🌏

2255-01-17

As your train emerges from a short tunnel through the platform above Level 6, you catch your first sight of the upper city---towers of glass and metal, some with smooth, rounded forms, some blocky and jagged like pixel art, some in asymmetric spiral forms---their glass shines in pastel colors in the abundant sunlight shining from the glass wall at the end of the colony. Walkways and train lines run between them at varying levels, lined with hanging gardens of flowering plants---you see pale blue morning glories, purple wisteria, white lilies.

Before you can begin to take it all in, the train stops, and Akiko takes your hand to lead you out before the doors can close on you. You stand on an open-air platform with a floor of thick pink glass. Behind you, purple glass doors on the platform slide closed before the train departs. You look out over the rail on the opposite ledge---the city stretches to the ends of the cylinder and curves ahead of you, fading into a sea of color rippling in the heat of day. Above your head the city continues, towers reaching down from the ceiling---must be why they call them “skyscrapers,” you realize.

The space between your ground and the ground above is so wide the air colors everything on the far side with a tint of blue. You hold onto the railing, looking out over the ledge, above, below, spinward, antispinward.

The æther is no less crowded with color and noise as the surface---the signals of millions of devices pass over your body antenna, giving you a constant light tingling sensation.

“Impressed?” Akiko signs.

“It’s not exactly the dismal regolith printed concrete of Korolev City,” you sign. “How do they even find this many colors?”

“You Lunatics like to build things for function over form, but here, we say why not both?” she signs.

“I couldn’t see everything on this level in a hundred months,” you sign.

“You couldn’t afford to live up here for a hundred hours. Come on, the HeartSynth corporate headquarters isn’t far from this station. After we take care of business I can show you some sights.”

“Right, the mission comes first...”

Walking in the light of the Sun for the first time in days, you feel the heat as your dark clothes absorb its light. According to Akiko, “In Upper AtaraChiba, fashion is Admin.” Discussing your options, you decided to try to look a bit professional for this meeting, but, not forgetting who you are, professional technopaths.

You look at Akiko in the sunlight---her hair braided into twin braids training behind her head, intertwined with her green highlights---an asymmetrical black dress with seams of metal wire---wearing a wire necklace and bracelets---metal hairclips, of the sort that can serve as mount points for small augments---and her tall, magnetic boots issued by Translunar Academy.

You tried to match her color profile somewhat, wearing your black and grey circuit pattern skirt and a nice black shirt lined with reflective silver edges, completing the outfit with your genetically modified wool arm warmers and your tall stripey socks, and of course, your neural interface collar and your terminal. You feel ready for any situation, technopathic or stylistic.

In a daze surrounded by such splendour and color, you follow Akiko along a walkway, up a ramp, across a bridge over the train line, and down a narrow street, emerging onto a larger street packed with thousands of people passing by, all either in grey corporate attire or in every sort of color. The green leaves of trees growing in planters along the street blend with the flashing lights of the ad displays in between. The glass panels of the street reflect it all like water until you can’t tell up from down.

At last she stops in front of a tall building---black glass lined with bright pink panels, shifting their colors in a smooth, wavy pattern in rhythm with the song playing from the speakers in front of the entrance.

You step inside, already welcoming a break from the visual noise outside. But before you can get far, a guard stops you at the front desk---a girl in a pastel purple uniform, carrying a long coilgun.

“Stop,” she commands, calmly but sternly, holding her hand up revealing her heart-shaped bracelet. “Name?” She picks up a terminal, looking at a list.

“Aydan of Luna, and she’s Akiko of AtaraChiba,” you say.

“I don’t see you on the list. Do you have an appointment?”

Although you had tried to make an appointment with the company as an artist’s agent, they were booked up until 2259, leaving you with the hope that somehow what you have to show them is impressive enough to change their mind, or that the binding contract you’ve signed will. Barring that, you’ll have to find another way in.

But there’s no door a technopath can’t open.