Neon Sky

The city of Auralis never slept. Suspended bridges curved like glass serpents across the sky, and buildings stretched so high they pierced the atmosphere, their tops swaying gently in the stratospheric winds. Artificial suns orbited above, casting tailored light onto each district: golden in the Financial Arches, violet in the Entertainment Grotto, and a cool blue above the Residential Reef.

Kael, a courier for Skyline Express, zipped through the air on his gravity board, weaving between drone traffic and holographic advertisements. His visor blinked with a red delivery icon. Destination: Level 914 – The Cloud Garden. Most couriers avoided the Cloud Garden. It wasn’t dangerous—just strange. That high up, reality tended to... blur.

He ascended, the noise of the lower city fading behind him. The Cloud Garden emerged like a mirage—an oasis of flora growing out of a lattice of translucent metal. Vines wrapped around data towers. Trees hummed softly, tuned to a frequency only pollination drones could hear. The air shimmered.

Waiting for him was an old man in a long coat that flickered with constellations—literally. His eyes glowed faintly, and a neural socket pulsed at his temple.

"You’re late," the man said.

Kael checked the timestamp. He was two minutes early.

"Time bends here," the man added, smiling. “You brought the seed?”

Kael handed over the vial, unsure of what it was. It pulsed with a warm green light.

The man knelt beside a gnarled tree whose leaves looked like stained glass. He opened the vial and whispered to it. The seed floated out, hovered in the air, and melted into the trunk. A moment later, a flower bloomed. It sang.

Kael stepped back. “What is this place?”

“A memory of Earth,” the man said. “Preserved in pixels and chlorophyll.”

Before Kael could ask more, his visor blinked—another delivery. He turned to leave but looked back.

The garden had changed. The man was gone. In his place, a tree stood, its bark shaped like a face—smiling.

Kael hovered for a moment, then shot downward, into the neon blur of the city. Somewhere below, someone else waited.