Heaven Apex

Gwen watched as the city passed below her in a blur. Thousands of lights from windows of the towers of Rezo Heights above and Upper Midtown Rezo below the level of the Magtrain. Opulence was one of six tower clusters that made up Rezo Heights, each joined to the central hub of Uptown Rezo Thorn. The train hurtled along atop one of the spokes joining the cluster to the city proper carrying people, drones and cargo. She stared up into the thinner clouds that coalesced and hugged the central hub of the mega structure. The planet surface was 5 km below completely obscured from view by the omnipresent sea of dense cloud that hung perpetually across the lower levels of the city. Rezo city rose up into the sky, each sector smaller and taller than the one below it. Tonight was special; she would be going up, way up.

Each passenger boarded their own pod, which was in turn affixed to the exterior of the train like eggs stuck to the back of a high-speed metallic caterpillar. From inside it was only possible to see those in the pods to either side of the capsule Gwen was in through the large curving plastic window. Translucent advertising holoscreens flashed around her vying for attention although she had muted them through her HUD. Gentle vibrations pulsed through the floor and there was the accompanying hum of power just audible.

Gwen enabled the HUD transit overlay so that a schematic layout appeared across her vision. Neon-cyan lines on a dark background, her pod a small sphere moving through the mapped-out superstructure. The view was a little disorienting but better than the sensory deprivation of the enclosed capsule. A small square pulsed in the map hundreds of levels above to indicate her eventual destination. She was still moving horizontally through the structure towards the thick artery of condensed lines at the centre of the hub.

“Hold tight, sweetie,” Honey said, rising up from the floor “we are about to rise.”

“I won’t make that mistake again,” Gwen replied reaching behind to take hold of the metallic rail attached to the back of the pod.

A few seconds later there was a dull thud and the pod shuddered slightly. Her stomach lurched as the floor accelerated up and she could see the capsule rising through the levels of the schematic overlay. The magnetic hum grew louder as she ascended before cutting off into silence. There was more shunting as the pod was routed again through the vein network that spread out to the various corporate towers before it again began to rise, the circle marking her location now directly below the throbbing square. The surface in front of Gwen shimmered and returned to transparent, the holo-projections fading as the city scape came back into view. The train capsule now acted as a lift scaling the side of the high-rise tower, from this height far above the omnipresent cloud bank sea, it was possible to appreciate the immense scale of Rezo, as it spread beneath her like a vast pyramid. The view was cosmetic. For those living and working in the towers Rezo was not so much a home but a backdrop.

Midway up the tower, level 1500 according to the schematic plastered across her HUD, the pod stopped and the pale white internal lights inside went out. This was the boundary where the uptown central tower transitioned to the Apex. Gwen was plunged into darkness, and the view was stunning. Her neural lace immediately compensated and augmented her vision to low-light enhancements. This allowed her to make out the swarms of traffic darting around below – insects buzzing around light.

Gwen blinked to confirm placing the HUD on normal mode – the quiet had been pleasant but would be impractical now. There were a series of clicks and bright lights flashed. Her HUD informed her of the scans in the infra and ultra-EM spectrums that were beyond even lace assisted vision.

The lights cut back on, and the capsule again began to rise.

“How do I look?” Gwen said to the drone, pirouetting around as the pod rose into the heavens. She wore the SecondSkin hugging her but had a diaphanous cloak that attached to neck and wrists and extended to the floor. As she spun around she stretched out her arms and the cloak shimmered a rainbow of colours. She had found it at the World Plaza earlier that day. Synthetically grown insect wings – it had been ridiculously expensive.

“Absolutely radiant!” Honey purred, flashing her field projectors through a rainbow cycle.

As the HUD registered the 1712th floor the pod spun around to face into the tower. Gwen stood perfectly still, checked her pulse, watched as handle tags appeared – most here were public sharing unless they were in a private ‘safe’ zone.

The flawless window split down the centre with a hiss and slid open in a blink of the eye. Immediately her HUD flashed up a narcotics warning. SEDUCE was a designer drug engineered to give a mild high and reduce inhibitions. Mostly harmless; she ignored it.

A mist hung to the floor and began creeping into the capsule the moment the doors parted. It was tinted orange accompanied by citrus peel scents. She could feel the music, a sub-frequency pulse that trembled against her teeth. Another layer, high above: fractured jazz brass cut across the bass at a cross beat. Gwen stepped out of the lift and into the elegance.

The terrace stretched beyond the schematic’s borders, open on the far side to actual sky. A living canopy of cloned coral trees hung inverted overhead, their glowing roots dripping bioluminescent capsules that swung like strange fruit. The noise hit in waves. Basslines shifting algorithmically with crowd density, the hum of drones, laughter calibrated for feeds.

AR clutter cascaded through her periphery: memes, product offers, stake opportunities. Her lace registered seven clean camera angles before she’d taken a second step. Every surface was a feed. Every guest a node in someone’s attention graph.

