The tram slid out of the station so quietly that most people didn’t notice it had begun moving.
Kaito did. He always did.
He liked the window seats.
The glass curved outward slightly, thick enough to shrug off micrometeors, transparent enough to make the universe feel uncomfortably close. The kind of window that made visitors from other civilizations step back a little too quickly.
Cyber-Gaia liked its windows big.
Kaito leaned his forehead against the cool surface and watched the impossible roll by.
Out there, filling half the sky, was Saturn.
Not orbiting freely anymore. Not drifting through space as it had for billions of years. Now it sat gently inside a containment halo the size of a small moon. The ring shimmered with layered fields, each one bending gravity, magnetism, and atmosphere just enough to keep the planet perfectly stable inside the sprawling megastructure of the city.
Storm bands curled across its surface like brushstrokes.
Tiny ships darted around it like curious insects.
It should have looked terrifying.
o Kaito, it looked like a neighbor.
The tram glided along a luminous transit spine that stretched across millions of kilometers. The line pulsed faintly beneath the hull, guiding vehicles from district to district faster than the human brain could comfortably think about.
Someone nearby yawned.
Across the aisle, a mechanic in grease-stained overalls was arguing with their wrist display.
“If the fusion orchard drops below seventy percent yield again, I’m filing a complaint,” they muttered.
Their interface answered calmly. “The orchard has requested a rest cycle.”
“You can’t rest a reactor.”