Sunworld was off to the west, near the center of D-block. The route I’d picked took us briefly north, then on a straight shot down Hsieh Street almost to our destination. Pengyi stuck close by me as we pushed through the clouds. Hsieh Street was one of the biggest thoroughfares in the district, running through multiple wards. This far east it was an old neighborhood, the buildings low and made of precast concrete or brick. Power and data lines crisscrossed in mad tangles across the street, and improvised ventilation units thrummed in windows and on balconies. Chromed-up jackers in oily coveralls talked quietly in the thresholds of junk stores. Elsewhere old men sat at tiny tables on the sidewalk and played tiles, smoking cheap cigs like it was their job. Gomi stand vendors cried their wares, crowding for space with salvagers and black clinic modshops. The latter mostly had open fronts, and Pengyi watched wide-eyed as people got inked, pierced, or fitted for dubious cybernetics.
“Very many of czuha’reynisz here,” said Pengyi. “Word is, um...cyborg, I think.” “You mean here-here, or here in the city?”
“Both.”
“Well, even in D-block you can find cheap prosthetics. You won’t be the first one they’re attached to, of course, but still. And this neighborhood,” I waved a hand around at it, “is full of clinics. Not any I’d recommend, though, unless you like blood poisoning and neural glitches.”
He shook his head rapidly. “Flesh and bone work good for me. Not need metal.”
“I feel the same, funny enough. By the way, what exactly does that mean, czuha’reynisz? Czuha is person, I know, but-“
“Czuha is person, yes. Reynisz is...like fix, but not fix right. Fix poorly.”
“We say ‘jerry-rig’ or ‘kludge.’”
“Oh! So is like saying ‘jerry-rigged person!’” The excited look suddenly slid off his face and his gaze dropped to the cracked sidewalk. “N-not saying that you are, though-“
I laughed. “No, I kind of like it. It fits around here. Like we’ll make it happen no matter how much Admin tries to keep us down.”
Pengyi’s lip curled, a surprisingly cruel expression passing over his pretty face. “Invera farech ye’khura khorvach harusz’yw.” He spat the words with such venom that they were obviously a curse.
“...What’s that one mean?” I asked tentatively. After a bit of back and forth I got it. “‘Kings tear up and devils burn their family tree.’ That’s, ah, that’s pretty harsh.”
“Not like Admin much. Almost no tornagena does.” With a visible effort, he shook his head and smiled at me. “Not here to talk around them, though, true?”
“True,” I echoed. We walked the next few minutes in silence, with a brief stop to watch a couple of busking nanopaths juggle some old steel coins back and forth with pulses of magnetic force. A block or two later, Pengyi stopped in his tracks to stare in awe. We’d reached the Old Ved meat market. Its riot of stalls sprawled over an area of free space surrounding Hsieh Street, variously made of dirt or gravel, cracked asphalt or ancient cobblestone. The stalls themselves were just as eclectic: built of cloth or tarps, springy conplas rods or stacks of old wooden shipping pallets, decommissioned softside fuel cells and cored-out reefer trailers. Some were intricate contraptions of folding spars and sheet-metal, others little more than ragged lean-to’s of plastic sheeting and cardboard. Throngs of people threaded between the haphazardly-placed stands, their noise and smell competing with that of the many caged animals: squealing hogs, screeching white monkeys, blind fish and fat, hissing meat lizards either going under the butcher’s knife or waiting their turn. A few stalls, heavily guarded, even had chickens. Presiding over it all was a towering olive-glass statue of Martyred King Vedrian the Green, patron of growing things and those who tend them. The sculpture had plainly seen better days. Old Ved was covered in chemical deposits from smog and acid rain, and his nose and ears had chipped off long ago- but its obvious age had a quality all its own.
“Magne zhiha...” Pengyi muttered. “Is incredible. So much...everything.”
“Old Ved’s a lot, isn’t it?” I rubbed the back of my neck, nervous. “If the crowd’s too much we can go around.”
