Go for it!

Samantha was sick and tired of walking. She was sick and tired of many things in this Orwellian future world, but mostly she was sick of walking. Before the great truck could accelerate to its cruising speed she sprinted forward. It took only a few strides with her new long legs to close the gap and a short leap to reach the bottom rung of the ladder. She lifted her legs with an acrobat’s grace and easily pulled herself up the rungs on the side of the truck until she was riding safely above the asphalt that zipped by below her.

Samantha could get used to this new body of Rhiain. Once she was riding on the truck she had time to look more closely at the buildings that lined the city streets she was travelling along. Most of the structures were at least fifty stories high and many were much taller. The bottom ten or so stories had a dirty industrial look, the few windows that were on these lower levels were small and dirty. Somewhere between the tenth and twentieth story a change takes place in the buildings.

Even in the early morning hours she can see the gradual change in the facades of the buildings as they climb higher into the heavens. Unlike the lower levels that are covered with a layers of grime and stained with streaks of rusty run-off water the upper levels gleam of white marble and gilded glasswork. The boring utilitarian straight lines of the lower levels begin to curve and bend with architectural features that become more and more elaborate the higher the buildings climb.

As the sun begins to rise behind her she sees greater numbers of floating cars fill the gaps between the towering buildings in ribbons of traffic that seem endless. She also realizes that the truck she is riding is slowing as it approaches the base of one of the great towers that she had been trying to reach. She hopped off her ride glad to no longer be standing on the narrow steps of the ladder pleased that the miles of travel from the hospital to the great towers of Aria were over.

She had arrived at Tower Eight. From her location Samantha could now see there were twelve towers in all arranged like the hours of a clock around a huge central opening more than a mile in diameter. Each of the towers reached high into the morning sky, hundreds of stories high in pyramids of glass and steel caught the morning sun

It took almost an hour for Samantha to make her way to the base of Tower Five. As she walked along the litter strewn streets she saw more and more people wandering about, but the inhabitants of these lower levels were not at all what she expected from a society as spectacularly advanced as this. There were no flying cars down here; some of the locals rode decrepit bicycles others pushed small carts laden with bundles of possessions. The vast majority of the squalid street-people simply walked with their heads down with the slow shuffle that she had seen in the streets of Worcester. Some things never change, the dirty faces and rag covered bodies would not seem out of place in the homeless shelters and food kitchens of early 21st century Worcester.

“Is Ugly-man one of these sad people?” She asked aloud. Somehow she knew that she needed to be looking somewhere else. What had Rhiain meant by the ‘Shadow of the Fifth Tower’? Samantha could not even think of how to begin. Should she ask one of these sorry people or try to get up to the higher levels where the normal people were on her own?