Superconducting Sky Garden

Chin propped in my hand, I scrolled down through the comments.

Ever since the gallery's operating company released the address of the restored site, posts like this had been piling up — people who'd gone looking for old threads, read the notice on the way back, and stopped to add their own two cents.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

At first the talk was all hacking. Then it turned to publicity stunt, and once the company flatly denied that, a new argument cropped up claiming the denial itself was part of the marketing. But every theory hit a wall at the same place: the part where boxes of chicken simply materialized. I'd stalled out there too, so I couldn't really blame them.

I was about to go check my posting times when my hand stopped. So they were watching that, too.

I'd figured I was safe — I'd never shown my face or said where I lived. But once people set their minds to picking someone apart, even the hours I posted notices became fodder for speculation. I'd have to be a little more careful with every post from now on.

Thinking that, I tapped ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into the next thread.

Halfway down the comments, I paused and checked my point balance instead. That number, ticking upward every time chicken sold and the thread got loud about it. Here I was checking inventory just to scrape together a little more of it — and meanwhile these people seemed convinced I had some grand design. No point going out of my way to clear up the misunderstanding.

I was about to head back to the list when my phone gave a short buzz. The moment I saw the name on the screen, my hand froze.

My landlord.

I stared at the screen for a while. All of this had started because I wanted to live without worrying about money. And yet in everyone else's eyes, I apparently looked like someone who had no need for it whatsoever. My mouth went dry.

The gallery had swallowed my attention, and for a little while I'd actually forgotten — forgotten that the rent was overdue, and that I'd promised to somehow pull the money together this time. My landlord had already waited for me more times than I deserved. Never snapped at me first, never pounded on my door in the middle of the night. When I said the deposit would be late, they only asked how long I'd need, then held off until the date I gave before reaching out again. And this time, I was the one who'd let that date slide past.

With no excuse to offer, I closed the message — then decided that ignoring it would be even worse, and opened it again.

The sigh came the moment I hit send. Check what, exactly? Even I didn't know.

I started with my balance, anyway.

The number in my bank account was exactly as I remembered it. This kind of thing, memory never gets wrong. The gallery's points, on the other hand, were climbing even at this very second.

Staring at that number, I opened the admin menu. Think about it — users charged their points with real cash. If there was a way in, surely there was a way out.

Point history. Store settlement. Account management. I tapped through every item on the screen. There were records of chicken-sale money coming in, but no withdrawal button anywhere. I scrolled the settlement history to the very bottom and pried account management open again. The door for putting money in stood there in plain sight; the door for taking it out existed nowhere, no matter how hard I searched. Convinced I'd missed something, I swept through it all one more time from the top — and landed right back on the same screen.

"So there's just... no way to withdraw it?"

I leaned back against the chair. The system could make chicken appear right in front of me, but it couldn't pay my rent. Hunger was no longer a worry, and I could probably eat most of whatever I craved from now on. The catch was that I'd be thrown out of the very room I'd be eating it in.

If I lost the room, where would I go?

Absently, I opened the store screen again. It sold every odd thing besides food. Maybe they had beds, too. My hand rose to the search bar — and stopped.

No. What good was a bed with nowhere to put it?

I changed the search word.

Search results flooded the screen.

"...These are actual houses?"

I tapped a result, backed out to the list, tapped another. This was no furniture category. Beneath every photo it clearly listed maximum occupancy and installation footprint.

Press the buy button and it hands you a house — same as the chicken? I leaned in close to the screen. I'd searched half expecting nothing, but the thought that I might actually find somewhere to live made my heart beat a little faster.

The top result was a small single-story house. A roof, a front door, a flower bed under the window — an utterly ordinary home. Below it came apartment blocks and mansions.

At first I scrolled along comparing room counts and prices. A small place would be plenty, I told myself, but my eyes kept snagging on the photos with terraces and yards.

A few pages deeper, a mansion ringed by castle walls appeared. After that, a dome settled into the seafloor.

"People live here, too?" A school of fish drifted past the blue glass. The moment I recognized the vast shadow cutting across behind them as a whale, I couldn't scroll for a good while.

Somewhere in there I'd stopped even looking at prices, just clicking open one type after another. Then I opened a photo that was nothing but forest.

