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International boulevard was on the outskirts of the dome, far to the south. The street here morphed between various styles of brickwork and pavement. Ethnic enclaves of various makes were built into the wall.

“Argentina… Rugby?” Germaine cocked his head, skeptical. “What the hell’s a rugby? What the hell’s an Argentina?”

Whatever these mysterious concepts were, they had stollen all sorts of cowboy imagery to adorn their steakhouse.

Mexico was there, though closed off and locked up. A rather low-definition picture of a pyramid was slapped on the front, above the doorway.

“Guy could learn geography from all this,” Germaine said as they passed Mexico and crossed over to France.

Canada had another log flume exhibit, though like the rest of the nations it was under lock and key behind a false log cabin façade.

“Hell, you could stick an embassy in these things.” Germaine looked to the façade of a vaguely Central American exhibit, the exact country he wasn’t sure about.

“Maybe that was the plan?” Dan asked.

Still no sign of any stairwells.

Vic motioned for his radio. “Ma’am. We may lose radio contact in the underground. We’ll respond once we’re in the western neighborhood.”

An exhibit for some Scandinavian country was wide open, designed in imitation of a cave with a nautical motif. A staff room behind the gift shop was accessed with a swipe of Vic’s wrist band.

“Seeing a theme with these halls,” Germaine said as they descended a winding, angular staircase.

“No reason to splurge to keep the employee-only areas decorated,” Dan said.

They went down to the ground floor, then continued to the second basement. Immediately, the temperatures moderated, and even grew a bit chilly.

“This ought to be underwater,” Germaine said.

The door led into a regular parking garage, high and dry as could be. There was evidence of past flooding in some low-lying drainage ditches, likely rainwater brought in by a storm or hurricane that never evaporated in the cool temperatures.

Natural light peeked in through a slit in the wall.

“We’re… not even on the ground floor!”

Germaine looked away from the portcullis, blinked, then looked again. Sure enough, they were on the first or second floor relative to the ground. A service road looped around the building, forming a buffer between the Futureplex and a palm-covered pedestrian park.

The “basements” were in fact built above ground, then covered up with dirt to give a more natural appearance. The pavilion was in fact the top floor of a particularly well-engineered parking garage.

“I know where we need to go,” Germaine said.

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There was no way the towers could possibly be built solely atop this honeycomb; the garage could never support the weight. More likely, the towers descended under the show floor and through the garage to the ground itself.

Support pillars grew larger as they neared the center. Sure enough, another set of stairwells and elevators could be accessed from a mammoth central pillar perfectly corresponding to the “control tower.”

Another maintenance door led them to a three-pronged intersection.

“Laundry to the right.” That wouldn’t do. “Hey, Vic, did the boss lady ever tell you where to go?”

The two remaining halls would lead them left, to an unspecified maintenance bay, and straight ahead, to a service closet.

“Closet seems best,” Vic said.

Dan’s lockpicking skills came in handy at the door, blocked by another bulky keypad.

The climate within was chilled, but it was not a freezer. There was electronic equipment, rudimentarily servers the size of a refrigerator, buckets full of punch-cards, and a single terminal. A fuse box sat on the far wall.

“This is what we need,” Dan said.

“You going to be okay here?” Germaine asked. “It’s freezing.”

“I’ll manage.” Shivering, Dan motioned towards his sidearm. “Haven’t run into trouble yet.”

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On the way out, Germaine turned a sudden right towards the maintenance bay. This door, too, was locked. But there was a narrow window just wide enough to shine a flashlight through.

Anthropomorphic silhouettes of bulbous-headed automatons sat in rows.

“Figured it’d be these things,” Germaine said, then reached for his radio.

He would have to remind Dan to keep the door locked.

--

The parking lot was three stories tall. Even one level was a labyrinth of pillars, arches, and arbitrary barriers to funnel traffic in an orderly direction.

Slivers of the parking-garage “pie” – about a sixteenth of the whole for every slice – were assigned cartoon pictures. These pictures were painted onto every column and onto extra-large plaques along the perimeter wall.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“It’s that rat again,” Germaine nodded at the nearest image.

There were other pictures too – some beaver-man, and more generic cartoons Germaine felt he should’ve been able to recognize from his childhood.

“None of this is what I remember,” Germaine said. “The international pavilion, maybe, but it was outdoors? Or under an awning? Hell, it’s like I have vivid memories of some kind of off-brand version of this place.”

“Mister Germaine, exit is that way.” Vic pointed towards a service ramp. “Leads down and out. We’ll have to take overland route.”

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The parking garage’s lowest level was reserved for heavy transport – including eighteen wheelers. A few trucks still sat idle, presumably used to transport goods to and from the airfield. Another ramp down spat them out of the Futureplex facing north.

No pathways existed along the perimeter of the compound. It’s like they never expected anyone to walk between the outer neighborhoods and the Futureplex. Two layers of road ringed the domed compound – one was larger and meant only for inbound and outbound supply trucks, while a second one was rated mostly for golf carts.

“Why not just offer a bus service?” Germaine asked. “Or at least build a sidewalk.”

The city’s preoccupation with overhead trams to the detriment of all other forms of transportation was curious. A power outage would cripple the entire city. There didn’t seem to be any infrastructure for fire trucks, even.

While they could hoof it to the far end of the complex, they could not do so in a timely fashion. Luckily, the western pedway was still in operation.

An elevated stop was welded onto the outside of the Futureplex. With no “mainline” monorail running through the western neighborhoods, there was space for another four stops running alongside the perimeter.

