Paul Di Filippo - WikiWorld

“You really think the tensile parms of the senstrate will support a pylon that high?”

“You used that same skin last year in Marple Cheshire, remember?”

“Siting the Jedi Temple within a hundred yards of the Zionist Charismatics? What were you thinking!”

The long hard slog to a final plan took all my concentration and energy. But still, I spared a little attention pinging the grapevine and trying to learn what the other contestants were doing.

That included Holly Grale of course. That stinker ranked two spots below me, but still within the top ten. Right this minute, as I struggled to balance greenspace with mall footage, taverns with schools, she was doing the same.

But her security was tight, and no news filtered out about her design.

Not even when I bumped into her at the reformation of Las Ramblas.

Back when the announcement that Bloorvoor was up for reformation appeared, the Las Ramblas remodeling was already in the populace-inspection period. The eventual popular vote awarded the honours to Lafferty Fisk and his plan, and tonight Lafferty was throwing the usual party to witness and celebrate his triumph.

The venue was a restaurant named Myxomycota that cantilevered out from the side of Mount Excess. Mount Excess held all the extra mass of sensate substrate not currently in use by any neighbourhood. It was in effect a solid vertical reservoir which could be drawn down or added to, and thus its elevation and bulk was constantly changing. Tonight Mount Excess was pretty substantial—minimalist designs were hip just then—affording us a good panoramic view of iCity and Las Ramblas, the neighbourhood lit up all red as a sign of the impending transformation.

The food and drink and music were splendid—I seem to recall a band named the Tiny Identities was playing—the company was stimulating, and I was just beginning to relax for the first time in ages. My plan for the competition was almost finalized, with a day or two to spare till the deadline. As midnight approached, a wave of pleasant tension and anticipation enveloped the room. Everyone clustered against the big windows that looked out over the brilliant city.

I turned to the person at my elbow to make some innane comment, and there stood Holly Grale.

Her black hair was buzzed short, she had six cometary cinder studs in each earlobe, and she wore a catsuit made out of glistening kelp cloth, accessorized with a small animated cape. Her broad wry painted mouth was ironically quirked.

“Well, well, well,” she said in a voice whose sensuous allure I found distractingly at odds with my professional repugnance for this woman. “If it isn’t Frederick Law Moses, once the baron of Floradora Heights.”

My name sounded so pretentious coming from her lips. I suppose “Robert Olmsted” might have been a less dramatic alternative to honour my heroes, but when I had chosen my name I had been much younger and dreamier.

“Oh, Holly, it’s you. I didn’t recognize you for a moment without your copy of Urban Planning for Dummies in your hand. Shouldn’t you be home trying to master that ancient emulation of SimCity ?”

My jibes had no effect. “I have plenty of down time now, Moses. I’ve just locked in my design for the Bloorvoor competition.”

This news unnerved me. Only a very confident or foolish planner wouldn’t be making changes right up till the last minute. I tried to dissemble my anxiety with a quip, but then events outside precluded all conversation.

The reformation of Las Ramblas had begun.

The entire red-lit district began to dissolve in syrupy slow-mo fashion, structures flowing downward into the sensate motherboard like a taffy pull. The varied cityscape, the topography of streets and buildings and all the district’s “vegetation,” was losing its stock of unique identities as all constructions were subsumed back into the senstrate from which they had once arisen.

Of course, all businesses, clubs, cafes, workshops, restaurants and other establishments had closed down early for the evening prior to the change, and people had retreated to their homes and condos, if they had not left the district entirely. These domestic units were autonomous permanent nodes and had sealed themselves off, locking their occupants safely away. Those inside would ride out the reformation without a jolt or qualm, cradled by the intelligent senstrate. Many people even slept through the whole process. And anyone absent-minded enough to be caught out during the change would be envaginated by the senstrate in a life-support vacuole and protected till the reformation was over. Inconvenient, but hardly dangerous.

Now the district was a flat featureless plain, a hole in iCity, dotted with the capsules of domestic units and the occasional person-sized vacuole, awaiting the signal to transform.

Lafferty Fisk proudly transmitted the impulse from his phone.

Cascades of information coursed through the senstrate.

iCity: a lattice of pure patterns.

Just like the time Mode O’Day had instantiated the old model of Bloorvoor on the tabletop in Desire Path, so now the new version of Las Ramblas (to be named Airegin Miles) commenced to be born. Structures composed of pure senstrate arose amidst a matrix of streets and other urban features, incorporating the autonomous domestic units into themselves where planned. (I swore I felt Mount Excess drop by a centimetre or three.) The sensate material assumed a variety of textures, and skins, right down to a very convincing indestructible grass and soil. Water flowed through new conduits into ponds and canals. Normal-coloured lights came on.

Within less than an hour, Airegin Miles stood complete, iCity’s newest district.

A huge round of applause broke out in the restaurant. Lafferty Fisk stood at the focus of the approbation and envy. Memories of being there myself flooded powerfully through me.

When the tumult died down, I looked around, feeling I could be generous even toward Holly Grale.

But she was nowhere to be seen.

All the tabletop models and phantom zone walk-throughs for the Bloorvoor reformation went live a couple of days later. So I saw what Grale had accomplished.

Her design was magnificent. There was no denying it. Just the way Alpha Ralpha Boulevard looped around and flowed into von Arx Plaza— This was genuine talent at work.

Was her design better than mine and all the others?

Only the populace could say.

And soon they said yes.

Grale’s was the winner.

I moped around for forty-eight hours in an absolute funk, a malaise that was hardly alleviated by the fact that my plan for Bloorvoor had garnered the second highest number of votes. Doubt and despair assailed me. Was I losing my touch? Had I plumbed the depths of my art and hit a stony infertile bottom? Should I abandon my passion?

I spent an inordinate amount of time inside the phantom zone walk-through of Grale’s winning plan. I kept comparing her accomplishment, her sensibilities, to mine, fixated on discovering what had made her entry so appealing to the populace. Was it this particular cornice, this special wall, this juxtaposition of tree and window? The way sunlight would strike that certain gable, or wind funnel down that mournful alley?

And by the end of my fevered inspection, I had decided something.

The taste of the populace was debased. The residents of Bloorvoor—soon to become (yuck!) “QualQuad”—had voted incorrectly. My design was indeed the superior one.

I realize now how crazy that sounds. The citizenry is always the ultimate arbiter. Without them, we urban planners would have no reason to exist. There can be no imposition of our tastes over their veto, no valourizing of a platonic perfection over perceived utility. We all offer the best we have, and they choose among us.