Silver and gold, bronze, copper and the shine of precious gems, the perpetual flicker of lights of electric flares over exposed circuitry...
Buildings of glass in intricate forms, tall and lacy and graceful in a hundred thousand shades, shimmering against the sky in all its changing hues from the red, pinks purples and golds of sunset, the yellow and blues of sunrises and the.... shimmer of starlight.
Alabaster-pale and shimmering palaces, the shining multicolored rainbow of various mosaics in intricate patterns...
Vehicles, smooth and sleek and speedy, always moving over the sparkling waters, threading through the air between shining silver and gold and glassy buildings with their perpetual assortment of rainbow lights, doing acrobatics at frightening speeds, speeding through freeways, burning rubber on concrete lit by multicolored streetsigns and the amber light of streetlamps....
The city is reflected in all its shining glory in the waters of its large waterways which are framed by ports and docks and connected to other cities, other continents by bridges above and below the water level.
Physically, what you do not see is under the water-level of its oceans.
A perpetual webwork of glass and metals connecting people to other cities and places and lands. Some are even settlements on the bottoms of the seas, surrounded by reefs and corals in their myriad hues.
This web glows pale blue, icy against the rest of the colorful surroundings of the sea bottom.
Beautiful, yes?
Certainly at first glance it seems so.
The majority of the populace are fed, clothed and taken cared of by the state. Or so it seems to be.
Yet scratch it to reveal the surface and within this polished gem of a city and its sisters is the poisonous corruption of a snake that devours itself.
Greed. Lust. Sloth. Envy. Wrath. Pride.
All seven deadly sins cause perpetual political rivalries, gang-wars fueled by the need to control TERRITORY.
Illegal drugs, addictions to net-surfing caused by the very technology that allows you to be IN the net as an avatar allows you to LOSE YOURSELF as you become the avatar.. and forget the outside world ever existed.
Clubs where you dance all night and all day, where liquor is spread freely so that through these and through the sanctioned drug trade, the governments may control the people...without their knowledge.
Sex. Drugs. Violence.
All day, all night.
A world where you can never tell who is your friend or foe unless you've been with them for ages and even then there may be secrets that they're hiding.
Out of the cities are untamed wildernesses, vast forests and rainforests, seas and fields where people grow food for the consumption of those in the cities in exchange for 'city luxuries'.
