Eku Mukai

I walk rapidly, dodging others. All the others are like me, too. Everything seems fine. I turn the corner and see the orderly bushes greet me, and I watch a neon-green uniformed ‘person’, reminiscent of superheroes of yore, approach me, sweeping up the small bits of leaves and debris that dot the otherwise immaculate cityscape. Glowing slogans surround us all, and appear peripherally, from all angles, from above, as satellites beam them down to our fading, blue sphere. Vehicles clog the pathways during this morning rush hour. It is much like the cyber-images I’ve seen of places from before – like New York, Tokyo, London. The city always watches us. This city is disguised as public space, but what of danger, of dirt, of ethnicities, of difference, of disobedience? Where did this thought come from? I forget it, worrying about how I can think such nonsense, in my safe, affluent city-state, where I feel perfectly at home. I continue quickly to the food disbursement shop, before I head to my place of employment, The Shelter – it is the 100 story wall that encloses my metropolis – I will again stand guard atop one of the thousands of towers that stretch into the heavens, which no longer interest us.