There were few things in town civil building as ceremonially tedious, politically delicate, and structurally dangerous as an official ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Austin was standing on the ritual watching mezzanine of the High-sky Equatorial Ring, suspended thirty-six thousand miles above the blue-green marble of the Azure Cloud Sphere. Across the twenty-foot-wide diamond-plate pedestrian concourse stretched a bright red, three-inch-wide polypropylene land-mapper’s ribbon, tied securely between two schedule-40 zinc-coated steel support posts using neat clove-hitch knots.
In Austin’s right hand was a giant pair of drop-forged tin snips, their hardened alloy steel blades polished to a mirror finish. In his left hand was a heavy light metal clipboard containing the master town occupancy permit, thirty-six pages of crushing weight-test sign-offs, and an official Certificate of Substantial Completion.
Before the dignitaries had been allowed onto the mezzanine, Austin had personally conducted a thirty-minute forced fall-protection briefing. Every king, emperor, and ancient patriarch had been forced to step into a full-body nylon harness with dorsal D-rings, submit their boots to a digital sole-flow rate test to prevent static-electric discharge onto the zero-pushback busways, and clip their twin shock-absorbing lanyards to the overhead steel cable lifeline.
Gathered behind the red ribbon was the most prestigious, terrifying, and thoroughly approved assembly of dignitaries in the history of the mortal cosmos.
