The city stretched beyond the wall of glass. Skyscrapers dominated the landscape, glowing with a million rectangular eyes, and Songdo Stadium loomed large in the panoramic view. As JD watched it shifted slightly to the left, as though its rounded roof were the shell of some massive tortoise, walking steadily across the city, demolishing everything in its path. JD felt light-headed, like he was about to pitch over sideways, then the sensation drained from his mind as he understood: the restaurant was revolving.
Soo-hyun approached the restaurant’s host standing at a glass lectern, underlit by a tablet glowing with reservation details. She was the only visible staff with her face uncovered, and her features were odd—too symmetrical, surgically perfected—but undeniably attractive. She wore a long shapeless top, fabric transparent but decorated in Mandelbrot patterns, with a bra underneath like a wide black censor bar. JD preemptively elbowed Khoder to stop him saying anything inappropriate.
“We need a table,” Soo-hyun said.
The host’s face stayed blank. “I’m sorry, but we’re completely booked.”
Over the woman’s shoulder the restaurant was mostly empty. JD opened his mouth in protest, but thought better of it. He leaned close to Soo-hyun. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
“It’s gotta be here.”
JD sighed and took the envelope of money from his back pocket. He slid out a fifty-euro note and placed it firmly on the host’s tablet. “If you look again, I think you’ll find we have a reservation.”
“Under the name ‘Fuck You,’ ” Soo-hyun said.
“Soo-hyun,” JD whispered, harshly. He turned back to the host: “Please, it’s my birthday.” He gave her his warmest smile.
The woman produced a small blacklight torch and shone it over the currency, as though she could tell forgeries with her naked eye. Indignant anger swelled in JD’s chest, but he quickly quashed it—for all he knew the notes were forged. He took a small step back, ready to rush the elevator if the host reached for her phone to call the police.
“While you’ve got that light out, maybe check me for crabs, huh?” Khoder said, to no response.
The woman looked to JD and the edges of her mouth pulled back in the approximation of a smile. “Right this way.” She picked up three menus and walked them into the restaurant proper.
“By the window,” Soo-hyun said to the woman’s back.
The host showed them to a table, far from the other diners. “Your waiter will be here shortly.” She placed the menus on the table and promptly left.
JD put his rain-damp jacket on the back of his chair and sat. He looked down out the window, and his body swayed with vertigo. He peeled his eyes away, and looked deliberately at Soo-hyun. “What is with you today?”
“I had a really good talk with Kali last night. I’m feeling more myself than I have in a long time.”
JD chewed the inside of his lip, but didn’t speak. A waiter appeared at his shoulder, face shrouded like all the rest, some features dimly visible in the light from the tablet resting on his palm.
“Some drinks to start with?” he asked.
“What’s with the veil, bro? You fucking ugly under there?”
“Khoder,” JD said firmly.
“What, bro? It’s cool; my grandfather was Dalit.”
Soo-hyun handed the waiter all three menus: “Can we get three servings of the fried chicken, and three of the salt and pepper calamari. Oh, and three whiskeys, neat.”
“I’m sorry, but the younger gentleman doesn’t appear old enough to drink.”
“No,” Soo-hyun said, “the whiskeys are all for me.”
“I’ll have a stout,” JD said. “And a coke for the kid.”
“Yeah, a long fucking line of it, bro,” Khoder said with a grin. When the waiter was done keying the order he left the table without another word.
“Was that true?” JD asked Khoder. “Your grandfather was part of the untouchable caste?”
Khoder shrugged, attention now focused on something beyond the glass. “I don’t fucking know, bro. Just making conversation.”
Khoder stuck his forehead against the window, and JD looked around the restaurant casually, careful not to let his gaze catch anyone’s eye. Most of the other diners were corporate elite: well dressed, with a rigid posture, as though each table represented a job interview, business meeting, or hostile takeover.
“Alright, Soo-hyun; what are we doing here?” JD asked.
“I told you: this is a planning dinner.” They sat up in their chair, eyes cast down to the city beyond the window, flickering steadily to combat the motion of the restaurant. “There,” they said. “What do you see?”
JD followed their eyeline. Without the augmented layer provided by his phone, he saw the city as it was. From their vantage Songdo looked less like a precisely structured and engineered city, and more like a living thing. Mounds of garbage collected in alleyways, spreading like mold, and everywhere the city’s poor had twisted infrastructure to forge themselves a place where the corps didn’t want them: mini-favelas emerging in parks and the gaps between buildings. They must have seemed like cancer to the corporations, but JD saw only evolution, mutation; antibodies fighting back against the corporate infection, the illness of greed.
“Buildings?” JD said. “Garbage? What am I meant to be looking at?”
“The rampartment complex, right there. That’s the target.”
With that new context, JD saw the structure emerge from the swamp of streets. Compared to the skyscrapers that towered over Songdo, it was a squat walled compound, four eight-story buildings joined together by enclosed skybridges.
“Alright,” JD said. “How do we get in?”
“Maintenance. Oldest trick in the book.”
“Oldest and most obvious,” JD muttered to himself, but he watched carefully as the restaurant kept spinning. His view shifted incrementally until he could see the maintenance access alleyway squished between the southeastern building and the high cement wall of the outer perimeter. A white van sat parked beside four dumpsters overflowing with garbage.
The waiter arrived with their food and drinks on a large tray. He placed the food in the middle of the table, and set the drinks down carefully, placing Soo-hyun’s three whiskeys