“No. Want to try using to it.”
“Using wh-Oh! Let’s go, then! Just keep an eye on your pockets.” We headed in, Pengyi following so close that his arm brushed mine. The noise, and especially the smell, intensified. Meat sizzled on a charcoal grill to our left, and frantic monkeys rattled their cages to our right. Rotary slicers rasped and sung. Knives and cleavers flashed as animals were deftly disassembled.
“Ey!” I looked over to see Pengyi with his hand around the wrist of a scared-looking kid. “Try steal again, and I galyie’nyw paltocha! I mean, feed you own balls!” He let go, and the would-be thief- whose fear had turned to boredom the instant she realized we weren’t going to beat the shit out of her- scampered into the crowd with a middle finger raised high. “How that?” he asked, turning to me.
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure his threat was anatomically possible, considering the victim, but it was the thought that counted. “Pretty good. Pretty nice of you, too.”
“Barely adequate attempt,” he said with a shrug of his own. “She never learns if I let her get away with that. Oh!” He pointed to a rack of sheet-metal baskets full of blue peaches, guarded by a heavily tattooed woman toting a submachine gun. “Have that fruit in park.”
“You can see it’s not just meat,” I replied. “Plenty of fruit, veggies, beer and liquor...see? Check that out.” Beneath a hazard-striped awning was a tangle of bell pepper plants still on their hydroponic rack. The tall, stringy man running the stall eyed us suspiciously as we went by. “I guess you get your food fresh anyway, so maybe it’s not that impressive. But for me-“
“No, no! I never see thing like this. All food together. Is...can we try something?” He turned to me, slit-pupiled eyes wide.
“Sure! You pick something out. I’m still full.” When he looked at me that way, what else was I going to say? We walked on a little farther, until Pengyi spotted an odd-looking stand at the end of a crooked lane. “There! Tea!”
The stall he pointed at held a counter lined with stout samovars that flowed with aromatic steam. The attendant wore her hair in a long braid and a quarrywoman’s loose blouse. She smiled broadly as she dispensed hot tea into paper cups, revealing a set of sharp-filed teeth.
“Alright, I’ll grab you some.” “No! I mean, I will get it.” “Uh, go right ahead.”
“Yes.” He paused. “Sharkie?” “Mm-hm?”
“How do I buy things?” he asked, very earnest.
Doing my best to hold it together, I told him. “It’s-pff-it’s probably a lot like how you trade for stuff. Just go up, tell her what you want, she’ll tell you what it costs, pay her and she’ll give you the tea. Simple as that.” I handed him some chits. “Go on, make me proud.” He shot me a flat look and darted off, sliding through the crowd like a knife through water.
“That. Was. So. Cute, Sharkie!”
“Shit!” I jumped about three feet into the air at the voice behind me. My outburst woke the caged albino gibbon next to me, which immediately set to hooting. Ignoring it, I spun around to find a familiar face. “Dezhda? What the hell-“
“Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!” she shouted over the monkey. It was indeed Dezi behind me, waving both hands in supplication. “It’s just, it was my turn to run and get coffee for everyone at the office, and then I saw you and your boyfriend and I couldn’t help, um, eavesdropping a little-“
“How long were you watching for-“
“J-just a minute or two!”
“-and he’s not my boyfriend, anyway!” Pengyi had reached the counter and seemed to be talking with the tea-maker.
“Oh? Your first date, then? How’s it going?” She was very eager.
“It’s not even a date. He’s not from around here and I’m just...showing him around, I guess.”
“Right. Sure. I see. That must be why you’re dressed so nice.” She smiled, giving me a sly look over her glasses.
“Come on, Dezi, I’m serious!“
“And so am I. It’s a shame. He is really cute, you know?” That smile got even wider. “If Rhoann were here, he’d probably be jealous.” I just folded my arms and gave her a look. “Well, I’ll leave you two to your tour. Have fun, Sharkie...” She departed walking backwards, giving me that annoying look until she disappeared into the crowd.
