(The Fifty-Foot Noodle Slime of Solaris)
In the heart of Solaris, the Grand Central Plaza had witnessed many massive glasses throughout the thousand years.
Last dynasties had erected towering black glass obelisks recording the slaughter of barbarian tribes, soaring bronze arches celebrating conquered mountain passes, and grim stone execution pillars where rebel commanders had been put to death before cheering crowds. For ten thousand years, public monuments in the royal capital had been designed to inspire one main emotion in the mortal populace: total, paralyzing terror of sovereign power. Every stone block had been laid to remind ordinary men that they were small, fragile, and utterly subject to the wrath of kings.
Today, however, the center of the vast white-granite plaza was enclosed by a huge wooden scaffold draped in five hundred yards of brilliant crimson silk.
More than sixty thousand citizens packed the surrounding flat stone slabs. Merchant families held their children on their shoulders. Returned scholars from the academies chatted with demobilized soldiers. And court eunuchs stood side by side with visiting beastfolk emissaries from the eastern territories. The air looked like the dawn of a grand midsummer harvest festival rather than a solemn royal rite, complete with the whistling of paper kites and the chatter of festive street crowds.
