Warden

was something to be said about not feeling any sort of arousal. It was liberating in a way, because she didn’t have to look for sexual relief like most people. She could only imagine how much time had been lost throughout human history because of horniness. Then again, humanity would have never colonized the world, let alone the solar system, without sexual reproduction.
In one of the videos for Brandywine street, fireworks lit the air as some sort of national holiday was celebrated. The sparkling pyrotechnics were often occluded by the profusion of drones that zipped back and forth overhead.
Drones…
She shut down the video and cleared her HUD.
“Hey Horatio,” she sent. “Can I borrow some creds?”
“Why?” Horatio said. “I’m busy now. Critical moment. My villagers are revolting. And PKs are attacking. Talk to Will.”
“Playing that MMORPG of yours again, huh?” she said. “Just send me a few creds and I’ll be out of your hair. Add it to my debt.”
“You still haven’t told me what you need it for,” Horatio said.
“I want to rent a drone,” she replied.

8
Rhea flew high above Rust Town, viewing the world from the camera lenses of Gizmo. Horatio had conferred with Will, and they concluded that they might as well lend her Gizmo rather than paying for a rental. Cheaper for everyone involved.
She had full control of the drone, inasmuch as she didn’t try to fly into a wall or tree or something—the obstacle avoidance tech wouldn’t let her. She also had an altitude ceiling of four hundred meters, which was the maximum allowed for drones of that size in the city.
It felt so good to travel by air like that in the dark, without having to worry about someone trying to rob or attack her. Of course, there were professional thieves who stole drones for a living, but they concentrated on the higher end models—it wasn’t worth the effort to steal a drone like Gizmo, considering one just like it could be rented for a few creds.
She could see the pools of light cast by the glow lamps below, which illuminated the streets in a pattern that reminded her of beads because of the spacing. She headed directly for the walls that surrounded of Aradne.
As she approached, lights flashed from the walkway of the city wall, and more flashes came from overhead—robots and drones were scanning Gizmo. Apparently she passed the threat assessment, because she received no message to turn back.
And thus, she entered the city by drone.
The well-lit skyscrapers arrayed before her matched the images and videos she had seen online. They were so very colorful, with each building seeming to compete with the next to see who could be the most extravagant. They competed not just in lights, but height, and design. There were an assortment of geometric shapes, some stacked one atop the other: a needle with a diamond on top; a thin ellipse with a broad globe in the center; two pyramids stacked tip to tip to form a shape vaguely resembling a giant hourglass.
She increased Gizmo’s altitude until she reached the four-hundred-meter mark, giving the drone enough clearance to fly over all save the tallest buildings. She had AR mode activated, which labeled every skyscraper and point of interest below.
She spotted the mushroom-shaped hydroponics plant where much of the city’s plant-based edibles were nurtured. Beside it were several tall, metal silos placed in neat rows—the Aradne meat production factory, where beef, pork and poultry cells were coaxed into ready-to-eat patties without ever birthing conscious entities. According to what she’d read online, the various food pills sold to the poorer denizens were derived from the refuse of that plant and meat production.
On the other side of the hydroponics plant, four squat, huge concrete cylinders formed the tanks that stored the city’s water supply. Because Aradne was relatively close to the ocean, the city had no need to manipulate the weather to divert rainfall—which was nonexistent in this region anyway, due to all the other cities that did manipulate the clouds. Instead, large pipes led away across the surface, past a processing plant near the city walls, before vanishing into the darkness outside the city. Those pipes led to the ocean a hundred kilometers away, whose waters fed the city. A small pipe led away from the tanks to supply water to Rust Town.
Menacing turrets lined the perimeter of both production plants, and the water tanks, warning away those who might be contemplating attacks on the city’s food and water sources. She made very sure to give those sites a wide berth with Gizmo.
Long strips of light delineated Brandywine Street and Orleans Avenue on opposite sides of town—the glow lamps were brighter there than in the rest of the city, as were the lights on the various buildings, even though they were small. The small silhouettes of drones told her that there were other curious pilots checking out the party districts, and she saw very few actual partygoers on the streets themselves. She zoomed in on a group of them with Gizmo’s camera—robots in suits and dresses. At least, she assumed they were robots, judging from the metallic skin. They could have been cyborgs, like herself. She was too far away to do an ID lookup on them.
She decided to veer toward Orleans Avenue, where they walked.
As she flew that way, her gaze was drawn to a series of sprawling, low to medium rise structures to the west. They looked to be part of a campus of some kind, and enclosed well-lit parks and fountains. On the farthest side, the buildings culminated in a large, dome-shaped structure.
She couldn’t see anyone on that campus. There weren’t even any drones, as far as she could tell.
She checked the AR labels. That area of the city was called “Aradne Parliament,” and the dome-shaped structure was tagged “Parliament Building.”
Interesting.
She found herself drawn to it, and she steered Gizmo toward the structure.
When she was within two hundred meters, a warning appeared on her HUD.
Warning, approaching illegal