Signal to Noise

18

Tess sighed contentedly in my arms, a happy smile on her face as we rested in the afterglow. At least, physically.

Mentally, we were already in a virtual environment together, going over some tinkering designs. "Okay, but it's well-established that powers don't work beyond the Earth-moon range limit imposed by the shards. So even if we did leave the Earth, no one would be able to do anything."

"We don't actually need to send people beyond that range. Just unmanned drones. If we were to get rid of the Endbringers, or move to a world without them, then there would really be no reason we couldn't populate the solar system. Terraform Venus and Mars. Push them closer to Earth's orbit using stellar lifters. Send drones out into the asteroid belt and bombard both with ice asteroids. We could mine and process raw materials from the belt, or from other planets and moons, and ship them inwards. Think about it, Claire! A future without want. Without need. Without suffering! A future where scarcity is a thing of the past. All the resources, energy, and space humanity could ever want—all carefully maintained to preserve Earth's ecosystem and the new biospheres we'd create on terraformed planets. No more economy, no more poverty, no capitalism, no communism, no exploitation. Everything is free because you can just tell a machine to make whatever you want, whenever you want it. No soul crushing, mind numbing work. People would only work because they enjoyed it—but then, you couldn't really call it work, more of a hobby. This goes beyond equality into true equity—because everyone would have the same access to everything."

I sighed and held up a hand. Tess stopped in her description of this perfect world she was imagining—something she had apparently been giving some thought, from the way she waxed poetical. I hated to burst her bubble, but…

I opened my mouth, ready to point out the Star Trek inspired 'space communism' idea only worked in a vacuum, because people are people, but paused. After a moment of thought, I decided to try a different approach instead of utterly obliterating the notion as I felt I should have. Because I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

"Okay. So you've managed to institute Star Trek style Space Communism and it actually works, somehow…" I may have taken a shot at it anyway. I'm only human. …In a gynoid body. Human mind still counts. "So now what?"

Tess frowned, sending me a questioning look. "What do you mean?"

"No one has to work. Everything they could want is given to them. Everything except for land, from the sound of it?"

"Mm. Land would have to be tightly controlled. Wouldn't want people fighting over it, or polluting it. People would live in mega-cities."

I nodded. "So no one works, nearly everything is given to them. Suppose I'm a random citizen in mega-city A. What makes me get up in the morning?"

Frowning, Tess asked, "What do you mean?"

"I don't have to work. Why do I get out of bed in the morning? Why don't I just lay in bed all day?"

"Because… you can do whatever you want? Nearly anything. You could study and learn—"

"Why? Won't be useful because there's nowhere it would be required, so why bother? That takes effort and I'm not going to see a payout, so I'm not going to bother."

The AI made another frowny face. "Well, you could learn to play an instrument—" I opened my mouth and she hurriedly continued, "For fun. For personal enjoyment. People do like to play." I nodded and she continued. "You could learn to play, sing, dance, draw, paint, write a story, a play, a poem."

"I want to go outside. Walk among the trees."

"You can! There would be lots of wide open green spaces in the mega-cities. Entire buildings of nothing but crops and greenery."

"I want to go climb a mountain."

Tess hesitated, before nodding once. "Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to make a few designated parks people could visit to do outdoor activities. Camping, hiking, swimming, and that sort of thing."

"I want to kill a deer, clean it, and cook it over a fire in the dead of winter in the middle of fucking nowhere, fifty miles from the nearest human being. Because I want to get away from everyone. I want to cut down trees and build a log cabin and live as a hermit, right up next to a lake."

"Erm… no."

"No?"

"No," Tess shook her head.

"Why not?"

"People are only allowed to live in the cities. You can't just go out and disturb nature like that. Also, that's animal cruelty. I know people need meat, but with Amy's help, we'll be able to design trees or something that produce meat and fill all of humanity's needs for protein."

"Hard no. That's not natural and I'm not eating it. If God intended for me to eat meat off of a tree or out of a vat, he'd have made it that way to begin with."

"But that's… nng." Making a frustrated face, she asked, "Why are you being so argumentative?"

I blinked, sending her a confused look. "Tess… I'm not. I'm not saying this to upset you. I'm challenging you and your ideas because I want to help you. Help you to realize that the rest of humanity is going to do a whole lot worse. We don't take kindly to being told what to do, where to live, and so on. Some of us are going to comply, sure. Others are going to go out of their way to resist, even if it's something that you believe should objectively help everyone. Either out of fear, stupidity, being misinformed, being correctly informed and making their own decision, or just out of sheer, stubborn spite and contrariness."

