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Ch.204: City of the Sun

Kasparia's weather had its own opinion about December. The sun was out, temperatures had dropped but the light hadn't, and the country refused to let the season dictate anything. The absence of mountains meant the cloud systems generally redirected around Kasparia rather than through it, leaving it warm and stable for most of the year by that geographical accident alone.

The capital Shamsi was packed. A normal walk through it meant constant shoulder contact and being briefly sandwiched between strangers at intersections. It hadn't always been this way, the Altean influx had changed the density of the streets considerably, filling every vacant house in the city with at least two families per unit.

02 moved through it all with her eyes on the crowd. The blue coloring was enough to make strangers stop and look, but the Omega symbol on her chest was what made the people who recognized it go completely still.

"I'm still not adjusted to a warm December." 02's face sensors were running at capacity, pulling every face on the crowded street. "In Elysium the rain would have soaked me before I reached the end of the block." She looked up at the buildings lining the street. "And the architecture here is genuinely something."

They were walking under an old-style covered walkway, arched openings standing on pillars, apartment buildings stacked above, but every façade finished in glass front panels that caught and redirected the sun down onto the street in long shifting rectangles of light. The effect was a constant low-level brightness even in the shade.

Infinity kept her eyes on the buildings. "Why glass on every front specifically? If you're going to change the appearance, wouldn't building new taller ones benefit everyone more?"

Raphael was working through a paper cone of traditional Kasparian street food, popcorn dressed in industrial honey, still warm, produced on the street itself. His voice came through slightly muffled. "I grew up in Altea. Back there, we don't preserve buildings for aesthetic reasons, we demolish and build taller, stronger, more modern. The cities kept growing indefinitely that way. Helped with the housing situation somewhat."

He held the cone toward Infinity without fully thinking about it. She accepted it with visible confusion and began scanning the contents. "Here, people love traditional things, and I've started to understand the feeling even if I disagree with the logic. Keeping old food, old clothing, old festivals, that's tradition. But keeping three-hundred-year-old buildings and attaching glass fronts to them is putting cosmetics on your grandmother."

Traffic had slowed down noticeably around them. Altean refugees in cars recognized the silhouette and the symbol, windows coming down, phones appearing. Raphael began distributing handfuls of his popcorn to the small children who had attached themselves to the group's orbit.

02 raised her head to read the street signs, Latin letters, but in a language she didn't have a reference for. "What language is this? I can read the letters but the words don't exist in anything I know. Even the city's name."

"Good observation, Captain." A handful of people nearby stopped moving briefly at the word. Raphael's expression warmed.

"The name Shamsi means 'Our Sun' in the original Kasparian language. It's one of the reasons the glass fronts exist, the Remidican Republic occupied this country and their language replaced Kasparian in daily speech. The original language was erased from conversation, but the street names were never changed. So the words are still there, written in the alphabet the occupiers brought. The buildings followed the same principle, glass specifically to catch and hold the sunlight. They love it here in a way that goes past preference."

Infinity was still studying her fingers, trying to clear the honey. ‘I watched him eat from that cone for an hour. It should be empty. How is there still popcorn in it.’ "Why 'Our Sun' specifically though?"

"They don't just like the sun, they refuse to miss it." Raphael navigated around a cluster of people while 02 and Infinity cut through directly, the crowd adjusting for them automatically. "Double-façade buildings are the most expensive real estate in the country. The light is a value here, not just a feature."

02 had been looking at the pavement as she walked, colorful white and red tiling, tiny red stars pressed into the pattern across every tile. She raised her head and found the Kasparian flag everywhere, hanging from balconies, strung between buildings, displayed in every window with the space for one. Green mountains, blue sky, a yellow sun rising behind the peaks.

"I thought Kasparia had no mountains."

"They don't. Not anymore." Raphael looked at the flags as they walked past. "The Kima mountains were taken from them under the independence treaty with Remidican. The mountains stayed in the flag as a reminder for every generation that came after, those peaks are theirs, regardless of who's standing on them."

He laughed at something and nearly choked on the popcorn.

"The Remidican president filed a formal complaint with the UNG about Kasparia's flag containing their mountains." He recovered. "The UNG representative lowered his head, sat there for a moment, then asked the Remidican side to produce documented proof the mountains belonged to their flag."

"Telling." 02 nodded. "If you're certain something is yours, you don't feel compelled to prove it. The most frightened of theft are the ones who took something in the first place."

‘The popcorn bucket is still producing popcorn.’ Infinity had stopped pretending to look elsewhere. ‘Magic is real. I will purchase one and conduct a full analysis.’

They reached the city's central plaza, wide grey stone paving, the trees that canopied the surrounding streets absent here, the space open to the full sun. A large marble statue of a man stood at the center, green stone, weapon raised above his head, mouth open in a shout, not moving and somehow still in motion.