I hope it really was just a coincidence, I thought, shaking my head. A minute later Pengyi got back, a steaming cup in each hand.
“Success?” I said.
“First try. Here!”
I took the proffered cup and had a small sip. I wasn’t usually a tea person, but this was pretty damn good: strong-flavored and a little spicy, without too much sugar. “Mm! Good pick.”
“I get leaves too. Not much good to drink in park.”
“Oh? You got a kettle and stuff at home? A hot plate?” He told me a little about his house as we moved on, and I admit I was intrigued- maybe even enough to overcome my aversion to the park. Soon enough, we’d passed through the rest of the riotous market.
Pengyi and I both took a deep, relieved breath, realized the other was doing it, and laughed.
“It’s fun to go,” I said, “but it’s also nice to-“
“Why, good afternoon, jo-chans.” I glanced over at this fresh interruption to find a guy looking at us. Young, with slicked-back platinum hair and a glass rod through the bridge of his nose. He wore the white, high-collared jacket of a wannabe gangster- it was a trend from a holo-serial, for Rik’s sake- and a cool, confident smile. In other words, dude was eminently punchable. Pengyi must have got the same impression, because he was giving the guy the sort of look a cat gives you just before it pounces: ears back, eyes slitted, teeth bared and slightly parted. I felt annoyed for him: he was already out on a limb just being here, and now this faux-crim was up in his face.
Our appraisal must have been lost on the guy, because he glanced between us and kept going. “Me and my boys-“ he jerked a thumb at a few similar-looking gentlemen lounging beneath the awning of a drugstore- “were about to go find some lunch, get a few drinks, and we thought maybe you’d like to-“
“No thanks, man. We’ll be fine on our own.” I wanted to cut the engine out of this thing before it had a chance to get going. He’d really only looked like a douche, though, so there was no need for me to be rude.
It looked like he was about to say something. Then- and I could watch the change come over his face- he noticed how big I really was, the bones inked on my left hand, the barely-hidden coilgun under my jacket. He blinked, took a moment, and finally managed a reply.
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“Of course. S-sorry about that. And if you change your mind, um, you know where to find us.”
“Right. You have a good one, man. Stay safe.” We kept walking, though Pengyi watched the guy as he meandered back to his friends. “He handled that with more grace than I would’ve thought,” I said when we were out of earshot.
“Fauy,” agreed Pengyi. Then he snickered. “What the hell’s so funny?” I looked over at him.
“You- you very protective, Sharkie. Like mother pergato with kittens.” He broke off into another laugh.
I felt my face getting red. I was so damn pale I knew he could see it, too. “It’s- I mean, I’m just trying to make this easier for you, man! I know it’s gotta be weird, coming here.”
“I appreciate, Sharkie. For true.”
“Thanks, Pengyi.”
“Still is funny, though.”
I rolled my eyes and kept walking. Soon we turned south off of Hsieh and onto Via Mikuel Anders. A few blocks that way and we finally got to Sunworld. It was housed in a monster old warehouse, a million square feet or more. The name of the place was spelled out above the door in blazing white plasmagram letters three feet tall. Luckily, it didn’t look too crowded.
Pengyi squinted up at the sign, ears flicking. “What...what actually is this place?”
“It’s like a museum and a theme park all at once, I guess.” He turned to me, looking none the wiser. “It’s supposed to show what the Sun Age was like.”
“Yeghia?” he exclaimed, meaning ‘really?’ “‘Mazing. We go in?”
“Let’s hit it.” We went through the doors, passing a couple of guards on the way. They wore deep-blue uniforms and actually seemed to be paying attention. The place was a lot cleaner than I remembered it, too. There were only a few people ahead of us in line at the admissions counter- a few parents with kids, and one or two couples. Maybe I’d been wrong about the target demographic here. It didn’t take them long to pay up, and then it was our turn with the weedy-looking clerk.
