Part Three: The Modern Era: Modern Society and Everyday Life

【Overview of the Era】 After the third millennium of the Stargate Calendar, many regions with long-standing access to the gate network entered a relatively stable stage of development. Postwar resettlement gradually became ordinary urban life, cross-world study and occupational migration increased, more inhabitants of Lands and Interspaces entered schools and hospitals after the year 6900, and after the ninth millennium, gate communications and inexpensive devices brought distant relationships into the home. The pace at which different places underwent these changes varied enormously.

[Housing and Cities] Most inhabitants of life-bearing Stars still live in ordinary cities, towns, port districts, agricultural belts, mining regions, and university towns. The communal heat-storage halls of Beichen’s frozen plains, the houseboats and tidal streets of Luojia’s port districts, the water-storage homes of Misatuo, and the workshop dwellings of Gewen and Nanhu are merely specific responses to urban life in different environments.

Differences in habitation are more pronounced in Realms and Interspaces. Homes on Qingqiong’s floating continents must contend with wind belts and Realm currents, Ruomu’s arboreal cities allow branch bridges to grow with the trees themselves, Wuhe settlements move with the cycles of their drift, and the “homes” of some inhabitants of Qianmeng Interspace are formed jointly by dream patterns, memory anchors, and communal dream courts. Renting, neighborhood life, inheritance, and family relationships have consequently evolved in distinct ways around each community’s actual mode of life.