Rafael leaned into the cool window, watching the glow slide silently beneath him. There was reverence in this view—how could there not be? It reminded him of stories, of those imagined space worlds where entire planets had been paved and planned to the horizon. This one wasn't fiction—it was real. No historical superstructure, not even Rome had shaped land and sky with such coordinated force. This was the quiet monument of a civilization that once believed it could master the world through design alone. The dream of dominion, still humming long after midnight.
But dreams, he knew, could fray.
He studied the darkened gaps between the lights. Vast zones of stillness. Suburban malls slumped into obsolescence, parking lots like drying lakebeds. Factories reborn as storage, not production. Whole neighborhoods radiating soft luminescence, yet asleep in more ways than one. The silence behind the lights had a weight to it, like holding your breath for too long.
The landscape was stitched with freeways—more concrete than river. Rafael could almost feel the motion: millions of souls always going, seldom arriving. He imagined it from above, the entire system pulsing in loops. Busy. Bright. Tired.
After landing, Rafael made his way into the city, choosing—almost by ritual—to visit the great central station. He liked this place. There was something timeless in its architecture, in its ambition. The station had been built to impress, and decades later, it still did. Towering windows bathed the marble floor in pale daylight, dust motes catching the sun like slow-moving stars. The ceilings rose like a cathedral’s, but here the worship was movement.
Stolen story; please report.
He paused beneath the main rotunda. For a moment, he stood in the beam of light that poured through the vaulted dome. No one noticed him. Everyone moved around him like water around a stone. It struck him how rarely people stood still here. As if the entire place were allergic to pause.
There was something poetic about it all. A nation still dressed in its prime, but carrying a quiet limp. A place designed to outpace time, now slowly worn by it.
He took a seat on a long wooden bench, smoothing his coat as he observed the current. People surged past: eyes on devices, voices clipped, backs slightly hunched from unseen burdens. They moved with purpose, but not peace. As though speed had replaced direction.
This place was still functioning—efficient, even impressive—but hollow in a way you could only feel if you stood still long enough. At first glance, everything radiated strength: the scale of the architecture, the precision of the movement, the sheer momentum of the place. Towering glass facades caught the morning light like armor. The marble underfoot gleamed with the polish of ambition. People moved quickly, confidently, like a machine that knew its purpose. It looked like power made manifest—alive, alert, commanding. From the sky, it still resembled the crown of the world. But up close, the cracks whispered—subtle at first, like hairline fractures in polished stone. And yet Rafael felt no disdain. Quite the opposite—he admired this place deeply. He loved its creativity, its daring, its refusal to accept limits. It had built not only machines, but myths. It had inspired the world. He wanted it to thrive. He wished it would pause long enough to remember what it once promised—what it still could become. His heart ached not from superiority, but from reverence. Like watching a friend stumble who once carried you on their shoulders.