North: Chapter 3

Night in City and information moved through its wide streets like a breeze of colours.

Night in City and City, like the night, spread for miles in every direction: white building beside white building beside white building, so tall that they rested their spires in high clouds made cyan by the streetlamps far below. Tiny studs of light decorated every surface of every building, each one a different room, a separate life.

The Knowledge flowed along the inner edges of the sidewalks, each stream a different colour, here and there forming junctions of blues, crimsons, greens and purples, where they met and could be accessed.

While most rode the railway below, occasional pedestrians, singly and in groups, would stop at these junctions and collect small portions of colour, examine them and move off in the direction of the crowded areas of bars, restaurants and parks.

Other places in City, however, lay deserted: in the business quarter, along Wolf Street and in the Edges where crimes came and went unnoticed.