“Two, please,” I told her.
“That will be-“ Her eyes went almost comically wide when she saw my tattoo. “-um, on the house, of course.” Her hand went to her forehead, nervously brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes.
“No, come on. What’s it supposed to cost? I’m not here for business anyway. Just showing my friend around.” I might have been more tempted to take advantage of my status if it didn’t already pay so well.
She reached under the counter and pulled out two shaded visors, the disposable kind that roll into a tube when they aren’t on your face. “Twenty denars each, ma’am. I mean Ms., or Miss-“
I saved her any further pain by putting the deng on the counter between us. “There you are. Have a good one.”
I felt her nervous gaze on us as we went past the counter and into Sunworld proper. The entrance hallway was dark, unlit except for the tiny white lights scattered piecemeal on the ceiling. They were supposed to look like the night sky from before the Pall, I was pretty sure. I handed Pengyi one of the visors and put my own on my forehead. “Get ready to put this on. It gets brighter.” He seemed distracted, staring up at the false stars, but nodded and took it.
The light brightened as we walked, and it seemed like the walls of the corridor spread out and faded away. I had to look very closely to see how they did it: a combination of careful holographic projections and the walls actually tapering apart. Very clever, and much more impressive than I remembered it being as a kid. The light ahead of us went from deepest navy to indigo, lavender, mauve, and finally a soft pink-orange.
Pengyi looked about with something like trepidation in his face. “Those colors...” he murmured. “How?”
“It used to be like this every morning.” I pointed to a freestanding plaque that said much the same. “The atmosphere acted like a prism or something. Bent the sunlight and made it look like this.”
“Mm...” He shook his head in wonderment and adjusted the shotgun on his back. A little farther and we reached a doorway, shining with light so bright it made my eyes water.
“Wait’ll you see this,” I told Pengyi as I put my shades on. He followed suit and we went through.
“Saeng’yw khuray...” he swore. It was as though we’d stepped into another world. The ground was covered in tiny green plants like the fur of some beast, rolling in gentle hummocks. Grass, not the gray cactus-like stalks I knew but the fine, verdant blades of antiquity. A few trees broke up the expanse, not the gene-twisted mutants of the Park but ones like you saw in old movies, with a single, vertical trunk. The holographic sky above was a clear, pale blue streaked with white, a seemingly boundless dome out to the false horizon. Most shocking of all, though, was the light: blinding, searing, all-consuming light, so intense I could feel the heat of it on my skin. Looking up was almost impossible even with the dark visor, but if I tried I could just make out a single, dominating illumination in the center of the high ceiling: the star Sol, A.K.A. the sun. Or D- block’s best imitation, at least. Between the huge room and the clever holographics, it almost seemed real. I wondered where they’d found the denars for all this.
“Blood of every devil,” Pengyi repeated softly. His pupils were cinched down to slits behind his shades. He looked about in wonderment, shifted his boots around on the grass. I was pretty sure it was plastic, but it wasn’t like I had any point of comparison for a nigh- extinct plant. “Earth.” The word drifted from him almost unconsciously, smoke from a snuffed flame. “Not other world, across Void of Heroes. Earth like this once.” I couldn’t tell if he was asking me or trying to convince himself. Then a huge smile spread abruptly over his face, bright as the false sun above. “So much light, Sharkie!”
“Uh...” I was stuck just looking at the way his grin lit up his face for a moment. In his own way, he was as good-looking as Willy or Fidi. “Yeah,” I finally managed. “Imagine twelve hours of this, every day.” He gave a slow shake of his head, trying and failing to look up at the sun-lamp. We followed a concrete walkway farther into the room, where the actual attractions were. There were places to buy food for picnicking, kiosks where employees could take your photo in front of the blue sky and distant horizon, some carefully-sculpted concrete rocks to climb, even a stand where you could rent a raggedy- looking robot imitation of some animal called a horse. Couldn’t pay me enough to get near that thing though. Even if it hadn’t been a robot its spindly legs and weird long head would have creeped me out.
