Headscratchers / Eternity Road

• It is just a little far-fetched that after over a thousand years no one inhabits or brought back stories of the tram still working from The Ohio to Madison, Wisconsin, or the operating robots here and there, etc. There is just too much in working order, still powered, and can talk for itself for the Illyrians to be that clueless. It works for the plot, though.
  • Not particularly. In fact, the explanation is largely given during the plot, partly through pure choice of words. The Illyrians frequently refer to ruins as being "haunted," and their initial reaction to the Union Station AI is to assume that it's a trapped spirit, possibly one in purgatory or other confinement. Shortly before the bank incident, mention is made of ruins being places of "unholy activity." The maglev is described as a "dragon," and they take a very conventional large-predator approach of trying to "blind" it by shooting out headlights. It's not at all farfetched that a bunch of technologically-illiterate people would ascribe supernatural explanations for what we would easily accept as technology - advanced, perhaps, but merely an extrapolation of our own and a development of our theoretical techs under development. The narrative is, in a large way, an embodiment of Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The Illyrians live that law without knowing it. Anybody brave enough to try to develop a true explanation is laughed off or considered insane, and even that's reasonable; if by our technology it's impossible, then it's impossible universally. We would react similarly to the sudden appearance of an FTL craft - the first reaction of many scientists, even faced with the evidence, would be to say "but that's impossible."