There can be 'Dark Ages' for the soul as well as for the body. As long as mankind looks to his creations to bring him peace and happiness he will remain divided and alone. Pretty toys and political philosophies will not satisfy for long. And AI will only enable a further fracturing of the societal bonds man claims to want but fails to achieve. Ray was a seeker in his AI managed space habitat who came upon the city of New San Fran. It was a city arranged as six concentric ring areas with a center disk area. Each ring followed a different political philosophy and as Ray found out, all had their absurdities and all were facilitated by what he found at the heart of the city. is a novella set in the future (2480s) and is the twenty-fifth story in the . The consists of 9 novels, 16 novellas, and 8 short stories. Hard Science Fiction - Old School.