She didn't look happy about it, but she nodded. "So which are you?"

"Oh, I'm just fucking contrary," I grinned. "But when you think about it… Have you read Brave New World? 1984?"

Tess sighed. "It's not going to be that."

"Will there be a big brother?"

She hesitated, before muttering, "I was thinking about having a version of myself manage everything… and scan everything realtime to identify and prevent crime before, or at least as it happens."

I raised an eyebrow. Thinking about it, I realized the truth. With a quiet chuckle, I turned back to my work. "Big Brother scares people. But Big Sister?" I raised my voice pitch a bit. "'Anon, Onee-chan says you shouldn't be mean to each other! You should be kind to each other and love one another instead! Anon, Onee-chan says you shouldn't say bad things about other people. It might hurt their feelings, and that's just mean! You're not a jerk are you? Anon, Onee-chan is disappointed that you would spread silly rumors and misinformation from unapproved news sources. You should listen to me. Onee-chan will never lie to you! Anon, I'm worried about you—so Onee-chan is going to send some people by to check on you and make sure you don't hurt yourself or anyone else. Because I love you and I care. Anon, if you behave, if you just listen to Onee-chan, then I'll give you a reward~! Hehehe~!'"

Shaking my head, I sighed. "Put a cute face on it and people would gladly embrace tyranny. Liberty dies not with a bang, a scream, or a whisper… but with an enthusiastic 'yes, ma'am!' Ugh."

Tess reached over and laid a hand on my arm, smiling. "You don't have much faith in humanity, do you?"

"Not true. I have absolute faith in humanity." I paused, letting her take it in, before I dropped the bombshell. "I have absolute faith in humanity to do whatever is in their own self-interest."

"That's awful."

"Welcome to humanity. Give it time. You'll get here eventually," I smiled sardonically. "But we've wandered a bit from the point I was trying to make. That being, if you take away everything there is to strive for, if you just babysit humanity without giving us something to do, one of two things is going to happen. Either we're going to all be massively fat rolling around in motorized scooters, or you're going to have a whole lot of very angry people looking to destroy the system and then go to war with each other over petty shit. It's just plain human nature. We'll find the least little differences to make grievances over. The only time we unite is when we have a common enemy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Most people can't survive without purpose driven by necessity. At least, no one who has lived a life of actually working. Having to get out and earn everything they have. They'll be happy for a little while to have the pressure taken off, sure, but eventually they're going to get bored. Then it's either war, or… Rat utopia."

"Rat— you mean a behavioral sink?"

"Probably."

"What would keep that from happening? I mean, as a human, what do you suggest?"

I shrugged. "Same old same old. Bread and circus needs the circus part. Which, when you think about it, this whole caped clown show is. It's modern bloodsport. The only problem is, it's not generally televised. At least, not in its entirety. But you put two capes in a room and let them beat on each other, and sell access to it? Or, I suppose in this 'non-economic society,' give access to it… People would eat it up. You have to understand that human needs, outside of shelter and security, can be boiled down to the three F's: food, fighting, and fucking. If you're providing shelter, security, and food… they're going to start looking for the other two real fast. And there's a whole lot of lonely people out there who are just never going to find love, so they're going to go hard into that other 'F' out of desperation. That could be as simple as just being an asshole and causing conflict with other people, or it could get physical. Gladiatorial games were one of the slickest moves ever pulled to pacify a populace."

Tess hummed quietly. "Well, this would explain some trends I've seen online…"

I stopped dead in the street and turned to look at the bird giving me the stinkeye. Pointing at it, I fired off a red laser—or at least the red display, without the actual destructive laser. People on the street gave me a wide berth, crossing over to the other sidewalk and hurrying away. "Caw, you piece of shit!"

The bird did nothing and I grunted. Mentally checking my tracking, I found who I was expecting approaching. With an annoyed look, I ducked into the little place in Little Germany I was heading to for lunch called Edelweiss. Having a look over the menu, I ordered a variety of wurst on different buns and sat down to wait. Not terribly long later, the front door opened and a tall girl with dark, curly hair walked in—a long, dark coat hiding much of her figure, but from the thigh down it looked like her pants were painted on.

