IN THE SHADOW

As I sped forward, across the elevated highway of the plains, far above the simmering fields of corn and soy, over the heads of the millions of dirt-covered men tending those hybridized stalks, the tops of the towers came into view hundreds of miles before I had to start braking. "You're sure?"

"It's just outside of the old Seattlehama perimeter," said Pheff. "It's called Royal NuSity Estates. He's in Tower 23, forty-first floor. Apartment E." After a beat, he added, "The place looks awful. Knit aluminum towers, doublewide moon balconies, watervators, and every other semi-modern cliché of super-luxury 'rises. Who is this guy?"

I had not been back to Seattlehama since my days of thread thievery and skivvé knitting. "I'm just following a lead."

"I thought you were going to see Ryder?"

"I did. Now I'm checking here."

"Way out in Seattlehama?"

"Seattlehama has a burgeoning local textiles industry."

"Not really. Have you ever been there?"

"Years ago."

"That's so knotted! Did you get all dressed and… you know?"

"I did, but I'll tell you about it another time."

The city was ten times larger than it had been. Originally the project had been the brainchild of a particle theorist and singer named Zika Emerald. She spent her fortune on building an enormous four-mile-wide foundation around Mt. Rainier and fourteen buildings that made the original core. But she had died a week before the final tower was topped, and by that point, she and the project were bankrupt. A few years later several rim cities joined together to rescue the project and transformed it into a sex and fashion tourism destination. As a slubber boy, gazing up at the structures, I had no idea of the politics, money, and lust that went on in there, not that I would have understood.

As the Chang sped closer, I saw how Seattlehama had changed in my absence. The city had been towering and thin, an awe-inspiring monolith. Now the original towers were lost in a garden of thistle, monocot, and dandelion buildings.

As the exit ramp curved hard to the right, I caught a glimpse beyond the guard walls of the slubs surrounding the new city limits. I couldn't help but wonder if some boy were out there, in the cornfields, looking up at the colossal mass of this new Seattlehama, and maybe even at the red and blue lights of my car and wondering who and what was up there.

The road straightened, as I set a course for the secluded Royal NuSity Estates. I wished I hadn't come back.

As I passed the city center, glancing through the star roof of the Chang at the cloud-shrouded towers, I could feel the crystalline memories of my youth shattering like glass.