No two accounts of the city align. Some sources describe it as a place where virtue was quantified, where morality could be weighed and traded like coins. Others suggest it was never a city at all, but a philosophical construct — a thought experiment designed to expose the dangers of turning righteousness into spectacle.

Paul drove into the city. The morning haze clung to the highrises before him. His automobile merged. The once-notorious I-5 congestion had vanished, replaced by the smooth, humming stream of traffic of autonomous cars.

Nebulae bloomed like cosmic flowers in an eternal garden; black holes spun in silent majesty. Amidst this cosmic ballet, where light takes millennia to traverse, an elegant and alien spacecraft glided silently.