Some sights

MallTown

MallTown is what happens when you let a mall overtake an entire city. Built over what was once a sleepy suburb, ground zero was a ShopMore department store. It’s been hailed as “a great leap forward”, “a boost to the region’s economy” and “a dystopian hellscape of middle-class ennui”.

A city-wide, multi-storey complex of interconnected buildings encompassing an area of over 30 square miles, it’s fully equipped for a life spent indoors. Public spaces are lit 24/7, air-conditioning is always at an agreeable 72-79ºF and speakers play an infinite loop of announcements and totally-non-soulcrushing muzak. Like a casino, and for essentially the same reasons, MallTown has no clocks or natural light. It's like they say: you'll lose yourself in MallTown! 

Shamballa Ashram

The first of its kind to open, amid rumors and accusations, not entirely unfounded, of being a hotbed of all kinds of deviant unpatriotic tendencies, like health food or guilt-free sex. It was the entryway for Gray philosophies and politics into the soft, impressionable brains of the nation's youth. Now it's a respected institution doubling as a Source ashram and wellness center, where tech billionaires can strip down and try out the monastic life without having to forgo continental beds and breakfast buffets.

Hades

Half a century ago the first pilgrims laid down the foundations of what was to become the town of Hades, a place where devil-worshippers would be free to practice their religion without fear of persecution from anti-child sacrifice bigots. 

Modelled after the nine circles of Hell, the city is sectioned into nine concentric ring-like boroughs, each separated by a circular road that, in good Hellish fashion, gets more traffic-ridden the closer you are to the center. 

International Lunar Base

The moon. Once a dreary, uncommodifiable dead rock adrift in space, it is now a vibrant melting pot of warring settlements. The International Lunar Base is the largest, at the same time a scientific outpost and a popular holiday destination (as one anonymous passenger on the first commercial flight to the Moon put it: "one small step for Man, one giant leap for the Lunar Board of Tourism").

Rustvania

In the wake of the umpteenth economic crash that absolutely no one could see coming; and after decades of exploratory Ley mining operations had turned the Ruddy Lakes into a blighted bog of doom, the Government finally decided it was time to close up shop on Rustvania. Millions of people were left to fend for themselves as society and nature collapsed all around them. Some even noticed a difference.

Anarchy! The expectation was that the power vacuum would give rise to warlords pitting child warriors against each other on adapted muscle cars. As awesome as that sounds, Rustvanians apparently had something else in mind. They formed nomadic communities organized around mutual aid and self-governance principles which have been — to the irritation of everyone else — doing surprisingly well.