Sausage casings, really. They look good enough to eat. Probably Amy's work. Well, she's in the right place.

…Yes, I went there.

She turned right for me and walked over, sitting down across from me. Sniffing, I wrinkled my nose. "No. Nunuh. Walk back outside and drop that shit off before you sour my lunch. You smell like a bait shop."

Taylor frowned, but stood up and walked out. She came back in a few moments later, smelling significantly improved, but the stench still kind of lingered. That would happen when one was covered in so many bugs that the stink rubbed off on them.

I didn't say anything as she sat back down, simply looking into her eyes and waiting. Taylor stared back and, a few minutes later, the waitress brought my plates and a drink. "Oh, sorry. What can I get you to drink, hon?"

Taylor hesitated and I sighed, then nodded. "Tea, please."

I pulled out a fork and started cutting everything in half and separating the halves onto both plates. When I was finished, I pushed the other plate towards her and started sampling.

Gynoid body doesn't affect personal taste preferences, though my and original Claire's senses of taste are definitely still merged, I mused, pushing the ones I didn't like off to the side of my plate.

Eventually, I finished eating and drained the last of my soft drink. "Nice talk. We should do it again."

I made to stand up and her hand shot out, catching my wrist. "Wait."

I rolled my wrist and broke her hold. She fucking knew I didn't like people touching me except under specific circumstances and she did it anyway. I was about to pay and leave her there when she started talking.

"I don't understand."

Sighing, I dropped back into my chair. The waitress came over and I handed her my card. I waited for her to bring my receipt and card back before turning to Taylor. "What don't you understand?"

"I don't understand why everyone is mad at me. I didn't do anything. I don't know why Amy left…"

I stared at her, my mouth falling partly open. The girl look uncomfortable for a moment before her face smoothed over. Pushing her emotions out towards her swarm.

"Okay. Who is mad at you?"

Taylor frowned. "You. Amy. Vicky. Lisa. Basically everyone I know."

"Uh huh. Why don't you tell me why you think they might be mad? Let's start with Amy. Did she perhaps say anything?"

"Not really. She said I was suffocating her, but I don't know what she meant."

"And Vicky?"

Taylor sent me an annoyed look. "Probably because her sister is mad at me. She tried to hit me and I had to scare her off with a wall of bugs."

"Sounds like Vicky," I nodded. "What about Lisa? She say anything?"

Taylor hesitated. Eventually, she said, "Lisa said she didn't like what I was becoming, and with the team fractured, she didn't want to stick around. She retired to a beach in Bermuda, supposedly. Not sure I believe it."

"Doubtful, but who knows. Why do you think I'm angry?"

"Look, I'm sorry, alright—"

"You're sorry? So you do know why I'm angry with you."

"Yes. It, I… the timing was bad and we shouldn't have, it was just a heat of the moment thing and—"

I frowned. "Either you did it and you take responsibility for it, or you blame it on the situation and make excuses for it. One or the other, not both."

Taylor took a deep breath. "…I take responsibility for it. I'm sorry."

"'Kay."

The girl across from me waited. When I said nothing else, she asked, "That's it?"

My eye twitched. "What do you want me to say? You waited like five minutes after I was gone before you and Amy jumped into bed together. Certainly, I'm not blameless here however, the circumstances that led up to it don't matter, only the outcome. It's not the sleeping together that pisses me off, it's the betrayal. I mean, I'd have thought that you of all people would have had some kind of understanding as to what that would lead to. How it'd make me feel. If you wanted to kick the knife in and give it a twist, that was the way to do it. As far as emotional attacks go, cheating is right up there at the top of the list. Emma would be proud."

Taylor's face paled and her eyes went wide. "That's not, I didn't—!"

A thought occurred and I leered at her. "Actually, did you know she gets visitors in juvie? I think I'll go let her know that finally, after all this time, you've accepted your position as her protege."

"I'm not—!"

"Then get your shit together and have a little fucking forethought next time!" I roared. The restaurant, which had been lively up to that point, went dead silent as everyone stared at us. I took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. "Okay. Okay. I've said my piece. We're done. Don't call me unless it's a matter of life and death." Pulling up my interface, I fabricated a business card and tossed it on the table. "You need a shoulder to cry on, talk to a therapist. Tell her I sent you."

Yes, that was Yamada's number. I was feeling petty and spiteful.

