“Shiny, and streamlined. With fairings, you know? And fins. All around them, people flying on their own, individually, with some kind of back-pack… jet, I think. No noise. Even the birds weren’t disturbed, darting and swooping amid the human flocks. Oh yes, there were birds, but not like the birds you see today. Big as eagles and coloured like kingfishers. They roosted on the ledges of the towers, and under the ramps. Long curving ribbon ramps, with… Obviously these were too heavy to fly, so they had to go on the roads. Very fast. Automated, of course.
“So, anyway, the people. Their clothes were shiny too, but lots of different colours. Skin-tight. They wore helmets with stubby aerials, and goggles. But the goggles had lines of information flickering across them. And I know this sounds odd, but most of the flying people were carrying briefcases. Maybe it was their lunch, or maybe… I don’t know, it could have been they needed paper, for some purpose I didn’t understand. Overhead, the clouds – wait! They weren’t clouds, at least not all of them. There were these gigantic airships, you see, shaped like clouds.
“In between the towers and under the ramps you could see what looked like parks, or gardens, but some of them had wilderness areas, and there were tigers. At least they looked like tigers, but maybe that was…”
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“Shut up,” I told the breakfast table. “I asked for coffee and waffles, not your dream from last night.”
I finished my breakfast in a silence that was, I suspect, sulky on one side. Reflective surfaces, huh? Sometimes they can get above themselves.