Monotopia

The upper levels of Rourke gleamed in the morning sunlight like an architect's dream. The city's skyscrapers reached for the heavens, while a mockery of hell seethed in its underbelly like pestilence.

Below, a factory exploded, sending plumes of red flames and yellow smoke into the air. The fans strung between the buildings blew it back down to street level, and civilians scattered, trying to avoid the noxious fumes on their ways to work. Only a few broke their routines to attempt to aid those trapped in the factory; the rest were more worried about getting to work.

On the midlevels, high enough to see the sky but low enough that the Sun rarely reached the streets, the midclass were just rising to see the morning. Shopkeepers swept their stores clean and neatly organized their shelves; hosewives prepared breakfast for their families. The sparse few people who worked the nightshift - no more than was necessary - returned home, exhausted and, in many cases, drunk; the Empire's liquor was cheap, and the haze it provided was an easier escape from the drudgery of their lives than a true escape from the city itself. A student at one of the midlevel universities gazed down through one of the grates in the street at the underbelly; he was in training to become a physician's apprentice, a role that would slowly bring him up through the ranks, into the golden spires above where his children and grandchildren would never have to worry about their fortunes again, but no small part of him wanted to be down there. He could do some good down there; he could save or improve lives, rather than tending to some rich bastard with a bellyache from consuming too much contraband cheese from Granlock or dispensing opium to people for whom alcohol had lost the edge to cut away their mental or physical pains. The city's upper tram rattled overhead; moments later, the vibrations of the lower one coursed through the pavement. The two trains were rarely in sync anymore.

On the highlevels, the parts of the city that gleamed in the Sun, an airship pulled into one of the docks lining the city's outer edges. The crew tossed ropes to the dockworkers - all from the midlevels minus their supervisor - who bound them to the gear posts lining the docks. The supervisor pulled a lever; the low hum of burning diesel accompanied the clicks of the gears as they slowly turned the posts, drawing the airship close enough to unload. Most of the cargo was legal, but one singular crate - stamped with the insignia of Dodge - was not. Two of the dockhands draped a canvas sheet over this crate before carrying it off the airship, careful not to drop it. Who knew what might happen if they lost its contents, when the hope of half the city's population dwelled within?

Two women in fine dresses walked past a dance hall. The older of the two turned her nose up at it, muttering something about the degeneracy of the youth. The younger, no older than twenty, gazed at the door longingly for a heartbeat before following in her elder's footsteps. She could hear the rhythm and melody of the music even long after the hall fell behind them.

In one of the city's penthouses, three girls and two boys sat together in a group, surrounded by schoolbooks and papers while a midlevel woman in a sober grey dress lectured them. One girl passed one of the boys a note; he unfolded it in his lap and giggled at the contents, hiding it behind his hand so their teacher didn't overhear.

In the city's highest spire, the Baronet sat at his desk of gilded malachite, opening the daily correspondence. Most of it came from the other cities; he pushed those all aside, stopping only to peruse whether he should use them as kindling or leave his beleaguered secretary to handle them instead. But one near the bottom, printed on fine vellum and sealed with a golden wax stamp, caught his attention. This one he treated with far more reverence, lifting it from the pile and setting it gently on his writing mat. The jackdaw on the stamp glimmered under the electric lights.

Unlike its sisters, Rourke had never broken free of the Domovoi Empire; the city had seen no real reason to. The Empire was generous to those who sided with it willingly; even now, the Baronet could imagine the heaping rewards he would receive for reclaiming its territory once Azaria fell. And once Azaria was under the Empire's control once more, they could use it as a jumping-off point for the continent on the other side, and with it, the remainder of the free monotopias. The only ones who'd suffer were the soldiers, but all of them came from the city's underclass; no one cared about what happened to them . The Baronet broke the seal and pulled out the letter within, greedily scanning the scribbled handwriting within. Its contents made him laugh, bright and eager and triumphant, promising everything he'd ever wanted for both his city and himself and then some.

The city of Rourke reigned another day.