DAY 6
After a breakfast sampling of Contingency cuisine – they grow three different crops and two types of artificial meat, so it won’t take long – it’s time to head to the surface again, aiming for the trenches of the Robot Wars.[39] To get there, you’ll need to head through a semi-abandoned subway rail network, where a society of stoic nihilists have carved out their Stygian fiefdom. They’re unpleasant sorts, acting as middlemen and spivs between the C-series bunkers and the Resistance fighters above, but they brew legendary vodka from the mushrooms that grow in their tunnels. Do hang around to try some, but be sure to make a brisk exit when it looks like everyone’s drunk enough to start shooting each other.
DAY 7
As you escape the tunnels, you’ll emerge into a pitched struggle between the humans of Jack Banner’s heroic Resistance and their skull-faced adversaries. Feel free to watch the laser show for as long as you like, then take five minutes to spray your face silver, put on a cockney accent and do a cheeky walk right behind Robot lines. Greeted like an old mucker by the skeletal combatants, you’ll be ushered to a chrono-warfare facility to watch an M-200 assassin get sent back in time, before being dragged to a Robot pub to celebrate with a good old-fashioned knees-up. You’ll drink warm beer from dirty glasses,[40] dance like an urchin and sing riotous songs around a big Robot piano (which also has a skull face, and plays itself). It’s a joyous conclusion to the trip – just don’t bother getting into a pub debate about the mechanics of time travel. The Robots may have the godlike technology required to achieve it on an industrial scale, but they just don’t get it.
3. HUNGER FOR GAMES:(1 WEEK)
Revolting Times in Hierarchia
Separated from the rest of the Wastes by an impassable wall, the city state of Hierarchia is truly a destination apart, and this trip is tailored specifically for teenage visitors to live the magic.
DAY 1
Thanks to its ever-growing number of would-be revolutionaries, Hierarchia now runs a timeshare system whereby if a dictatorship survives a hundred days without being overthrown, it’s uninstalled and returned to the queue, giving another set of tyrants and rebels a chance to play. You’ll arrive right after a scheduled changeover, as the new government works out what mad rules to split society by. Orient yourself by working out which bleedingly obvious visual signifiers of caste are currently in vogue: sometimes it’s ‘the lower your social rank, the more thumbs you have’,[41] sometimes it’s the shape of the scarf people wear or whether they can roll their tongues or not.
You’ll spend your first evening enjoying the hospitality at the Leader’s Palace, sitting like an incredibly fancy gold hat at the very top of the city. Its appearance and layout changes depending on who’s at home, but you can count on extravagant throne rooms, huge open-air party spaces, and plenty of spires and rooftops for climactic duels.[42] Enjoy the decadence, as it’s the only time you’ll see it outside the context of the violent revolution to come.
DAY 2
As you begin your journey down the city, enjoy the statue garden set up around the structure’s core, where the huge monuments favoured by off-rotation regimes are stored while they wait for their turn to come round again.[43] Statues from fallen regimes are kept here too, defaced with graffiti, and some may even acquire garlands of vat-grown flowers, as nostalgic citizens sneak in at night to pay homage to classic dictatorships of years past.[44] Further down, you’ll pass the Gloat-o-scopes, where massive screens display the luxuries being wasted above by the social elite, in order to needlessly enrage the downtrodden lower classes. Finally, you’ll reach the sprawling Titanaeum, where Hierarchia’s famous teenager deathmatches are held. No matter what regime is in power, it will – for some reason – rely upon mass-broadcast young-adult blood sports to function, and this is where the magic happens. Whether it’s the sons and daughters of the aristocracy duelling for the right to join the ranks of their parents, a fight between teams of different castes in a grim labyrinth, or just a load of random kids unleashed into a room full of hammers, you can be sure of a banging show.
CYCLE OF VIOLENCE
Since the relentless, awful action of the Titanaeum is the single biggest spark for rebellion in Hierarchia, it’s no surprise that successful revolutionaries always set out with the sworn intention of ending the games for good. Nevertheless, after each revolution, the blood sports always quietly come back. Every rebel leader comes to realise, in the end, that the people would riot just as hard if they didn’t have their games.[45]
DAY 3
Your third day will see you visit the Nethercity, where the lowest social class – known as the Nethers – live in teeming millions. While the aesthetics of the upper city may transform dramatically in the wake of a new regime, barely anything changes down here: the Nethers work in factories and mines, they drink, they dream of