The preview showed a forest. I assumed the house sat somewhere in its middle — only when the view pulled back did I realize the entire forest lay on a single branch. The green wall running behind the villa was a piece of the foliage itself.

My mouth hung slightly open. If that was one branch, how big was the whole tree? I panned the preview toward the trunk, but it wouldn't fit inside the frame. They hadn't just borrowed the name World Tree for effect.

It took me a long while to check the price — a number I couldn't even bring myself to hold up against my balance. Still, I couldn't close the window right away. I took one more look at the villa's terrace, sunlight pouring through the leaves, before moving on to the next listing.

I read the last description twice. Choose the date? Did that mean the door could open onto yesterday — or tomorrow? I expanded the details, folded them away, expanded them again. It wasn't some line written for show, either. Date selection was listed as one of the residence's actual functions.

Until today, I'd thought a box of chicken appearing out of thin air was already past all sense. But this place built homes inside stars, dealt the seasons out one to a courtyard, and sold doors that opened onto days that hadn't happened yet. And at the bottom of every screen sat the same buy button.

Which meant that with enough points, even those places were within reach. I looked at my balance, then back at the photo. The price was astronomically far away, and yet this time scrolling past felt like a waste. Would I ever get to press that button, someday?

For a moment — just a moment — I let myself hope.

Then I climbed back up the list. Browse like this and there'd be no end to it. What I needed right now wasn't a house built inside a star or a villa parked in tomorrow. Somewhere the rain couldn't get in, with a place to lie down. That was all.

Just as I reached to sort by lowest price, a small tag near the top of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠list caught my eye.

I tapped it, and an information window unfolded.

I sat up straight.

Free.

Sure I'd misread it, I checked again from the first line. Provided at no charge. Initial installation costs included. No mistake about it.

"You could've led with that one." The words slipped out, though no one was around to hear them.

I pressed Show Eligible Only. Most of the strange names that had filled the screen blinked away, and what remained were houses you could picture in the real world. Right. This much was plenty. From among them I picked the one whose photo I liked best.

One whole wall of the living room was glass. The city spread out below the window, and the space in front of the sofa ran so wide your stretched-out legs would never reach the far side. Even the bathroom looked bigger than the room I was sitting in.

My finger drifted toward the select button. Then I read the installation notes and stopped. The residence, it said, could be installed on a chosen plot — or installed in place of an existing space.

I lifted my head and looked around my room. Mold creeping along the corner of the wallpaper, the tiny window pressed up under the ceiling. Trade this, for that?

The fantasy was delightful. Right up until the landlord came by and saw it. A semi-basement, no question about it — open the door and there's a terrace? Anyone who came to talk rent would end up calling someone else first.

And installing it somewhere else solved nothing. Empty land still had an owner, and a penthouse sprouting out of nowhere wasn't staying secret for long. I closed the penthouse window. The house you like and the house you're allowed to live in are two different things.

I kept browsing for a long while after that. I looked at a mountain cabin, thinking a lonely peak might do — then realized that even with food covered by the store, there'd be nowhere to hide if anyone came looking. An underground dwelling looked cozy enough, but first I'd have to choose land to dig under. Never mind whether one was even allowed to live in secret beneath someone else's property — how would I get in and out? And with the fine print swearing my choice could never be changed once made, deciding only got harder.

I went back to the list and opened the next page. Flipping through the small photos one by one, I caught sight of an unusually broad sweep of green.

I tapped the photo. At first I took it for a close-up of some immaculately kept garden. Forest rolled on past a low fence of blooming flowers; white and pale-violet blossoms clustered along the path, and between the trees a quiet lake caught the sunlight and glittered. On the shore facing that lake stood a building of pure white.

Tall columns held up a long colonnade, and through every arch behind it the green of the garden showed through. Light ran along the roof and dripped from the eaves — less like a thing built of stone than like sunlight frozen solid. The word temple arrived in my head before the word house. If gods lived anywhere, wouldn't it be somewhere like this?

I zoomed out, and the white building shrank. I zoomed again, and the trees shrank with it. Only then did the edges come into view.

The garden was floating in empty air.

