The city of Mecha stood on what was once Dejima, the artificial island originally used to house foreign traders between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Javier’s new ears told him this as he wandered through it. The old island had been only nine thousand square meters in total; it was now many times that size, having annexed the old Naval Training Centre as well as some of the city of Nagasaki. The original island stood at the centre of the total landmass, and it was the only place in town where the buildings remained low. Skyscrapers loomed over it, casting the reproduction Dutch warehouses and townhouses in a constant shadow that left the snow accumulated on every rooftop a pale blue. He didn't understand why the humans on the cruise liner had needed an artificial winter; real winter seemed just fine out here.
Javier had visited a few great, old cities in his time. Mexico City was probably the oldest, standing as it did on the shoulders of Tenochtitlan. But where the ancient roots of that city were almost invisible, the gilt-edged heels of each cathedral grinding the stone faces of each temple into the hungry mud of Lake Texcoco, here the remnants were a tourist attraction. It was like watching a body laid out in state: the little houses with their white and blue china and their long tables and their stiff-backed horsehair chairs arranged as neatly as the bones of an elder statesman. Javier considered this as he wandered through the oldest part of the city. They were still nice houses, in their own way. A little dark, perhaps, but cozy. Perfect for vN, or any other species that didn’t truly require indoor plumbing. He liked the raked gravel in the alleys, and the way the vN staff left out food and water for cats in dishes printed to look like wooden shoes.
It was all real. Tangible. Not like the Museum of the City of Seattle, that painted harlot of a city-wide earthquake memorial that appeared like a PTSD flashback if only you wore the right glasses. Not like the dry fountains outside the Akiba, in Las Vegas. Not augmented reality, but an entirely separate and equally valid consensual reality, as dishonest in its performance of what might once have been as Javier’s iterations were inexact copies of himself.
It helped that only cosplayers were allowed in.
Javier bounced a little in his sandalled feet. The wood bottoms of his geta were surprisingly comfortable. They’d been printed from a cedar-cellulose composite, which improved the smell a great deal. He’d obtained them at the Tori-Tori, one of the four gates to the old city. The Tori-Tori had a big old quadcopter drone skinned to look like a majestic red bird. The other gates had a white tiger, a blue serpent, or a black turtle. Who knew what they were made of. But the quadcopter was the most famous, because every hour on the hour it squirted some butane down the bones of its exoskeleton, burst into flames, and flew away to some distant rooftop. On that rooftop, someone skinned it again, and then it flew back just in time to repeat the process. It was a low-tech solution, but as Javier watched the bird dip and arc and perch and preen, he thought it worked. It looked old. It looked as old as the surrounding buildings, despite the fact that it was built centuries later. It matched.
At the Tori-Tori, the vN inside the little wooden kiosk asked him whether he wanted to be foreign or not.
“You could be a Portuguese, circa 1543,” one of them said. She looked like Rory, but if the network had warned her about him, she made no sign of it.
“That’s the brownest option you’ve got, is it?”
Some algorithm in her activated, and she blushed. Colour diffused from one high cheekbone to the other, spreading across the bridge of her nose without ever touching the tip. “I’m sorry,” she said, in a tiny, breathy voice that sounded like what would happen if fluffy white kittens ever gained the ability to speak.
“It’s fine.” Javier started removing his dad’s clothes. “I’ll take it.”
The “Portuguese” costume wasn’t the most ridiculous thing he’d ever worn, but it was pretty damn close. Under his sandals – standard issue for everyone, no matter what costume they wore – he wore pale tights that rose up into a pair of puffy culottes that ballooned around his thighs and swished as he walked. He had a weird pirate shirt with a bunch of ruffles at the collar and cuffs, and a deep green “velvet” jacket complete with a little peplum at the hip and a matching hat.
“Do you have a walking stick?” he’d asked.
“Are you injured?”
“No.” He stood back from the mirror in the little changing stall. “I just think that an outfit like this needs a walking stick.”