Today, I worked at the office. After a morning spent in never-ending meetings, lunchtime came rightly as a savior. But there was some place I wanted to visit before eating lunch, so I left the office building. The distance to my destination was a 15-minute-long walk under the rain to the warping gate, followed by 10 seconds of warping time. My office was located at the capital of the United States of Europe, Bruxelles since President Christian Zhu unified disaggregated countries into one single superpower. After I arrived in front of the nearest warping gate, I told the machine my destination and it proceeded to check my identity by sending a query to the chip inside my head: “Take me to Mountainside Lake.” I paid 15 crypto-euros and then walked into the gate from which a neon-blue fluid emanated.

The city of Sacred-Heart has a particular urban organization. At the center of the city, a huge composite building, Babylon, was erected on what used to be an emerald-colored hill in ancient times. Babylon was made up of a pile of constructions built progressively at different times of human history. Thus many different architectures coexist - baroque, industrial, gothic, neoclassical, etc. It spans over such an extended area that Babylon could be seen as a city of its own. In fact, people from Babylon never interacts with people from outside the tower. All around Babylon, an endless area of miserable buildings and shacks was divided into multiple districts. This destitute area is where the vast majority of the population lives. My name is Canau Ghyn and this where I live. Today, I’m over 80 years old but I’ve never left the place where I was born but once, the District Nine which is notorious for being the highest ranking district among all.