from the off-world.