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and threw open its doors to all comers, turning into a free port where anything was allowed, with the possible exception of getting caught interfering with somebody else’s business.
    Now it is one of the tallest cities in the world, a place of laser-lit and solar-powered towers: marble white, sandstone red, granite pink, crystal, diamond, ruby, amber, emerald, and sapphire. Cable cars, elevated maglev trains, and pedestrian walkways with stained-glass windows lace those towers together. This shining urban web straddles the remains of the ground-level city with its ragged parklands and urban antiquities. Some of those old ground-level neighborhoods are living enclaves existing in the twilight of the new city, while others are quietly crumbling monuments to the old days, both good and bad. The crowds for the ghost tours on Halloween and St. Valentine’s Day in Chicago rival the ones down in New Orleans on Katrina Day.
    Among the most enduring of these ghosts is Union Station.
    “Attention, passengers. Union Station is an active advertising zone. If you do not wish to input/download/receivepersonal advertisements, please turn off all information-input facilities.”
    I made sure my handset was switched off and gathered up my coat and gloves and slung my pack over my shoulder. Setting my jaw, I joined the river of my fellow passengers spilling out into the antique sandstone-and-marble hall.
    I don’t have eye or ear implants, so I had nothing to shield my senses from the riot. The onslaught of noise and color threatened to drag me under. A hundred billboards flashed images too fast for me to take in. Dozens of different songs blared in my ears. Artificial breezes wafted the scents of food and perfume at me, alternately making me salivate and tightening my stomach from the unpalatable combinations. The whole place seemed to be a hangout for the hyperchic, the exotic, and the truly bizarre, as paid actors and models tried to compete with the billboards for my attention.
    I gulped air and found that, as thick as the artificial miasma was, I could still breathe. It took a moment, but I was able to narrow my focus down to the real and scan the crowds that waited for the disembarking passengers. No one came forward to meet me. Of course not. I had deliberately not told anyone when I was coming.
    I strode across the main terminal, automatically adopting my “not a tourist” walk: eyes straight ahead, shoulders square, put on your coat as you walk, don’t let the people or the ads catch your attention, and for the love of all that is sacred, don’t let an ad-bot catch up with you.
    In the express elevator, I endured two giggly, much-enhanced and tattooed actors talking enthusiastically about the new game they’d been playing the night before. It seemed to involve death, zombies, acrobatics, and a lot of VR sex.
    I had to stop myself from sprinting down the walkwaytoward the Dearborn Zone El train. I crossed out of the confines of Union Station accompanied by a fanfare of “come back soon” and “you’ve still got time to take advantage…” messages from various motion-sensitive billboards, and instantly relaxed.
    At least until I saw Vijay Kochinski on the bench.
    He was already in the act of taking off his glasses and tucking them into his jacket pocket as I threaded my way across the half-full platform. I stopped directly in front of him as he stood up.
    “Hello, Terese.” He said it with that extra weight people give an inadequate greeting that comes after a long absence.
    “Hello, Vijay.”
    Vijay had been Optimized as a child. Some parents will do everything they can afford—and a few things they can’t—to give their child an advantage, materially or genetically. It has long been known that people automatically respond more favorably to tall men, and to handsome men, and to men with blue eyes (which I’ve never understood, but there it is). So Vijay had been inspected, injected, and worked over until he had