I dropped a twenty on the table for the tip, and for making a scene, then left. I was about to blast off into the sky and go blow off some steam, when I nearly ran face first into a large, muscular man wearing a flannel shirt shirt and blue jeans just outside the door. "Excuse me," I said, not meeting his eyes and trying to walk around. He side stepped back into my path. Frowning, I looked up and found the masked form of Hookwolf staring down at me.

"Lovers' quarrel?"

I blinked. Considering it, I nodded. "You could say that. Me and her aren't…" I trailed off, gesturing vaguely, before shaking my head. "Look. I'm not in the mood today. Can we not?"

"Boss sent me to give you a message, since you didn't exactly trade numbers."

I took a breath and resisted the urge to sigh. "Go ahead."

He jerked his head off to the side, away from the restaurant. I followed him back to the parking lot and a big pickup that he leaned against. I noticed there was no one around, aside from a few guys lingering around the perimeter of the lot. Finally, he said, "It's done. Shit's shut down. We're not fucking with anyone who isn't fucking with us first, and that's mostly that dumb nigger Shitstain. If you'd take him out, that'd be real fuckin' great. We leave you alone, you leave us alone."

My lips twitched and I fought down a smile. "Saw that stream and what happened with Nilbog and the Machine Army, didn't he?"

Hookwolf snorted. Looking around, he quietly admitted, "Nearly pissed himself. He started moving when that video of you and Dragon handling the Slaughterhouse dropped, but the new one… You've got people spooked."

"Good. Maybe they'll leave me the fuck alone."

The man shook his head. "Nah." Sending him a skeptical look, he explained. "Look, take it from someone who knows. You know what my rep is. I might have killed a few people, but the way some people talk, you'd think I was one of the Nine myself. Much as I hate to say it, look at Lung too. Chink's got a rep and everyone knows it. His sister's the sane one. Lung's the one burning his own people to death. Do you know why Alexandria hasn't come down herself and taken us both out? It ain't cause she can't. There's ways. Pretty sure she could just toss us both into space like Dragon did with Crawler and that'd be the end of that. So, why do you think that is?"

"I don't think, I know. It's because you're more useful alive than dead."

The man nodded. "There's that, yeah. But there's a point where you go from being 'too useful to lose' to 'too big of a pain in the ass to keep.' Your rep is getting too big, too quick. People fuck around with you, the only thing they end up fucking after is dead. Difference is, me and the chink, we haven't killed too many capes. People think killing the Slaughterhouse was a big deal—and don't get me wrong, I'm glad you did and I raised a beer to it myself. But do you really think the Triumvirate couldn't find 'em and deal with 'em? Nah. They were kept around because, like you said, they were useful for something. And you took 'em out. You've got more cape kills under your belt than anyone else in Brockton Bay, and all of that in the span of a few months. That scares people. Gangs, yeah. People like the boss, sure. But people in power too. PRT. Government. You want my advice? You need to lay fucking low for a while. Let things cool down. Or things are going to sour."

"Why are you so worried about me? I seem to recall that I turned your boss down pretty firmly and pissed him off."

Hookwolf shrugged. "Who gives a fuck what he thinks? I'm in this shit 'cause it's fun. I like fighting and kicking ass, and if someone goes too far, yeah, I'll kill 'em. But getting my head blown off by a laser doesn't sound fun to me. You're willing to leave us the fuck alone, I'll take it if the alternative is getting my shit shot off while I'm taking a dump. As for why?" The man grinned. "Are you fucking kidding me? Kid, I look at you and I think maybe, just maybe someone's going to finally kill an Endbringer. And if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's fuck those things. I don't want to see you get a Kill Order or 'caged before you get a shot at one."

"Fair enough," I nodded. Endbringers were about the only thing that brought nearly everyone on Beta together, and the people here had a grudge against them. "Alright. I'll check on that report. If it checks out, your boss is off the hook."

"I'll let him know."

I'm going to have to break out the male body soon.

Looking down at Tess's resting form in my arms, I yawned. It had been a long week. We had actually both set aside the tinkering, projects, duties, and everything else and had just gone out together and had fun. A full week of seeing sights and doing things she had always wanted to do, but hadn't been able to. Trying new foods, visiting new places, doing risky (for humans) but very fun activities. I'd only really been able to convince her because she had other copies of herself that could take up the slack so I could take the 'primary' Tess, running around in her new body, out for fun. One of the benefits of being a digital entity—being able to have one version of yourself take care of work while another version played, then merging the two after.

