Event · event
The Settlement's elevator
Equatorial Atlantic, off Gabon.
Read more in Reaching outward
The bloc elevators. After the Crisis, neither the Settlement nor the Mandate would depend on a shared cable again. The Mandate opened its own in the equatorial Indian Ocean southwest of Sumatra in 2488, and the Settlement its own in the equatorial Atlantic, about 1,000 km off Gabon, in 2496. In 2497 the Settlement and the Mandate each run one of their own, both brand new. The Elevator is still the only shared one, and the Parishad's and the Open Cities' only stake in Earth's routes to orbit. It carries cheap freight and the poor, its slow decline has begun, and "the Elevator" still means only the first.