Welcome to Cloudland

Expansive view of Ventoria from the Cloud’s southwest shoulder. Created with Microsoft Designer IC for illustrative purposes only.

Definition from the Howard-Pinney Dictionary:

Cloud land
(noun)

An unbound subgravitational area of land shaped by the petrification and mineralization process of a type Z Cumulonimbus Incus cloud.

From the Encyclopedia Nubica:

Cloudland (/klaʊd.lænd/) is the only colonized cloud in the earth’s atmosphere. Situated at 6 300 meters (20 669 feet) above sea level in the North Atlantic Shuttle Zone, ‘the Cloud’ is a slab of petrified cumulonimbus roughly the size of the Faroes that 32,416 Cloudlanders call home.

Human adaptation to stratospheric living

Things to consider before you consider applying for a Cloud residence permit:

Humans have not been biologically engineered to subsist, and let alone grow and proliferate, in a high-altitude environment with extreme weather conditions where the oxygen levels are 7 times lower than on earth. Consequently, Cloud life brings its own unique complications. Without the proper microclimate technology and oxygenation infrastructure, life on the Cloud would be similar to that of Antarctica or (future) Mars, restricted to a handful of elevated space station colonies.

It is because of technology and atmospheric programming that we’ve managed to create a controlled microsphere beyond theory and wishful thinking. Still, for those born outside of the Cloudsphere, it takes time and tremendous cellular effort to adjust to this semi-artificial atmosphere. Although the risk of altitude-related health issues, including altitude sickness, hypoxia, and cerebral edema (HACE) or pulmonary edema (HAPE), remains minimal, it can’t be completely discarded. Each year, an estimated 43 % of applicants fail to acclimatize (accompanying canine statistics are 32.3 % higher on average) and are returned to earth, subsequently hospitalized, and in some cases remitted to a psychiatric institution.

For those who stick it out, great adventure awaits as cloud miners, storm chasers, fog forest rangers, sky ladder builders and microclimate scientists. The sky is no longer the limit. Your mind’s fortitude will be.

Welcome to Cloudland.