Gwen moved through it the way she moved through everything worth being seen at — unhurried, peripheral vision cataloguing the spectacles on each terraced level without lingering on any of them. A synth-tiger with four eyes and circuit-veined wings. Contortionists in bio-silk hammocks. Pleasure slaves laughing in synchronised bursts. The usual currency of distraction.

Honey’s drones spread formation, capturing angles. The viewer count spiked. Someone pledged fifty $GWN tokens for something Gwen had already walked past.

"You're late," said a voice behind her.

She turned slowly. Marxo stood there in a monk's robe, the fabric printed with his own face repeated in diminishing iterations down his torso. His smile hit that precise angle—wide enough to seem genuine, crooked enough to seem self-aware. The kind of asymmetry that polled well with algorithms.

"I'm never late," Gwen replied, gliding past him. "I just arrive at a higher resolution."

He laughed, sharp, performed, and his drones caught it instantaneously. The moment bloomed across a dozen feeds with the tag #HighResArrival already trending in the local metadata.

Gwen crossed toward the photon-reactive glass. Each footfall sent light scattering outward, her silhouette multiplied across the floor in fractured geometry. Honey's drones-maintained formation, capturing the cascade. The effect was hypnotic, intentionally so. Someone had paid for this floor specifically to make people look good moving across it.

"Gwen," purred Thera-Luun, approaching like a mirage given form in holo-skin that seemed to ripple with barely contained energy. Her face was 70% projection, layered filters that updated in real time, algorithmically tracking sentiment metrics across the room like a living instrument. Tonight she had leaned hard into tragic regal, all soft angles and undertones of grief, an aesthetic choice that Gwen recognized immediately as intentional, strategic. The kind of persona that invited speculation and drove engagement.

"You're trending again," Thera said, holding a bubble of imported atmosphere like a precious jewel between her fingers, the rare air glowing faintly in the dim light. "You monetize boredom and routine into something everyone wants to watch."

Gwen took the compliment like a stock acquisition, letting it settle into her portfolio of recent wins. "I don't monetize," she corrected, her voice smooth and measured. "I perform liquidity. There's a difference, one requires authenticity, or at least the appearance of it."

“You’ve been riding lean volatility, Gwen,” she said, her voice all molasses “Fast pumps. Loyal fan base but edging, well, one might say a bit rogue.”

"Feels realer when the curve bites back," Gwen replied, her own tone carrying the weight of conviction. "Stability is for stakefathers who've already made their billions and just want to watch their money breed. I'm not interested in that kind of boring certainty."

Thera's smile widened, the smile of someone who had already purchased your data twice over and was preparing to buy it again at a premium rate. "I want you," she said, and the words carried genuine hunger beneath the performative veneer. "Not your facefeed, not your curated content drops. Your token rights. Your actual equity stake."

A soft-binding contract materialised between them in augmented space, whispering incomprehensibly in L2 legalese that only specialized AIs could parse at full speed. Stake Offer: 50% of $GWN, double the current market rate. Soft-binding. Mesh-locked. Corridor settlement arbitration with Thera's legal infrastructure backing the entire agreement.

"You'd maintain trend velocity," Thera purred, sweetening the pitch with each word. "Executive title on LUUNskin Futures division. Creative director position, or whatever terminology your neural lace prefers to interpret that role as." The offer was substantial, the kind of offer that could reshape her entire trajectory, embed her deeper into the corporate ecosystem of Rezo Heights.

"Tempting," Gwen said, watching her own metrics tick steadily upward across her HUD, the numbers climbing with satisfying precision. "But I'm not riding this wave just to sell it off at the first substantial offer."

"Of course you are," Thera smiled, the expression carrying an almost pitying quality. "You just don't know your exit price yet. Everyone has one, it's just a matter of mathematics."

Gwen leaned in until the holo-skin on Thera's cheek glitched faintly in the glare of a passing drone swarm, the projection momentarily breaking apart before reconstituting itself. "I'm not aiming for an exit," she whispered, each word deliberate and weighted with intention. "I'm breaking the loop entirely. I'm done being a token that trades hands. I want to be the market itself."

The bassline pulsed through the reinforced glass of the observation deck, somehow perfectly synchronized with her elevated heartbeat — another AI-orchestrated coincidence. "Risk curve's steep," Thera observed clinically. "It doesn't care how flawless your feed is or how perfect your metrics look. Markets crash. Trends die. Attention moves on."

Thera blinked the contract closed with a gesture, the legal framework dissolving back into the ether. "When the crash comes, and it will come, Gwen, these things always do. My buy window stays open for you. Don't wait until you're dump-flagged and toxic to every portfolio manager in the city. That would be terribly unattractive for both of us."

"I don't dump," Gwen said quietly, turning toward the glass horizon where the city's lights created a false horizon of possibility and ambition. "I detonate."

Honey logged it instantly. Viral within seconds.

She stood at the glass a moment longer, the hashtags unspooling across her HUD, four lines of text already priced by people who’d never met her. Below, the city breathed its usual hunger.

She let Honey run the metrics. Then she blinked the HUD dark.

The cube was still in her pocket. She could feel its weight now.