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Esplinade lay on an island and looked as if it had erupted from the surrounding ocean. Great hulking shells of skyscrapers stood ready to topple around the four levels high constant shack covering and raising the island.

As the rickety passenger jet stuttered through the air and dipped towards the city, Abe shuddered. He hated landing.

The jet skidded and bounced along the surface of a platform strung up precariously between jittery skyscrapers, a couple of hundred metres above the weak mess of four floor city sat confidently underneath. Textbook.

Abe moved quickly through the wide expanse of featureless customs and past the armed guards into an elevator. He rode it to the ground floor, stuck in the close vicinity of a half-century of other passengers in the tight metal holding pen. It hit the ground floor without incident.

Moments later Abe was through the last armed, crew-cutted, angry-looking armed guard build-up and into the loud crazy free-for-all of the roof. Odd cars lay stranded between swarming pedestrians, crawling cautiously forward. Bikes and scooters nipped in between people who moved aside, zen-like, breezing past each other without collision as they pressed forward calmly.

Abe wasn't used to it and soon found himself flailing wildly and throwing shoulders at people, knocking them off their instinctive paths. They scowled at Abe with angry faces as they re-aligned themselves. Abe needed to get out of this craziness.

He pressed through the swarm of limbs, shoving and pushing his way across the street, to where a huge billboard at the seventy foot long base of a dilapidated skyscraper. Abe ran his eyes high up the ravaged frame, the skyscraper a mere fifty-foot stump, thousands of metres having broken off and fallen into the ocean, burying a large portion of the roof no doubt, and crushing anything in the lower levels unfortunate to be positioned beneath it. The repairs would've been almost instantaneous, Abe thought to himself, surveying his situation with what he regarded as no small amount of moral calm.

There were about two dozen suit-wearing security guys lining the wall of bar, keeping gatecrashes, as people filed past the guards, cover fees instantly transferred to the management. Inside, the seventy foot of plant and water feature dotted skyscraper interior spread out in epic calm before smiling Abe. There were maybe a half-thousand people dotted far and wide about the space, soothing music programmed in from outside. The whole place was brilliantly light with blaring spotlights expanding over the entire ceiling.

He got to a machine and got himself an ice-cold Frisky. He sat at a station and sipped slow and thoughtful, thinking through the purpose of his being in Esplinade. He was here to relax and forget about work. Success had its drawbacks, and Abe had a lung stuffed full of them. He knew that the longer he stayed here the worse things would get. Such is life. The Frisky sparkled across the synapses of his brain. Abe smiled suddenly. He was growing comfortable in his new environment.

Abe sat there and let the Frisky delicately soothe away any critical internal rumours. Thoughtless. His gaze fell across the place and landed on a three person group, a girl and two guys, sat indeterminate minutes away. The girl looked nice. Abe realized suddenly he had no idea what the time was. Flights'll do that. As will Frisky. It was early, surely. Abe composed himself and looked at the huge main staircase, leading up to the darkness of The Upper Rooms. He probably had time to squeeze in a quick visit. He could easily do that and be done in time to get on with everything.

Abe glided across the pseudoturf towards the huge spindles of mammoth tree trunk wrapped together to comprise the thirty-foot by twenty foot staircase leading up into the electric dark above. He stumbled across the dead wood and looked without seeing at the others ascending and descending the thing. He was clear of purpose and of conscience.

The peace was shattered as he reached the top of the staircase -