A thin white veil of cloud curled slowly around its rim. Water spilled from the lake, threaded its way between the flowerbeds, and dropped off at the garden's edge — a long ribbon of waterfall dissolving into the clouds below. Each time the clouds parted for a breath, the outline of the foundation beneath showed itself, a faint blue glow sliding along its smooth curve. No pillars held the colossal thing up. No cables hung it from anything.

For a while my hand wouldn't move. Only the waterfall in the photo went quietly on falling.

I checked the size field.

"...Kilometers?" I looked again. Still not meters. This was no plot for a single house. Lay out roads and raise buildings, and an entire city would fit on that ground.

And this was Basic Grade?

I tapped the help icon beside the grade label.

In other words: the land was enormous, and the house was one. Even what this place called a basic garden looked to me like a handful of parks fused together. The rest of the lot had been left as grass and gentle hills. Exactly how far did basic stretch here?

I scrolled down. The deployment notes listed the expected installation altitude.

Fifty kilometers.

I studied the altitude scale beside the preview. The cloud layer was drawn far, far below the garden — this was no platform hovering just over the overcast. From up there, I figured, you'd look down and find a sea of clouds spread out beneath your feet.

I switched the preview's viewpoint down to the ground. It wouldn't smother the whole sky. But neither was it the kind of size you could shrug off like some airliner crossing the horizon. It was a colossal island hanging in the air, the kind that snags your gaze the moment you look up. I couldn't make out the house or the trees from down there, but there was no mistaking that something was there. No way to insist it was just another cloud.

The penthouse would have been neighborhood-gossip material. This was something every broadcasting station on the planet would come running with cameras for.

"This one's a bit......"

My hand, already moving to close the window, stopped at the next feature.

Beneath the description, a short demonstration played on a loop. A beam of light stretched toward the garden — and simply cut off at the edge. Next, an incoming object, instead of striking anything, vanished from the frame beginning at the point where it crossed the boundary. No explosion. No debris scattering back out. I played it once more. It wasn't a wall stopping things by being hard. It looked as though no path to the inside existed in the first place.

It wasn't just about keeping things out. No one could come up and knock on the door — and if they tried to smash their way in regardless, the boundary stopped them. Even a telescope leveled from outside would show nothing of who was doing what within.

I double-checked how to get in, too.

A single button. No need to climb all the way up there. Wherever I happened to be, one press would carry me inside.

Only then did living there stop being a vague daydream and turn into something that could actually happen. Pack up my things and press the button — that was all. A house on the ground could be traced back to me the moment it was discovered. But this place — even knowing the house existed, no one could see me.

Someone would try to work out who was behind it. They'd take photographs, run the evening news, argue over who lived inside. Some would suspect a connection to the gallery; a few might look at a garden floating in the sky and flatly declare it the Admin's house. But guesswork only went so far. If no one could peer inside or tail whoever came and went, there was still no clue to a face or a name. And going by the description, at least, I would never be caught in the act of going home.

I looked up from the screen. The small window of the semi-basement room I was sitting in sat flush against the ceiling. A passerby's shoes flickered past in the alley above, then were gone.

Down here, I saw shoes far more often than faces. With the window jammed up next to the ceiling, looking outside meant craning my neck every time. Dried rain streaks stained the lower edge of the glass. Leave it open to air the place out, and the dust and someone's cigarette smoke arrived first. Even on days when the sun managed to reach the wall across the alley, it seldom made it all the way down to my floor.

I had lived with all of it without thinking much of anything. This much was fine for someone in my situation, I'd told myself — at least I had a bed to sleep in. Whatever showed outside the window was a small thing next to the business of eating and paying rent.

But looking back at the screen now, sunlight was spilling all the way to the inner end of that white colonnade. Up there, you could change your clothes without drawing the curtains. You could stand at the window and never again wait for a stranger's footsteps to pass before opening it.

Get up, open the door, and there were flowers. Walk a little way, and when your legs grew tired there was a bench to sit on. And you could do it all again tomorrow. And the day after that.

I pressed my dry lips together. Strange as it sounded, that mattered more to me than all that open land. Not somewhere I was allowed to stay a while on someone's goodwill — a house I could remain in for exactly as long as I wanted. A house like that could become mine.

The words free of charge were still sitting there on the screen.

I pressed Select.

I pressed Confirm.

A new button had appeared. I looked at the words on it for a long moment.

Return.

I had somewhere to go back to now.