Traveling between the districts reveals the truth of Shenzhen. The horizon fades and with it the simulacrum sun, the sense of an open sky. The waystation that separates Luohu from Dameisha is built like a decellularized kidney: hollow and opaque white, vertical and vertiginous. Small ledges mark where bridges will extend for humans passing by, but there is otherwise scarce accommodation apart from the shuttles that carry passengers from one district to the next. Short, dizzying trips in vehicles with the appearance of termites. Krissana and Orfea have chosen to walk. The distance is physically not so long; it is only the perspective that disturbs.
Accretion cores pulse in the wall, venting and redirecting excess energy. Even shielded their glare is harsh, leaving afterimages behind the eyelids; Orfea turns on her optical filters, one of her few overt implants. Krissana does likewise, though where Orfea’s filters sheathe her pupils and sclerae in complete black, Krissana’s appear invisible and leave her looking more human between the two of them.
Their footfalls echo against a silence so heavy it is difficult to breathe, for all that the air has been regulated to suit their tolerances. There’s no real reason the waystations need to look like this: they could have been as pleasant as the rest of Shenzhen, built to primate scale and looking like any ordinary tram stop. Instead traversing the waystation is like being inside a cosmic wound, and Orfea wonders if this is how the Mandate sees the universe. Relentless void, blinding brilliance, and a total human absence.
“Do you know,” she says into the quiet, “if any AIs have ever declined to join the Mandate?” (pp. 31-32).
