Theodora calmly typed a financial report as the floor pitched and swayed underneath her. Occasionally, a sliver of cloud would leap into view before dipping below sight once more. The almost oceanic motion had been getting more pronounced lately, as the wind rocked the vast structure to and fro, but Theodora had long since grown accustomed to it. The only unusual part of the scenery was the fifty-meter crane bobbing gradually upward.

The red crane, starkly visible against the cloudless sky, moved toward the apex of the EXN building, buoyed by a combination of mechanical pulley and magnetic field. For whatever reason, the company had decided to add five hundred meters to the tower. They would mostly consist of absurdly expensive executive suites and observation decks. Not that there weren't already enough of those. No one had the balls to say it, but everyone involved knew that the company was building the extension for the sole purpose of flaunting the fact that it could.

Finishing the report, Theodora gathered her things and left her office, leaning to accommodate the pitch of the tower. Her only vacation for the year started that day and she was eager to start it. She reached the elevator and watched the floors blur by as it sped downward. Theodora felt her weight fall away, and her stomach crawl into her chest. The unpleasant sensation persisted for several minutes before the elevator began to slow down. Theodora shook her head to clear it once the black platform came to a stop.

The main floor was just as disgustingly spacious as it was every day. The hologram that hung from the ceiling showed the monstrous face of some higher-up who had done something noteworthy recently. As she made her way to the exit, it fluidly shifted into the much more pleasing figure of a starship, a slender column of blue and red capped by two mighty engines.

The Facem project was completed more than twenty years ago, and even now, the company was slobbering over it uncontrollably. It had been by far the largest expenditure Exonavis had sustained in its three-hundred-year history, so perhaps the promotion was justified. Commendations for the Facem were not limited to the EXN PR department. Some pundits would commend the project as the first step into the great void beyond the sun's domain. Of course, the United Districts of Sol and its ideals of harmony and intrepid advancement were a common theme in any discussion of the project. Even the investors and company executives made remarks about Facem's great ideological importance. Beneath their pretty words, however, none could hide the look of displeasure in the eyes as they spoke about the tons of antimatter that had been manufactured for the exotic propulsion system. Naturally, no one in a position of any influence would mention that the stuff had cost EXN several million dollars for every kilogram. Not to mention the garishly complicated and power hungry containment system that kept it tame. As for the pundits and their giddy congratulation, they all had a terrible misunderstanding of both history and politics. The UDS had only a rudimentary role in the design of the starship. It had been engineers under the payroll of the company that had built her. After all, Exonavis was a "military contractor". The whole thing was a political ruse on the grandest scale.

Theodora stepped into the cold morning air. The sky was surprisingly clear, presenting a wide patch of blue for the first time in months. It would likely disappear before the hour was out. The skyscrapers concealed most of the blue anyway.

Compelled by a combination of habit and simple awe, Theodora looked up and tried to find the top of the EXN building. Even the base of the skyscraper was heavily shrouded in the underbellies of the clouds. She could just barely make out the slim needle of the upper floors through the wisps on the edge of the short-lived clear patch. A number of poets had written about the skyscraper, comparing it to a pen scratching on the unmarked parchment of the heavens, or a sword skewering the celestial dome, or a modern Olympus, housing the new gods. The especially obtuse ones called it a monument to the perpetual march of technology, commenting on its sloping shape and how it looked, from the ground, like a road leading to the stars.

She walked through the thick stream of humanity, resisting the urge activate the dreams. Instead, she took the time to watch the people around her. Most had the empty-eyed look of someone who wasn't really there, and the all-too perfect gait of electronically induced muscle movement. Those that weren't stuck inside their own heads were tired and grey. No one looked healthy. Probably the air.

The street seemed to stretch on forever, grey and desolate and full of people. Above them, twin streams of levcars flew by, casting watery shadows over the crowds. On either side of the street, bodies lay twitching, their minds on fire. They weren't in the way.

It would be about a kilometer to the nearest train station.

A quarter hour of temptation later, Theodora reached a long, low building that labeled itself a maglev station. The structure was over a century old, and wore the fact with ill-placed pride. The floors were rough and dirty with the passing of a billion shoes. The roof, once a masterpiece of architectural engineering, a marriage of technology and art, gracefully curving in a ripple of aluminum overtop of the building, was now a wilted mockery of its past self. It had imperceptibly sagged over the years, the decay invisible to the even electronic eyes of the maintenance bots, until it threatened to collapse in on itself. One wall held the UDS symbol, which was only slightly scuffed about the edges.

The United Districts of Sol was obligated to provide a set of public services for its needy billions. They ranged from tanked oxygen for Martians to basic healthcare for all One such service was public transport. Maintenance and fuel was paid for by tax money, so tickets were free of charge. There were certainly other, classier options; one could take corporate-owned transit, or buy a levcar with its own robotic chauffeur. Both options, however, were expensive and rather pointless. Reserved for the vain and rich. Neither descriptor applied to Theodora.