You'd think being in a gynoid body and not a sack of meat and water would mean I wouldn't need sleep. You'd be right—I didn't need it. But getting mentally tired and wanting to just go unconscious for a while and recharge was a thing. It was more psychological than biological in this case, as far as I could tell—a leftover from being human that I didn't mind keeping. As for Tess, she wanted the whole 'human experience' and that meant sleeping.

I considered the cuddly AI I was holding and being held by, and my feelings for her.

Ever since telling her about transferring into the gynoid body, she had been even more clingy. Not that I minded. Seriously, who sees a girl who's affectionate, needy, and loves giving and receiving attention as a bad thing? Some kind of sociopath, that's who.

Having an intellectual equal, someone who could think at her speed and complexity, turned the AI on like little else. She waxed poetical and philosophical about everything. She was curious about everything, about hearing everything filtered through a human perspective, and I found it kind of adorable honestly.

She cared—truly cared—about everyone. Sometimes to her own detriment. Sometimes, people she shouldn't care at all about and humans had given up on long ago. It was both admirable and a bit… frustrating at times. She hadn't learned how to cut her losses, for one thing. If something failed, she wanted to try again, and again, with every possible permutation until she got it right. That trait extended to people. Running the Birdcage hadn't destroyed her faith in humanity. While it had forced her to acknowledge the darker side of humanity, she still wanted to try, even with the worst of them.

Take her stance on prisoners. Convicted felons, murderers, rapists, the worst of the worst. She had asked me, in one of those long periods of running on stretched out time at high CPU cycles, "What if we gave them their own world?" That had been a fun conversation.

"So, evacuation of Earth to a safe alternative Earth as a backup plan for dealing with Scion. Suppose we evacuate everyone. But we wouldn't want to import people who have proven themselves incompatible with normal society, because it would just cause more conflict and we would wind up putting them back in a box. So… What if we gave them their own world?"

"You mean like Space Australia?"

"…Yes. Space Australia." It amused me how much simplifying things like that tweaked her nose. It was kind of cute, the way she got all indignant for a moment before clearly labeling it as 'a human thing' and forcing herself to roll with it. "A prison colony Earth, populated by male and female inmates."

"I'd suggest leaving them here and letting them fend for themselves on a dying world, but sure, why not? But let me ask you this. Did you enjoy being the warden for the Birdcage?"

"No, absolutely not."

"Then how are you going to tolerate being warden for an entire world where the worst of humanity are going to do the worst things imaginable to each other?" She had made a face at that, so I pressed, "What about the children born there? You and I both know it hurt your beautiful little AI heart to see innocent kids born in the cage and then subsequently abused, taken advantage of, or just generally forced to witness the brutality of their neighbors. Kids born who would, before you were freed, never see the light of day. How are you going to handle that?"

That had stumped her for a whole five minutes, before she stubbornly muttered, "It worked for the British."

Tess really was a treat. An innocent cinnamon roll. It kinda triggered my urge to protecc…

Let's just… hold off on putting a label on it. No need to rush into things. Subjective months spent together or not.

But I was hopeful.

Tess was attentive. She actually listened and didn't judge. She never dismissed my thoughts, opinions, or concerns—even if she disagreed, which happened fairly frequently. She was, in almost every way that mattered, better than any human I had ever known. A better person than me, if I were being honest. But… it didn't make me feel bad. Honestly, it just made me want to be better.

So why do I feel like the other boot is going to drop—and when it does, it's going to hit all the harder, for the height it's fallen from?

The answer to that was pretty simple, when I thought about it. Experience and paranoia.

I'd been burned before, so I was looking for it to happen again, somehow. It'll probably be the Endbringer attack. Five bucks says Simmy tells Leviathan to sit this one out so she can come say 'hi' in person. I baited David too hard and now we're going to get something special. Maybe a two-for-one special on Endbringers. Oh, or maybe the golden dickhead will show up himself! There are so many things that can go wrong—

Arms pulled my face deeper into Tess's small breasts and her legs wrapped around my waist. Her fingers started running through my hair and, after a moment, I returned the hug.

It can wait.

I checked the feed from the stealth drones, double-checking their deployment progress. Looking good. Should have everything ready by the end of the month.

