When they built the new magna-rail train track, the old steel and wood railway line was not cleaned up afterwards. It was just gently abandoned and slowly faded back into the landscape. The rain beat off the sharp edges, the sun beat the bright colours into greys, and winter frosts squeezed and snapped rusting steel. Old teeth of it emerge piece by piece from the rubble, leading in to a tunnel that has found an afterlife as a fungus farm. A bridge of interlocking arches stands nearby like a British aqueduct, a remnant of a cozy Rome.

Decima is sitting atop the bridge cross-legged, silver haired and serpent-eyed. Over her warm neutral grey synskin she wears a cape with a teal and black triangular camouflage pattern, an artificial cascade of colours that will be right at home in the neon of the Hexadrome - but somehow don't look fully out of place here. In front of her is a gun case, open to show two a single oversized pistol. It looks more like a toaster with a trigger grip, exposed red and white wires visible on the outside.

"I use a lot of different gun casings," said Decima by way of introduction. "But those are all for show. There's always something like this inside; sometimes the gun itself is just a low-yield holoprojector around this. You need to cut a lot of corners in your energy budget to make firearms work, and you need to walk a long way from traditional ideas of what a gun is and meant to do to make it effective in the Hexadome. But before I go into that further, what are you spending your energy budget on?"