Nightside City

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THE CITY OUTSIDE MY WINDOW WAS A CACOPHONY OF neon and Stardust, a maze of blinding glitter and flash, and from where I sat it was all meaningless, no discrete images at all-nothing discrete, and certainly no discretion. I knew that the casino ads were shimmying and singing like sirens, luring passersby onto the rocks of the roulette wheels and randomizers, sucking them in with erotic promises of riches, but all that reached me through the window was a tangle of colored light and a distant hum, punctuated every so often by the buzz and blink of a macroscopic floater passing nearby. Even the big ships landing or lifting didn't bother me-the window was angled so I couldn't see them unless they buzzed the Trap, which would have gotten any pilot's license erased, and the port's big damper fields kept the noise out of the city.

As long as I kept the window transparent I always had the flicker and the sparkle and the hum for a background, and the blaze of light and color was there if I bothered to look, but I didn't have the noise and flash grinding in on me.

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