Eight million people inhabited the former two-hundred-meter iron asteroid converted into the two-kilometer low-gravity space colony with internal lakes, centrifugal waterfalls, and small but dense forests.
The colony had developed its own language and culture, deliberately made as complicated as possible. Leaving the colony was inconceivable for most citizens.
With 10% of the population, the capital city dominated intellectual and business life. Residents looked down on the backward 'Nurbs' two kilometers away.

During a time of particularly intense discrimination, a few outsiders snapped at about the same time.
They knew this conflict had been manufactured, part of every colony's essential makeup, but it felt intensely catastrophic nonetheless.
After eight years of protests, sabotage, and assassinations, the colony had no choice but to split up. The two factions were walled off forever.
The notion of any further contact, whether trade or invasion, was unthinkable.
A hypothetical tourist wishing to visit both sides of the divided colony would have to pass through at least nine other stations in three Solar alliances to make the trip.
The two nations occupied almost the same space, but their enmity would endure forever, even if they were to split into even smaller groups.
Eternal feuds were necessary to stabilize mankind through the eons. Very similar groups could suddenly turn into polar opposites, but never the reverse.
Without regular Schisms, one colony would inevitably expand to take over the Solar System and beyond.

Separated by steel walls, the two halves of the station soon looked quite different.
A few tenuous links remained: the shared geodetic framework, the thermal pipes, and the recycling system.
The two sides didn't mind pooling their pulverized garbage sludge, including the remains of their dead.
A few misfits formed hidden societies in the no-man's-land.
The smallest such society occupied a forgotten storage closet. It had just one member: the cloned descendent of the original architect of the Schism.
Cut off from everything he held dear, he meditated about what had gone wrong, and whether anything could be done.
One thought came to dominate his mind.
In physics, every process, no matter how complex, elaborate, or unlikely, was theoretically reversible.



The best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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