Det finns ingen aning alls. Historien är inställd så långt i framtiden att det hade varit gott om tid för kontinenter att ha drivit och gamla berg har varit nedslitna och nya att stiga upp. Diaspar existerade i minst en miljard år.
LIKE A GLOWING JEWEL, the city lay upon the breast of the desert. Once it had known change and alteration, but now Time passed it by. Night and day fled across the desert's face, but in the streets of Diaspar it was always afternoon, and darkness never came. The long winter nights might dust the desert with frost, as the last moisture left in the thin air of Earth congealed-but the city knew neither heat nor cold. It had no contact with the outer world; it was a universe itself.
...
Since the city was built, the oceans of Earth had passed away and the desert had encompassed all the globe. The last mountains had been ground to dust by the winds and the rain, and the world was too weary to bring forth more. The city did not care; Earth itself could crumble and Diaspar would still protect the children of its makers, bearing them and their treasures safely down the stream of time.
...
They had lived in the same city, had walked the same miraculously unchanging streets, while more than a billion years had worn away.
Många sedan hade mänskligheten ställts inför invasion eller Månens fall och förstörelse:
That great ordeal exhausted mankind; one by one the cities died and the desert rolled over them. As the population fell, humanity began the migration that was to make Diaspar the last and greatest of all cities.
Lys var det enda stället som överlevde i en annars ökenvärld, inbäddat i Jordens sista återstående berg:
Then Alvin lifted his eyes to the horizon, and there above the trees, sweeping fiom right to left in a great arc that encircled the world, was a line of stone which would have dwarfed the mightiest giants of Diaspar. It was so far away that its details were blurred by sheer distance, but there was something about its outlines that Alvin found puzzling. Then his eyes became at last accustomed to the scale of that colossal landscape, and he knew that those far-off walls had not been built by man.
Time had not conquered everything Earth still possessed mountains of which she could be proud.
For a long time Alvin stood at the mouth of the tunnel, slowly growing accustomed to the strange world in which he had found himself. He was half stunned by the impact of sheer size and space; that ring of misty mountains could have enclosed a dozen cities as large as Diaspar. Search as he might, however, Alvin could see no trace of human life. Yet the road that led down the hillside seemed well-kept; he could do no better than accept its guidance.
Lys hade överlevt mycket:
Most of these changes did not affect Lys, but it had its own battle to fight-the battle against the desert. The natural barrier of the mountains was not enough, and many ages passed before the great oasis was made secure.
Slutligen finner Alvin ett arbets rymdskepp och ser både Lys och Diaspar åtskilda av kanske en tredjedel av jordens omkrets:
Alvin did nothing to check the machine; still they rose until the whole of Lys lay spread beneath them, a green island in an ocher sea. Never before had Alvin been so high; when finally they came to rest the whole crescent of the Earth was visible below. Lys was very small now, only an emerald stain against the rusty desert-but far around the curve of the globe something was glittering like a man-coloured jewel. And so for the first time, Hilvar saw the city of Diaspar.