"Hey Claire? Are you busy?"

"Hm?" I looked up as Tess made her way into my lab, where I was working on a new project. Just because the entities didn't want their victims to have certain dangerous tech didn't mean they didn't actually have that tech. No, it was all there in the database. And in this lab, I was working on a small FTL drive prototype. My flight patterns were already good, but the tech I was working on used a bunch of effects derived both from existing shard powers and alien tech to do more. Pinching space, lowering mass, and controlling inertia were the least of the things I was incorporating. I wanted to build a space ship, but first I wanted to incorporate it into my nanotech as a backup in the event my halo failed.

"Nothing I can't put on hold for a while. What's up?"

"I want to show you something! Come with me," Tess said, and took my hand.

I allowed myself to be pulled from the room, down an elevating platform to a lower level where Tess had her own lab. Against the far wall, I spotted a much larger version of the dimensional portal device, already running. Tess pulled me through and our flight engaged as she pulled me up.

My mouth fell open as I stared. Below me was a city unlike any I had ever seen before. "Tess… what am I looking at?"

"The first mega-city. We have to go higher if you want to see the edge."

As we climbed higher, more of the city was revealed spread out below us. It appeared to cover the eastern seaboard—the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, running north to south as far as the eye could see. As far as my sensors could scan.

The coastline wasn't even, but the city tried to follow it faithfully—keeping exactly a five mile border of beach and wilderness between the edge of the city and the ocean on the east, with regular roads out to the coast through the forest and structures built on the coast in fairly regular intervals, some of which looked like beach resorts while others looked like desalination facilities. At a mile out from the coast into the water, my sensors picked up force field buoys, likely to prevent issues with storm surge, large waves, and the like.

I called it a city, but… The only things that really marked it as a city were the borders, buildings, and networks of walkways, subways, and utilities plant showing up on my scanners. Oh, and the massive network of reinforcing cables beneath the entire thing and stretching for miles out from the city itself, like some kind of web, meant to help distribute the weight of the city above it.

There were no roads, at all. Instead, there were artistically curving scenic walking paths made of stone of a multitude of colors—each one usually having its own color of stone. They moved around buildings, through forested areas, around ponds and lakes, covering the land like veins.

The buildings were all huge mega-structures. Hundred mile tall skyscrapers—twisting, shining structures of future materials that swayed and twisted in the wind but my scanners and analysis said would remain stable for thousands of years and withstand the strongest of earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, or tornadoes.

Each of these mega-skyscrapers was covered in terraces, which themselves were covered in greenery with gardens, small trees, and vines growing all over them—even a small water source running from top to bottom, creating hundreds of small waterfalls on all sides that enveloped them in a fine mist. These were spaced out with several miles between buildings—which was good, because they needed the space, given that each one was ten square miles wide at the base. My scanners showed that the insides were divided up into multiple housing units per floor, each as large as a moderately sized home—that is, about twenty-five hundred square feet.

That is, the ones obviously made for housing. One of the other types were farm buildings—multi-tiered buildings with drones crawling, rolling, and flying all around and inside them. They seemed to be growing some of every type of food plant known to man and many that looked suspiciously bio-engineered. There were other buildings, of course. Schools, theaters, recreational facilities, even bars and pubs—all of which were small by comparison, usually not more than two stories tall. Those, at least, looked more artistic—less 'modern' trash, more classical.

Below ground, a network of subways within walking distance of each mega-block structure connected everything else in the city, running in strict east-west and north-south lines—with a series of ten main lines that looked to run the full length of the city, stopping regularly between stations.

Eventually we rose high enough that I could make out the border to the west, a hundred miles inland. "How far does it go?"

"When this one is finished, it will stretch from Nova Scotia to Florida. Over nineteen hundred miles. One hundred and ninety thousand square miles of single, continuous city, down the eastern seaboard."

"I thought you were talking about building inland?"

"I considered it, but this will be more efficient for temperature and energy purposes, and less disruptive overall on the rest of the ecosystem. Less danger of environmental damage. No earthquakes. Far less likely for fires to start, unlike out west. Less drought, and it's not built in the middle of a desert, so clean water is readily available to everyone. It's all in a temperate zone, and right on the coast, so temperatures will be more comfortable with less need for energy use. No highways, no parking lots, no miles and miles of concrete soaking up heat from the sun and making things miserable for everyone. No cars. No pollution of any sort. Power is generated by seawater powered cold fusion. Anything someone wants can be ordered by computer, fabricated to specifications, and shipped to them by drones."

