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Chapter 16 by Nemo of Utopia Nemo of Utopia

Which Will It Be, Champ?

*"Take Me Home, The Tour Can Come Later."*

"Take me 'home' Jessica, the Tour can come later, right now I need to call my parents and tell them I'm moving out, for starters..." You explain, and Jessica smiles.

"Sure thing John, next stop, the Penthouse Suite," Jessica says and you head for the waiting express elevator.

The elevator is attended by a sharp dressed young-adult person of indeterminate gender, either a very Femi dude or a very butch chick, and you can't tell which, but honestly, it's unimportant: you've just started a new relationship and your new partner seems to be the possessive type, so no roving eyes for you. "Penthouse Suite, please," you say to the attendant, hoping their voice will give you a clue, but your hopes are dashed when he/she simply nods and presses the button marked "RA" on the wall of buttons behind him/her then stands stoically silent for the entire ten minute elevator ride to the main roof of the building.

The express elevator disembarks from an area holding doors for five of the massive elevator carts directly in front of an Art Deco style Mini-Cathedral, clearly built primarily for facilitating fancy weddings. Off to one side of it is the Helipad on which rests the chopper you observed landing earlier, with space enough on the platform to land three more, or alternatively one of the midsize helicopters that do things like transporting small vehicles and bulk cargo. On the other side of the cathedral is an immense swimming pool and your appraising eyes soon realize that the whole roof is subtly sloped to feed rainwater into that pool, so it most likely also acts as the building's main cistern.

Behind the Cathedral though is the Penthouse Suite, and it takes up a huge patch of real estate. Walled off from the rest of the roof you can't see much of it yet, but you do see that there are mature trees already in place to shade the house growing around yet still more Neo-Art-Deco styled construction with a distinctly pseudo-rustic flare to it this time. Jessica leads you around the eight-foot-high, spike-topped, wooden privacy fence to a gate that opens with a keypad, amusingly enough presently keyed to your cell-phone number, ("We'll have to get Nanet to change that before tomorrow morning," Jessica mutters, blushing,) and you head inside. The Penthouse Suite proves to be a single story open floor plan ranch house as decorated by someone who has a mild obsession with the American 1920s, yet not so much that it blinds them to the advances made since that era, just that they are hung up on the 20s aesthetic.

As some examples of the dichotomy...

Solid oak king size four poster beds varnished with a period non-toxic varnish? Check.
King size memory foam mattresses and pillows for those beds? Double check!

1920s era enameled double-sided sink and tile countertops in the kitchen? Check.
Accompanied by all modern appliances? Check.
BUT, those appliances have been custom styled to resemble modern versions of 1920s appliances? Double check!

Period antique crank gramophone and vacuum tube radio in the living room for music? Check.
72-inch widescreen flatscreen 2160-dpi UHD TV set with full surround sound and the best cable bundle available through any cable network in the region plus all the assorted streaming services and a PS4 with a library of over 100 titles to chose from†? TRIPPLE Check!
†(Counting reverse compatible classic titles from PS3 and PS2 plus downloaded titles like Minecraft...)

This is kind of the theme for the whole house, its a fusion of the Art Deco era and modern advances, just like the entire skyscraper you've seen so far, and you're starting to feel a bit concerned about Jessica's sanity. I mean, admiring the Art Deco movement and building a skyscraper that emulates it, that's one thing, but theming your living space around it? That's getting a bit neurotic.

Still, that's a fight to save for later, right now, it's time to tour the outside of the house. Outside the house is made of bricks, or rather Faux Brick Aluminum siding, but quite cleverly and skillfully disguised. The whole thing is wrapped by a garden most of which grows edible food but it does it in such an artistic way that you don't realize these plants aren't just for show till Jessica starts pointing them out.

There also are fish ponds where you grow edible fish and a pigpen where a small sounder of swine grows fat off the table scraps of the skyscraper. All in all an incredibly eco-friendly operation. Then she takes you to "The Vista", and that puts the final stamp on the deal...

*What Is "The Vista" And How Does That Put The Final Stamp On The Deal?* (Also What KIND Of Stamp? Big Red[X] Of Rejection Or Shiny Green (OK!) Of Approval?)*

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