A wooden park bench three thousand five hundred feet below sea level was the finest place in the world to drink chilled apple cider.
Giles Croft sat on the green-painted slatted bench on the southern walkway of New Thalassos, his boots resting on clean granite curb stones, his silver thermos resting beside him.
Overhead, the afternoon sky was a vast, inverted bowl of pale turquoise, framed by the sheer, terraced dark rock cliffs of the former ocean gulf.
In the public gardens across the avenue, children in clean linen smocks were laughing as they chased wooden hoop-toys through rows of newly planted plum trees.
The sweet, clean smell of blossoming clover and fresh mountain loam filled the air, brought down through sixty-four air-flow shafts by giant electric air intake fans.
Giles opened his worn drafting ledger, uncapped his fountain pen. Then he logged the final macro-colony entry for the season.
Three million five hundred thousand citizens.
Zero homeless. One hundred percent electrified. Every tenement block connected to high-pressure freshwater, town sewage, and central district steam heat.