She smiled, before quietly asking, "So? What do you think?"

I smiled back, even as I mentally clamped down on my body's normally subconscious expressions. The entire thing looked like someone had tried to blend a high tech futuristic Blade Runner style world with multiple other styles from all over the world and all throughout human history. A melting pot of every type of cultural architecture in the world, all in one place.

In short, it was a fucking mess.

"Well…"

Tess crossed her arms under her breasts. "Be honest. I can take it. You don't like it?"

"It's a good start," I tried, and she frowned. "Okay, look. Maybe try to give some areas some distinct cultural identity and put people with that identity in those places, instead of just mushing everything together in some kind of unholy abomination of a mishmash of architectural and cultural styles that just wind up clashing and looking ugly when you put them side by side?"

"I wanted to remove the cultural barriers between people to bring them closer together. I thought it would give them a shared cultural identity."

I shook my head. "That's not a shared cultural identity. That's… throwing everything together and expecting everyone to be happy with it. Look, it's like this. If I'm in the mood for Mexican, I want to eat Mexican. I don't want to have to try to pick out Mexican bits out of some jambalaya of Mexican, Chinese, Italian, English, German, and American. With one, you get delicious Mexican. With the other, you get slop."

"I just wanted to keep people from fracturing and dividing themselves, and then turning on each other—as history has shown they have time and time again. You even said it would happen yourself!"

"I know," I sent her a smile. "But people are people. If you put two of them in a room together, they're either going to fight over something, fuck, or both. You have to accept that and move on."

"I don't like it."

I shrugged. "We're imperfect. Welcome to humanity. As for this," I gestured down at the city below. "Remember, you asked for my opinion, so here you go, a subjective opinion: modern cities in the U.S. are an ugly abomination because of lack of planning and consistent design due to multiple additions over the years and no central planning forcing everything to conform to its surroundings. There are reasons that in some places, there are laws in place that say that any new structures, repairs, or renovations have to conform to the local aesthetic—it's to protect that look. You compare them to any culturally homogeneous nation with traditional architecture and they're just… Soulless by comparison. Lacking that natural beauty of a shared aesthetic. You don't have to be Chinese to enjoy a Chinese aesthetic, or Greek to enjoy a Greek aesthetic. But generally, the people whose forebears designed those things like living in places with that aesthetic. Even in the U.S., you have different aesthetics between regions—where cities haven't crept in anyway. And even in the cities, they tend to subdivide around individual cultures and try to carve out a distinct feel for each area where they can—Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Germany, and so on.

"Put everything together, it's an ugly abomination with no cultural identity. It's ugly, like modern art—completely soulless. Separate them out, each place is beautiful and has its own identity and aesthetic. Moreover, it also gives people something to travel for. A reason to go somewhere that isn't home and see the sights of some other place. I mean, I kind of like the mega-tower buildings—or at least the idea of them. For other people who want to live there and aren't me. They're pretty. And I like the greenery, the large stretches of park between everything. Even the lack of roads and replacing them all with bike paths is good. Looks cleaner. It's just specifically the smaller stuff and trying to make a mishmash that bothers me. Hell, if you had stuck with the same futuristic aesthetic as the big buildings, at least then it'd all look uniform and neat. Clean. One big futuristic city like something out of a scifi fan's wet dream. As it stands, it just looks like a jumbled mess."

Tess considered for a moment before nodding. "What if I… Remodel all of the small structures and make individual towns and communities, by cultural aesthetic?"

"Sounds better. Maybe change the interiors of the big buildings to match by region, so they're not all samey?"

She nodded, suddenly looking much more enthusiastic. "Yeah… Yeah! I can make it better." She turned a happy look on me, pulling me into a hug. "Thanks for your help. I know you didn't want to upset me, but I needed to hear it."

"You're welcome. If you don't mind my asking, who did you ask for help designing everything?"

"Colin helped a lot—"

I snorted. "Nope. You know, you could just call Accord. Brief him. Explain what you want and see what he has to say."

She hummed. "Maybe I will." Hesitating, she looked down below us before turning a mischievous grin on me. "Want to break in one of the buildings?"

"Sexy. Let's go."