The stop was empty, with only a kiosk that displayed a rudimentary map of the western wing. There was a schedule, but the timetable was inconsistent and pockmarked with missing spaces.

“Where the hell’s the tram?” Germaine said.

“Ignore the schedule,” Vic said. “It will come every fifteen minutes.”

So, they sat there, Germaine hoping they’d happened upon an outbound terminal. Sure enough, within ten minutes a vintage tram came gliding out of the Futureplex. There was a simple awning keeping the blaring sun and frequent Florida rains out of the otherwise open-air tram.

Sparks spewed from the rail below as the tram bucked harder than it probably should. It slowed but did not stop.

“This is how you board?” Germaine yelled over the mechanical whirl of an electric motor and grinding wheels.

“Go!” Vic said.

The pair made a synchronized leap onto the tram. Germaine stumbled onto the far railing.

“This thing is going to fall apart.”

“It will take us to the substation,” Vic said. “Just don’t lean on railing.”

Germaine took four tiny steps back towards a pole that held the roof up. It was the perfect size for an improvised handhold.

The tram continued, speeding up slightly after clearing the platform.

Apartment complexes awaited, with tramway stops along the second story of each building. Windows were broken, stucco cracked, and the apartment stations were blocked by barricades of overflowing trash bags.

So far along was the decay of this wing that the tram did not even slow down; it must have been abandoned long ago. Their noses were spared from an onslaught of years-rotten organic matter.

Beyond the apartments, the lawn morphed into rolling hills interspersed with single-family homes. From this lower vantage point, the illusion became clear.

“It’s all Astroturf,” Germaine said.

“Less maintenance,” Vic explained, nodding.

The layout was the same as the southern wing they’d rode through on the monorail. Every house was near-identical, every dip and hill, every water feature. In fact, it was perfectly symmetrical. Only the monorail track was altered slightly, to account for an extra set of smaller pedestrian trams.

The architecture of the neighborhood was dated even when it was first built. Hadn’t progressed past the fifties, which was older than the complex itself. It must have been hard attracting residents even in the boom years of the early eighties.

Now, though, any shelter looked like good shelter. Land and the ownership-by-occupation thereof was going to matter more once all these militias carved out their fiefdoms, soviets, theocracies, and gonzo combinations thereof.

Rolling into town decades after its prime, it was hard to tell when exactly everything went to hell. It was clearer why the western neighborhood was more decayed. No monorails meant no tourist traffic. There was less incentive to keep the grounds in pristine condition and more incentive to offload the marginal workers, the lower-quality housing materials, the less-appealing palm trees into “the bad part of town.”

This journey came to its fitting end above a trailer park past the edge of the astroturf lot. Standing water pooled at the intersections of three dirt roads. Still, the tramway had been extended out into the swamp to service this area.

Vic made his way off the tram in one fluid motion, while Germaine stumbled again.

“You act like you’ve done this before,” Germaine said.

The pair descended the stairs.

“Used to live here.” Vic pointed towards the skeleton of a double wide. “Workers at the international pavilion lived in the trailer park.”

“Oh, is that why the boss lady hired you?”

“Something like that,” Vic said. “Used to work in the Soviet exhibition, Ukraine specifically.”

The trailers were long abandoned. Most didn’t even have windows while the doors had been removed.

“Trailers were assigned at random,” Vic said. “Neighbors were from Peru and China. Prevents labor organization.”

“Sounds rough,” Germaine said. “Surprised they didn’t shack you guys up in the apartments. It’d be closer to the shops.”

“It was easier to remove workers if they complained,” Vic said. “Especially international workers. An average of four visas were revoked per week.”

The power substation was beyond even the trailer park, on a concrete slab jutting out into a waterlogged pond that demarcated the domains of gator and man. A simple shack sat welded upon this slab, which rose over the water high enough to avoid storm surge.

Again, a simple padlock blocked the way. For all the trouble getting in here, the security systems on any given door were lacking thus far. Germaine’s bolt-cutters allowed for easy access.

Within, circuit breakers and a knot of humming wires sat elevated on stilts. “What’s all this?” Germaine asked.

There was no one switch to flip. They’d need a degree in electrical engineering to continue.

Vic walked up to the plate.

“We used to manually reroute power back to the trailers when the circuits flipped. Wait one moment.”

Vic got to work. Dead streetlights flickered to life, only to die again as the power was piped elsewhere.

“Bad news,” Vic said. “Full power to the Futureplex will require shutting down the trams. It’s those or the monorail.”

Germaine reached for his radio.

“Hey, we’re going to kill most of the transportation. That okay? Over?”

The line crackled with static.

“Signal’s poor,” came Soto’s voice. “You’re going to kill the trams?”

“Trains will be okay. Just the pedestrian-mobiles. That good? Over.”

There was a pause as Soto and Miss Diaz discussed the issue back in their makeshift headquarters.

Germaine turned to Vic. “How’s Dan going to know to flip the fuse box?”

“The lights will turn back on.”

The radio crackled to life. “Affirmative.”

“Do it,” Germaine said.

Vic leaned away from the contraption, shielding his eyes, then re-wired a particular socket. There was a whiff of ozone and a spark as the shed’s lights overloaded.

Outside, the sun was still halfway into its late-afternoon western track. That every light in the trailer park suddenly dimmed went scarcely noticed. The trams ground to a more jarring halt; one sat in the distance, inert, and far from the trailer park. The neighborhood beyond sparked as the odd transformer blew.

“Maximum power is being routed to the Futureplex,” Vic said.

“Which means we’re headed back on foot,” Germaine reported.

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