course, unique: the first true World City, its population (simulated though it might be) was made up of planet Earth's ten million or so most influential citizens . . . or so the District's clientele clearly believed, and they went to great lengths to justify that contention.
The things they built for themselves were wonderful. In a place without gravity or even the necessity of normal geometry, and with highly flexible zoning laws in the private sectors, human creative ingenuity had flowered in most spectacular ways. Structures that would have been buildings in the real world, and thus subject to mundane laws, could here dispense with such irrelevant considerations as up-and-down and size-to-weight ratios. They needed only to serve as nodes, and so blazing displays of computer design appeared overnight and often disappeared as quickly, wild and colorful as jungle flowers. Even now she paused for a moment to admire an impossibly thin, translucent green skyscraper rising high into the sky beyond the arches. She thought it quite beautiful and unusually restrained, a knitting needle of solid jade.
If the things they built for themselves were spectacular, these denizens of the innermost circle of humanity, the things they made of themselves were no less so. In a place where the only absolute requirement was to exist, and only budget, good taste, and common courtesy limited invention (and some District habitués were notoriously long on the first and short on the other two), just the passersby promenading along the major thoroughfares made for an endless and endlessly varied show. From the extremes of current fashion-elongated heads and limbs seemed to be a current trend-to the replication of real things and people-Renie had seen three different Hitlers on her first trip to the District, one of them wearing a ballgown made of blue orchids-on out to the realms of design where the fact of a body was only a starting point, the District was a nonstop parade. In the early days, tourists who had bought their way in with a holiday package had often sat at sidewalk cafés gawping for hours until, like the most junior of netboys, their real meat bodies collapsed from hunger and thirst and their simulations froze solid or winked out. It was easy to understand why. There was always one more thing to see, one more fabulous oddity appearing in the distance.
But she was here today for only one purpose: to find Stephen. Meanwhile, she was running up a bill on the Poly's account, and she had now incurred the wrath of a nasty little man at the Gateway. Thinking of this, she programmed Chancellor Bundazi's delivery for Entry plus 19 minutes, since she knew Mister "I am a Citizen" would be checking up. The delivery was actually a piece of department mail addressed to the Chancellor, one of no import. She had swapped its bill of lading with something actually addressed for hand-delivery to one of Ms. Bundazi's other nodes, and she hoped the resultant confusion would be blamed on the mail room-actually a two decades out-of-date electronic mail system-which certainly could never be blamed too much. Trying to get something through the Poly's internal delivery system was like trying to push butter through stone.
After a moment's examination of Stephen's message coordinates, Renie jumped to Lullaby Lane, the main thoroughfare of Toytown, a backwater sector which housed the smaller and less successful creative firms and merchants, as well as the residential nodes of those clinging to Inner District status by their fingernails. A subscription to the Inner District net was very expensive, and so were the creative fashions necessary to retain one's place among the elite, but even if you couldn't afford a new and exotic sim every day, even if you couldn't afford to redesign your business or personal node every week, just keeping Inner District residency was still major social cachet in the real world. These days, it was often the last pretension that the
The things they built for themselves were wonderful. In a place without gravity or even the necessity of normal geometry, and with highly flexible zoning laws in the private sectors, human creative ingenuity had flowered in most spectacular ways. Structures that would have been buildings in the real world, and thus subject to mundane laws, could here dispense with such irrelevant considerations as up-and-down and size-to-weight ratios. They needed only to serve as nodes, and so blazing displays of computer design appeared overnight and often disappeared as quickly, wild and colorful as jungle flowers. Even now she paused for a moment to admire an impossibly thin, translucent green skyscraper rising high into the sky beyond the arches. She thought it quite beautiful and unusually restrained, a knitting needle of solid jade.
If the things they built for themselves were spectacular, these denizens of the innermost circle of humanity, the things they made of themselves were no less so. In a place where the only absolute requirement was to exist, and only budget, good taste, and common courtesy limited invention (and some District habitués were notoriously long on the first and short on the other two), just the passersby promenading along the major thoroughfares made for an endless and endlessly varied show. From the extremes of current fashion-elongated heads and limbs seemed to be a current trend-to the replication of real things and people-Renie had seen three different Hitlers on her first trip to the District, one of them wearing a ballgown made of blue orchids-on out to the realms of design where the fact of a body was only a starting point, the District was a nonstop parade. In the early days, tourists who had bought their way in with a holiday package had often sat at sidewalk cafés gawping for hours until, like the most junior of netboys, their real meat bodies collapsed from hunger and thirst and their simulations froze solid or winked out. It was easy to understand why. There was always one more thing to see, one more fabulous oddity appearing in the distance.
But she was here today for only one purpose: to find Stephen. Meanwhile, she was running up a bill on the Poly's account, and she had now incurred the wrath of a nasty little man at the Gateway. Thinking of this, she programmed Chancellor Bundazi's delivery for Entry plus 19 minutes, since she knew Mister "I am a Citizen" would be checking up. The delivery was actually a piece of department mail addressed to the Chancellor, one of no import. She had swapped its bill of lading with something actually addressed for hand-delivery to one of Ms. Bundazi's other nodes, and she hoped the resultant confusion would be blamed on the mail room-actually a two decades out-of-date electronic mail system-which certainly could never be blamed too much. Trying to get something through the Poly's internal delivery system was like trying to push butter through stone.
After a moment's examination of Stephen's message coordinates, Renie jumped to Lullaby Lane, the main thoroughfare of Toytown, a backwater sector which housed the smaller and less successful creative firms and merchants, as well as the residential nodes of those clinging to Inner District status by their fingernails. A subscription to the Inner District net was very expensive, and so were the creative fashions necessary to retain one's place among the elite, but even if you couldn't afford a new and exotic sim every day, even if you couldn't afford to redesign your business or personal node every week, just keeping Inner District residency was still major social cachet in the real world. These days, it was often the last pretension that the
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