Pengyi left the path and shot up one of the concrete outcroppings so fast it was like he’d run vertically. He stood atop it with a hand shading his eyes, just looking around. Sunworld really seemed to have slapped him sideways, but I guessed that if I’d spent my whole life starved for the smallest candela of light I’d react the same way. I enjoyed just being here too; the illusion wasn’t perfect but if you squinted and didn’t try to notice that things were fake it was pretty convincing. The other part I liked were the Sun Age historical exhibits placed alongside the path, little scraps of knowledge from a vanished time. This section was all under a banner reading “THE ANCIENT WORLD: Earth Before the Kings.”
The first exhibit I passed was a hologram depicting the Viridian Colossus of Neoruk. It was a great green statue of a woman, her legs astride the harbor of a strange city of square towers. The figure itself was shown as tall as I was, and the buildings barely reached its ankles. In one hand she held a torch, in the other a seedpod. The plaque beside it said it was built long before even the Kings. It had once guarded that city, far to the east, and served as a symbol of freedom and plenty. The next was a 2D image of a sort of castle that stood amidst a sunny city square. Its towers were topped with onion-shaped domes of different colors, each with a glowing red star at its peak. It was called the Cathedral of Saint Lynyn, apparently, and had served as that now-forgotten luminary’s resting place. I couldn’t suppress a snort at that one. The best funeral anyone in D-block had to hope for was that your corpse ended up burned for electricity rather than processed into arpaste.
Pengyi jumped off the rock to rejoin me, and we went past more history. Here was a sandy-colored stone, supposedly a piece of the Cottonwood Fort that had stood on this very spot in a very ancient time. An army of rebels had made their last stand there against someone called the Dark Prince, and been slain to the last man by his effluent. There was a chunk of scorched slag that claimed to be a piece of a starship, forged in the orbital yards of Gliese with metal not from Earth. Next to it was a hologram, ten feet tall, of a fiery mushroom cloud. Melting buildings of a tiny scale were barely visible at its base. “A...to...mics...” Pengyi read off its plaque. “Ah. Khorvas’yam.” I was pretty sure that meant something like ‘all-burners.’
“Yup. I guess the old empires chucked ‘em at each other almost for fun before the Kings turned up.”
He frowned at that. “Not know what they breaking, then.”
“I’ll say.” Soon the path took us through another doorway. When I’d come as a kid there’d been nothing but more fake grass, so I stopped dead as we entered the space. Beside me, Pengyi laughed in wonder. “Beach!”
“Stride’s iron dick, it really is.” Sunworld’s management- and I was really starting to wonder who they were, now- had filled this whole area of the warehouse with fine white sand. Along one wall, it subsided gently into water, which ebbed and flowed with generated waves. It even smelled salty, like the ocean was supposed to. A bunch of people and their kids had their shoes off, splashing and laughing as they waded through the shallow water. There was another imitation sun in here, even more intense than the last one. It was warm enough I took off my jacket and threw it over my shoulder. I saw Pengyi’s head move in the corner of my eye. Had he been looking at me? Stupid Dezhda had me all messed up with her talk of dates.
“Come on, Sharkie, we try!” He took my hand and started pulling me toward the false sea, then let go as he realized what he was doing. “S-sorry.”
“...Fine. It’s fine, I mean! Uh, yeah, let’s go.” Damn it, woman, I thought to myself. Concentrate. We peeled off our boots, rolled up our cuffs and walked along the waterline. The water was cool, the sand hot and funny-feeling between my toes. This wasn’t anything I’d ever thought I’d be doing. Depending on who you believed, the real ocean was either dried up, frozen, or contaminated to the point that just getting close would turn you into a short-lived nightlight. This imitation was as close as I’d get.