Families occupied every park bench around it. Small fountains dotted the perimeter, cooling the air and pulling the light into mist. A section of the road to the east had been painted blue, cyclists moved along it at their own pace, passing through the water particles that drifted from the fountains.

Infinity felt a tug on her hoodie. She looked down. A child, maybe eight years old, had two fists closed around the fabric and was pulling with quiet determination.

"Hello. Do you want some magical popcorn?"

"No." The child's tone was strikingly composed for his age. "I want this hoodie. Where is the store that sells it?"

"From the magic land of E-UNIT—"

"The E-UNIT hoodie. Original. What store carries it. Are you hard of hearing?"

Infinity's smile held through effort. "It isn't for sale. Kid."

"Then give me yours."

"I would be arrested."

"I'm a child. Refusing my demands is a form of cruelty." He delivered this with complete sincerity.

"You are demonstrably not a child on the inside." She removed his hands from the fabric and stepped back beside 02. She looked at the paving. "Why is the tile pattern near the statue different from the rest of the capital? I like the red and white elsewhere."

Raphael was still moving, cone in hand. "Colonial period. Remidican's style, white with three red stars, their flag's pattern. They put it everywhere they went. If you want to understand how much they believe in that aesthetic, look up their military uniform."

02 pulled up a screen. White tactical clothing, white hooded capes, three stars on each shoulder, large red masks covering the face worked as breather.

"White isn't a tactical color in combat."

"Their slogan is that they don't hide from their enemies." Raphael smiled. "I think it's a rationalization for painting their military in flag colors. Easier to say it's intentional than to admit it's vanity."

02 closed the screen.

The newer district announced itself through the width of its streets, cleaner, broader, quieter. The light poles disappeared, replaced by floating lights drawing charge from wireless infrastructure embedded in the road. The trees here were denser, covering the sidewalks in an overhead canopy. The buildings shifted shape while keeping the same philosophy, half-sphere glass structures reinforced with metallic dome framing, the stone pavements replaced with fresh asphalt marked by glowing road indicators, speed limits projected into the air by small overhead holograms.

Infinity disconnected herself from the link for a moment and let her battery take over. She felt the charge coming immediately, passively, through her feet, from the road surface itself. She looked around. The robot presence in this district was significantly higher, distributed normally through the crowds, several actively in conversation with people. She reconnected.

02 glanced at her and said nothing.

They reached the presidential residence, the Glass House. 02 read it in a scan. "The head of state lives in a transparent cube. That's a security concern by any standard I know."

Raphael looked at it too. "You and I both grew up in Altea's framework. We build around protection as a default. The fact that we produced hyper-powered androids to police a civilian city says everything you need to know about how that country thinks about threat."

Infinity tilted her head. "I prefer this. The early two-thousands operating system aesthetic, glass and green everywhere. It's genuinely pleasant."

"I'll grant you that." 02 scanned the district again. "I feel safer here than I expected to. My guard keeps trying to come down." She looked around. "I haven't heard a single police siren since we arrived. Is there a local equivalent of the E-UNIT?"

"No." Raphael put an arm around 02's shoulder without thinking about the action, the way someone does when they've been building toward a point. 02 went perfectly rigid. She stared at his arm, then looked at his face. "You're singular. No one produces anything like you except your creator. I've been reading about your work in Veridian Coast, and—"

"Wait." 02 stopped walking. "We have internet access." She opened a screen and pulled up Automatica.

03's profile. Offline. 05. Offline. 04. Offline. 07. Offline.

'Why are they—' She found 24 online and sent the message before the thought finished.

Infinity and Raphael both turned toward her, reading whatever had arrived in her expression.

02's eyes went wide. She took Infinity's shoulder with one hand, grounding herself. Her energy leg flared a violent, unstable blue, the pavement beneath her boot cracking from the sudden spike. "What is happening?"

Infinity put a steadying hand on her arm. "Captain. Talk to me."

"My sisters are broken." Her voice dropped below its usual level. Her eyes shifted red. "Black Voltage hit them recently. 03 is in a boot loop. I need to go back."

A message appeared in both 02's and Infinity's HUDs, Systami.

[Going back now is a poor decision. You would enter the same cycle as them. Let me open a line to Dave and develop a counter-approach. We can fix your sisters and have you ready when you return. Stay on the mission, we're close.]

02 raised her head and looked at Infinity. Infinity met it with a steady nod.

"I'll keep 24 updating me." 02's voice returned to cold and level. 'If there's no solution in seventy-two hours, I'm turning back regardless of where we are.'

Systami's next message came through.

[I dislike operating under pressure.]

02's eyes shifted back to blue.

"Now you know what I feel."