Arthurville

Note: As the author of this work, I wish to first state that the coronavirus (COVID-19) is a major threat to society and the world, and should be treated seirously. Masks should be worn, and social distancing should be enforced. However, I do not believe in going to the extremes exemplified in the following story: it is merely to entertain.

It was called Arthurville, a city of the healthy, or rather, many cities of the healthy. English Billionaire James Arthur, in 2021, was its creator. By then, the coronavirus had evolved once again, and it was an even greater threat to everyone. People of all ages and all ranges of health began to die off at greater and greater rates. One sixteenth of the world’s population had already been wiped out when the first Arthurville was established. The goal: to save the human race, its culture, and its history.

As its founder, James Arthur set the rules: they were to be small, walled-in cities, and there were to be many of them, all over the world. They would have some of every necessity required by humans inside them, from resturants, to hospitals, to parks. They were self-sustainable, for the most part, and they would each hold three thousand people, one thousand five hundred of each gender. There would be no money earned nor spent, as everything would be given for free or else properly earned.

The citizens admitted into the Arthurvilles had to meet certain qualifications. For one, they had to have a higher-than-average IQ. They also had to be both mentally and physically healthy, and they had to be diverse. So, for example, each Arthurville ended up having roughly the same number of Christians, Hundus, Jews, naturalists, utilitarinists, nihilists, and so forth. Each citizen would work one job five times a week for a total of twenty seven hours. They were encouraged to raise small families, and to spend time with them whenever they could.

In their periods of leisure, they were also required to meet certain academic criteria. for example, each citizen had to read a certain amount of classical or modern literature each month. In addition to this, everyone was required to spend a total of twenty four hours each month contributing to something involving creativity. They were encouraged to write books, paint, sing, invent...Whatever would keep them occupied and cultured. They were also required to learn as much about history and cultures of the world whenever they could, and to participate in some form of physical sport. The rules were heavily enforced, and the penalty for too many failures in following them was banishment back into the rest of the world (after a fair jury trial).

The real world, also, had not collapsed by then. Some nations supported the idea of Arthurville, some opposed it, and some made the practice illegal within their borders. Regardless, the cities began to show impressive success. James Arthur even began constructing and completing wharehouses for historical artifacts to be held, seed vaults for plant preseveration, and nature reserves for as many animals as possible. It seemed as if the human race would be saved. Even if one city fell to the virus, there were hundreds more across the globe to make up for the loss, and dozens were always under construction. There was just one last challenge, one challenge that humans as a species have always failed to conquor: avoiding revolution.