After a couple minutes I left Pengyi to it and wandered over to the other historical section: ‘THE DEKARCHY: Earth under the Ten Kings’. The centerpiece was a very impressive scale model of the Kings’ own Suzerainty, so large you could climb up on a balcony to get a look at the whole thing. It was a hugely impressive piece of workmanship, if you asked me, a clever combination of phsyical modeling and holography that made me feel like I had a god’s-eye view of the ancient world. I pulled off my shaded visor to get a better look. Everywhere I looked I spotted new tiny details.
The Kings had chosen a place called Himalaya for the capitol of the world, rocky and riven with towering mountains. The highest of all was Qomolungma, where the Kings had built Shambhala, the Lead-glass City. Its gothic spires, flying buttresses, and elegant colonnades spilled down the flanks of the mountain like a frozen waterfall, sparkling with the many crystal windows that gave the city its nickname. Mist drifted around its towers, and tiny holographic people mobbed through its streets and tramways. At its summit was the gold and marble Sumeru Palace, the seat of King Aurambard himself. Above that was the Luna Spire, a milky-white spike that had supposedly reached miles into the sky- here, it nearly reached the ceiling, and hologram starships crowded around its tip.
Surrounding the main model were smaller ones of the other Kings’ keeps as they were described in the Sacrifical Record: Glamis’s red-brick manse on Lhotse, Vedrian’s Impossible Forest sprawling across Kangchenjunga, Garik’s hollowed-out forge-mountain of Makalu, Ironstride’s forbidding donjon atop the savage cliffs of Kaytù. None approached Shambhala’s beauty but King Irem’s Crystal Libraries, which laced Annapurna’s peaks like a diamond necklace. The whole display had me wondering if maybe the Dakessar church had something to do with all the renovations. There were plenty of people faithful enough that they donated.
Pengyi wandered over to join me in looking at the models, still looking very pleased with himself. “Magne shan! Beautiful...”
“Right? Almost seems too nice for fucking D-block.”
“Mmm...Can find pretty things almost anywhere, Sharkie. Some places in Park, even. Could...could take you to them, if you want.“
I swallowed, thinking of the huge cave where we’d found the ancient church. It had been beautiful, I thought, in its own strange and dangerous way. I really, really hadn’t liked going there, though. And even though Pengyi’d broken his solitude to come out here, I just…
“I-I’ll think about it,” I stammered. I felt bad, but it was the best I could manage.
Pengyi gave me a soft smile. “Thank you.” From the way he said it, it sounded like he got what my difficulty was. From there we walked over the sand to the far wall, where there was a rather sparse exhibit on the Opheiic Mandala and the Kings’ final sacrifice to end the Lastwar. The next room was pretty disappointing, too.
“What the hell’s this, man?” I threw out my hands, exaspererated. “No wonder she didn’t want to charge me.” The rest of Sunworld currently consisted of a tunnel walled with translucent plastic and lined with tape reading “CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS.”
Pengyi was rather more sanguine about it. “All fine, Sharkie. I have fun time.”
“Alright, alright, good. But I will not be patronizing the souvenir shop.” He snickered at that, and we were about to walk out when he jumped.
“Wait! I forget!”
“What?”
“Let’s take picture by beach, Sharkie!”
“Oh! Yeah, sure thing.” We went back through and snapped a few timed photos with his phone. He tended to just stand there, arms at his sides and grinning like a loon, and for some reason I found it so funny I was cracking up in most of the shots. After that we breezed out through the gift shop. The clerk gave me a nervous look as we walked out, though I didn’t mess with her.
“So, what do you want to do now?” I asked Pengyi back out on the street.
“Kind of hungry again,” he said. “If not is problem for you, I-“
“No, no, I could eat too.” Rubbing my chin, I thought about it. “Blisstown’s closest, but it’s kind of...different.”
“Came to see all different places, Sharkie. Different how?”
“Um...you’ll see.”