Fun fact: If you’ve ever gone outside and wondered why you couldn’t see any of the corners of the world, let alone all four ones…then you’re spending too much time playing carelessly programmed videogames. Well, or perhaps you’re just living in the precise middle of nowhere. Which, actually, would fully justify spending a lot of time playing videogames, so…uh, where was I going with this?
Anyway, K’ip and Si’ri haven’t arrived in the precise center of nowhere, but in the center of the Ad’nanapart plains, aka the geographic center of the continent. Which they’re immediately made aware of by a helpful and giant marker to that effect. If maps of fantasy kingdoms are to be believed, such large markers were pretty common, back in the days of yore…although none seem to have survived to today. I guess they weren’t permanent markers.
You can still find these, though, which are similar in concept:
(image from wikipedia, see here)
Ironically, they’re most often to be found in the middle of nowhere, or thereabouts.
More on Mon…uh, Thursday.
heh. Navigational markers from the early days of aviation. Such an … American concept, because in good ol’ Europe you always had a handy canal, road or rail line to follow to your destination…
Yeah, in Europe pilots could easily make do without that sort of extra effort – the most help they got was that railway stations often had their names painted on their roofs for easier reference from above. But the American habit of having sprawling metropolises right in the middle of nondescript wastes naturally called for more. Still, given how large the investment into that system of beacons must have been, and how little time passed before better navigation methods made it obsolete, it would be interesting to analyze if it ever even reached financial break even.