The interior of the train station was significantly better kept than the outside, and still looked rather new. Sunlight filtered through the skylights set in the ceiling, a rare and beautiful sight. Theodora risked and smile and waited for the train to arrive. None of her fellow passengers seemed interested in making conversation.

The train slipped silently into the terminal a soon later, two and half seconds early. The train was an elongated bullet, with a pointed nose and sleek body. It was the newest thing in the station. The few dozen people waiting to board it shuffled through the sliding doors wordlessly, risking an occasional, distasteful glance at those around them. Once boarding was complete, the train slid gracefully out of the terminal and into the city.

For some time, it soared quietly through a transparent tube of soundproof material, to keep out the sounds of the city. It moved with only with only the electric hum of its magnets. The appreciated quietude was possible because it never actually touched the rail, instead gliding half a meter above it. The only drag it experienced was that of the air rushing past. The technique was tried and true, and had not changed in over three hundred years.

The buildings dwindled as the train accelerated, dropping from an average of a kilometer in height down to more manageable sizes. Finally, about forty kilometers along, the skyscrapers gave way to endless rows of quaint suburban houses, surrounded by acres of well-manicured lawns and gardens. The manicuring itself was automated, mostly because no human could be troubled to go around doing it. Each house was quirky and unique, with exotic colors and shape, making them all identical in essence.

The Appalachian Mountains marched toward the train. Their soft slopes were covered in the green tufts of forestry, dotted with a few isolated residences. The train, unable to shift its considerable inertia upward to follow the incline of the mountains, instead passed through a perfectly straight tunnel that bore directly through them.

The trees floated by with little whips of noise. The homes grew less common as the private lands around them grew larger, each one progressively more secluded and more extravagant. Meanwhile, the clouds above began to darken. The patch of sunlight had long since passed on, and the sky was once more overcast. Rain and thunder was unleashed from above, not by the might of the gods but by that of a seeder drone.

Many miles had rushed underneath the train before the clouds finally cleared. This far from the ocean, there wasn't enough cold moisture in the air to force the rain, and so the verdant greenery died. The lush forests of the Appalachians turned into a dry, parched scrubland. The sun, no longer filtered by clouds, beat down unhindered, raising a shimmering layer of heated air. The distorted skyline of a dead city crawled across the horizon, a dark cloud of dust hanging above it.

The train hummed as it went, vibrating with speed. The long dead remains of a farm, nothing but a few kilometers of rusted metal fence, rushed by. In the distance, twin plumes of steam from a nuclear fusion plant stood as the only blemish on an otherwise blank sky. The sparse vegetation had given way to sweeping dunes of loose, white sand.

Another city appeared on the horizon, balancing atop the silver thread of the maglev track. This one gleamed in the noonday sun, whole and living, sucking on an unseen aquifer to sustain itself. Here, the train would be stopping to pick up more passengers before completing the final leg of the journey. As the first houses flitted across the windows, the desert gradually succumbed to a man-made paradise. Palms and cactuses sprouted from the dry ground, nurtured by underground pipelines, surrounding gleaming residences, themselves decorated with lazily drooping ferns.

The train squealed and decelerated, shook as its braking mechanism robbed it of momentum. The vegetation became more diverse and common. The cactuses were joined by oaks and pines, planted in pleasing swirls at the bases of high rises and skyscrapers. The train entered another sound-proof tunnel with a rush of displaced air. In a strikingly familiar fashion, the buildings grew higher, until a few reached the lofty height of one kilometer. They swayed visibly in the wind, like colossal versions of the palm trees that clustered around them.

The train slowed to a halt inside the terminal of a maglev station, hovering over the silvery bar of the track. A few dozen more passengers boarded, and the train started on its way once more.

The city melted back into barren desolation behind the train, and with it went daylight. The sun set over the dry dust, flattening into a ruddy blob before finally slipping over the horizon. The night sky that followed was a constellation of flying, un-twinkling stars, backdropped by a dim haze of seeping light.

Later that night, the train reached the Rocky Mountains. Their presence was only evidenced by the ragged hole in the artificial starlight and the intermittent rush of air before entering a tunnel. The spiny shadows of leafless pine trees whistled by the windows, narrowly missing the train. Several of the passing mountains had no peaks. Their tops had been cleanly sheared off, as if by a giant scythe.

When the sun clambered above the horizon, it was cold and tired. It seemed to be pushing the train forward and away, to the sea. When the bare, stony mountains gave way to a wide valley, it was still dawning.

For some time, the maglev shuddered past endless acres of crops, tended by hulking robots. The Californian Great Valley was one of the only places still fertile and vacant enough to support large-scale agriculture. It produced most of the food distributed by the MIAD, and represented one of the last open air croplands anywhere in the human universe. Here, the soil was still potent and untainted, albeit only through careful management and probing.

The train began decelerating again as it curved toward a distant city. The city was centered around a large bay, standing at the threshold between ocean and land. San Francisco was one of several cities that had prepared for the floods before they came. Unlike in New York, there were no dikes keeping the sea at bay. The infrastructure had simply been moved to accommodate it. It meant that some of the city's oldest monuments still stood, even hundreds of years after the war. The Golden Gate Bridge, spanning the bay mouth with all its ancient grandeur, now possessed four rusty red towers, each indistinguishable from the rest, and two more than it had originally.

