Stoney Vander sighed as he gazed out over the towers of the aging Municiplex. It was an unusually clear day and he was not only able to see the massive foundations on which Skyview Tower and its neighbors had been built almost three centuries ago, but far in the distance, a hint of the green wild beyond, where civilization ended and unsupervised nature began.

What was out there? Stoney wondered.

According to the Board of Supervisors, there was nothing but a wilderness of tangled vines and creepers, thick forests of trees whose branches swept the ground and whipped their leaves in the wind, swamps of disease-ridden water, and matted grasslands woven with ground-crawling thorns and infested with biting, stinging insects.

Just the thought of it sent shivers down Stoney's spine . . . shivers of anticipation, that is. The truth was that on clear days, instead of working or studying, he often found his attention drawn to the enormous tower's expansive window banks. The view never failed to send his mind wandering down paths that other citizens of Sunshine would surely consider perverse.

But why was it perverse to think of life outside Skyview Tower? What was wrong with feeling the wind on your bare flesh, instead of the tower's climate-controlled atmosphere, or breathing air unfiltered by its ventilation systems?

Stoney yearned to feel the spring of real grass beneath his feet instead of the artificial turf preferred by his fellow citizens. And it was with guilty pleasure that he sometimes stood in the garage stall at home when the exit panel lifted and the outside air rushed in. One time, years before, his mother caught him and had restricted him to his room for a week.

But he had always known that he was different. Unlike other children, he took no pleasure in the games intended to prepare them for their lives as adult citizens. In games of mathematical logic, he deliberately set out to confuse his fellow players by reciting numbers at random, mischievously preventing the others from concentrating on the proper equations needed to win. In others, he made moves out of order to see what the unexpected results might be, upsetting his playmates when events did not go as everyone knew they must.

As a young man, he had alarmed his parents when he refused to practice the accepted courtship rituals, and female companions carefully chosen for their compatibility factors were sent home in tears. In school, he was a constant challenge to his instructors with questions that usually landed him in tutorial where he was required to memorize the 367 dicta required for orderly life in the town of Sunshine.

Behind his peers in entering the workforce, Stoney was assigned maintenance closet #224 in Design Wing, Employment Level IV, where he was expected to spend his career making sure the work environment was kept clean and pleasant. Some day, if he were diligent in his duties and a position unwanted by any reparations card-holder opened up, he might be promoted to junior designer and help to create schematics for upgraded food preparation units, the chief manufactured export of Sunshine.

So here he stood at the window banks on Employment Level IV trying to catch a glimpse of the green wild that more and more represented the one thing not provided in Sunshine, or anywhere else in Skyview Tower: escape. Disappointed, he saw that a mist was drifting across the large lake on whose shores the Municiplex stood. Once again, it would obscure the bases of the towers, and the green wild would vanish from sight. The view would shrink until all that remained were the upper levels of the towers thrusting out of the mist like lonely peaks.

"Daydreaming again, Stoney Vander?" asked a voice from over his shoulder.

Stoney turned quickly, dropping the vaporizer that he had been using to clean the window banks. Like other Tower residents he was so used to the cracks in the glass that he barely even noticed them.

"The time of prayer to the Prophet is over," Mehmed Trumbel pointed out.

"I am sorry, supervisor Trumbel," replied Stoney. "I had not noticed."

"You must learn to take notice of such things, Stoney Vander," Trumbel admonished, not unkindly. "You know that as a citizen of European descent, you bear much of the guilt for past evils perpetrated against non-European peoples. It is incumbent upon you to be especially sensitive to the feelings of Sunshine's colored citizens."

"I do understand that," Stoney said, with an appropriate tone of humility.

In order to redress past injustices, the Municiplex had instituted a reparations card system based on the citizens' gender or skin pigmentation. The darker a citizen's color, or if the citizen was female, the more credit points that person was entitled to. At the extreme end, reparations cards could be issued to some citizens that freed them of labor and entitled them to a free education, free housing, first choice in the selection of spouses, and many other benefits. Lighter-skinned citizens might only need to work part-time, or pay a portion of their rent. Citizens could also use discrimination credits to prorate test scores, improve evaluations on the job, or obtain promotions regardless of skill or competence. Of course, as a citizen of European descent, Stoney did not possess any credits at all, but was instead required to turn over eighty-three percent of his income in taxes to subsidize the system.

"The city depends on all its citizens to perform their assigned duties to the best of their ability," said Trumbel, who was himself a citizen of color. "Today we're working on the latest improvements to Sunshine's food preparation units. Your work, though seemingly insignificant, is integral to creating the proper atmosphere for our designers to do their work. You do realize the importance of completing the drawings for the transverse microwave frequency modulators, one of the most crucial elements of the Mark IX automated food processing unit?"

"Of course, supervisor Trumbel," Stoney replied. He had been trained as a designer himself and had graduated in the same form as the supervisor himself.

"The city of Cloudscape in Thunder Tower has already pre-ordered three thousand units, and expects delivery and installation by the end of the quarter," Trumbel continued. "Do I need to say more?"

"No," replied a chastened Stoney Vander, despite his knowledge that the quality level of the product would be obsolete even before it left for Cloudscape. Due to a lack of incentive on the part of its designers, the new modulator scarcely improved on the old one. But this was a fact that citizens were strictly forbidden to discuss or even think about. "I realize the importance of my role in the production schedule, and will perform my duties with the proper diligence."

"That is good, Stoney Vander. You may continue."

As Trumbel walked away, hands clasped behind his back, Stoney picked up his dropped vaporizer and looked over the vast room that housed the design wing of Employment Level IV. In all directions, rows of desks radiated away from the window banks, most occupied by employees of color, all busy at their tasks: some hunched over drafting boards, some delivering completed work or picking up new assignments, still others conferring with one another, seeking advice on some technical problem. Over all, the glow of even light radiated from the ceiling panels and, in the distance, rows of supervisors' offices lined the wall that faced inward toward the town's central hub.

The massive hub extended vertically through the heart of Sunshine to other towns both above and below in Skyview Tower. According to what Stoney had learned in school, Skyview and the other towers had once been the headquarters of global corporations that governed the world years before. While no one was certain how it happened, the corporations gradually stratified their functions into separate departments such as management, manufacturing, sales, design, product development, transportation, and customer support. Over time, these departments grew increasingly independent until they incorporated themselves into separate towns and cities, depending on how many levels they occupied.

Sunshine had been the original corporation's design department and, occupying only a dozen levels near the top of the tower, it became a town with a permanent population of 15,679. With limited room and resources, the town developed a strict regimen over the years that covered every facet of municipal life. And such were the benefits bestowed on its citizens that there came to be less and less need to venture beyond its limits. Except for the occasional air car flight to neighboring towers, a citizen could spend his whole life here and never leave.

Which did not prevent Stoney from daydreaming about doing that very thing. As a child, he used to suggest imaginary games where he and his friends would leave Skyview Tower and have adventures outside the Municiplex. But as he grew older, he became aware of how uncomfortable his ideas made others feel. By the time he became a teenager, he had learned to keep such fantasies to himself. Nevertheless, he continued to entertain them, wondering what life was like in towns lower down in Skyview Tower, or in other towers. Later, it occurred to him that, although life in the other towers was probably much the same, it must be very different in the green wild where no one had ventured for almost two centuries. Just the same, he kept such musings to himself, half convinced that there was something wrong with him.

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