"[color=#8d97bf]Between you and me, I think the real ones were worse. Too small and sour,[/color]" Jewel replied. He didn't quite feel deceived, but he felt a once-bitten wariness now toward those advertisements in the news bulletins. Like most things in this city, the raucous boasting and immaculate surface sheens had built up an impossible apex, a summit upon which only the superhuman could plant their flags. They had promised the sky was bluer down there, the ocean cleaner; and though there certainly were [i]fewer[/i] dead fish bobbing on the surface, still the waters were deemed unsafe for swimming, so the difference in water quality seemed not to matter in any practical effect. And of course, the prices in the tourist districts were old-fashioned highway robbery while the "real" areas, the ones swarming with roving gangs of young children as old wooden ships swarmed with rats, were much too perilous for city folks like him. While he was largely able to keep it to himself, Jewel had a pessimistic streak which even the enormous airstrip struggled to contain, and he had a talent for being able to complain about anything.

Still, even if he was the sort of man to air his concerns so wantonly, he would not have complained this time, mostly because he did not need to see a true blue sky, or the world's last clear blue ocean; he had wanted silence, and peace, and a condition of the inner apathy by which so many of his coworkers could gracefully let their problems roll off them like rain off an oiled coat, no matter how heavy the bombardment. These he had found in the luscious faux-velvets of his hotel bed, and in the enclosed rainforest garden, and several other places down there.

"[color=#8d97bf]2F, huh?[/color]" He rested his head against the window, his eyelids threatening to snap shut any moment. Too bad. He wanted to avoid work talk but he couldn't think of anything else he and Ona were both interested in; she didn't drink whiskey, nor he overpriced diet supplements. "[color=#8d97bf]Who got laid off?[/color]"