Of course, the city evolved with the times, just as any other. Most of the buildings, the tall ones at least, were new and sparkled prettily in the morning sun. The peninsula bristled with skyscrapers, as thick on the ground as grass. Suburbs splayed in a green carpet around the city center.

The train entered yet another sound-proof barrier as it approached the city, then slid into yet another station, an exact replica of the one on the other side of the continent. Theodora stepped off the maglev train and into the muggy heat of the Pacific coast.

The next few hours were blank, as Theodora succumbed to her weaknesses and slipped into artificially induced oblivion, her mind ignoring the motion of her body as it traveled. She received an unobtrusive notification once she reached her destination. When the colors and shapes melted away from her eyes, she saw a large, dome shaped building, perfectly reflecting the towers and sky rising above it. The windows were flush with the surface and just as smooth, so it was difficult to differentiate them from the walls. The excruciatingly familiar EXN symbol stood above the wide door.

The Nox Spaceport was one of three of its kind in North America. While the UDS provided free orbital transport, considering it a form of public transit, the Exonavis Corporation arranged a much more elegant means of leaving the planetary surface. Their shuttles were new and the terminals immaculately well maintained, a far cry from the ratty affairs of government spaceports. The downside lay in the painful ticket costs that came with the added flair.

Theodora had long since paid for the trip, and so she made her way directly to the shuttle terminal. As the glass doors slid open to accept her, it immediately became obvious that the company had decided to dispense with their usual decorative style in the case of the spaceport. Instead of the usual white plastic and blue carpet, the spaceport was tiled with genuine marble. Trees and ferns lined the stone walls. The ceiling managed to look both advanced and classical, the curving plaster decorated with delicately painted vines. The great, sweeping windows let in ponds of sunlight, illuminating the bustling floor pleasantly.

The spaceport was circular, like a stadium, with the launch pads in the middle. Four massive corridors divided the building into equal quarters, offering passage into a maze of shops and restaurants, and leading to the terminals.

Ignoring the incongruously obnoxious storefronts on either side, Theodora walked to the terminal. Several of the people she passed were limping or in wheelchairs, having recently lived in nil gravity environments for months on end.

The corridor opened into the terminal chamber. There was no roof here. Instead, a neat circle of sky replaced the plaster ceiling. Four sleek shuttles sat on their pads, pointing toward the open air above. Two pads were empty. Six terminals, demarcated only by a short plastic wall, lead to each pad. Theodora found the one she was scheduled to depart from and waited for the quiet announcement to board the vehicle. In the intervening time, she delved into a virtual newspaper and watched the pages in front of her eyes. The top story was on the rising tensions between the Mississippi Administrative District and the UDS, detailing how Governor Robert Uto demanded greater financial freedom for his people, how he was willing to fight for it, and precisely how many troops he had ready to make good on that promise. Theodora scoffed and continued down the page, past the flashing advertisements and shallow gossip stories to a short article on a series of terrorist attack on the Martian city of Opportunity, destroying a military station and killing thirty people. The city was being put under martial law until the situation could be better understood. UDS troops were being rushed to Opportunity from orbit to enforce the lockdown. Concerning.

Theodora was wasting time investigating the market for space-grown wheat when she was called to the launch pad. There was a general rustle as people collected their things wordlessly and walked into the open hatch of the shuttle. After all passengers had boarded, the hatch closed and the pad began to descend into a deep launch silo with the soft whirr of motors.

The EXN Pugione-18302 checked all its systems. It communicated with the flight coordinators, found there was no expected traffic that might interfere with the launch, and authorized the ignition protocol. The electromagnetic rails surrounding the shuttle charged silently. It counted the milliseconds as charge built and the burgeoning magnetic field caressed its skin. Finally, when the shuttle was straining against the walls of the silo, ready to be flung away from the ground, the EXN Pugione ordered its launch clamps to detach.

With an explosion of light and motion, the shuttle burst into the air. The only sound was the rush of air, and the distant rumble of the living city nearby, as the shuttle leapt out of spaceport like a spore out of a metallic fungus. For a time, it flew silently, coasting on the brief instant of acceleration it received from the launch well. Then, as air resistance and gravity brought the gleaming bullet to a halt far above the city, the chemical engines ignited. Exhaust exploded from the nozzles, burning blue before settling into a billowing plume of white vapor. The EXN Pugione began to roll, curving east on its route into a low Earth orbit. Its exhaust was soon the only sign of its existence. Then, that too disappeared, carried away by the Pacific wind.

About an hour later, the shuttle rendezvoused with the Lionsgate space station, a massive torus of metal that spun to produce ersatz gravity. Four spokes connected the torus to a central core. It hosted a population of several thousand, and served as a hub for trade within the Earth-Luna system and beyond. The shuttle approached the center of the torus, towards a docking complex built to handle several ships at once. It had already matched the station's spin, causing the planet beyond to wheel sickeningly beyond the windows.