"Another world, another lesson, is that right?" said Holt, keeping pace with Cal as they negotiated their way down a busy walkway, which was elevated above the ground. It was a gleaming metal and glass construction, and wide, allowing plenty of space for everyone. Below was a lush forest, some of the trees tall enough to poke above the walkway. Holt grabbed at a protruding branch.
At regular intervals there were lifts of a sort - hovering platforms which descended and ascended without any obvious form of propulsion, delivering people silently to the the forest floor and back up to the walkway. The locals seemed very comfortable with this, barely even breaking stride as they moved on and off.
"You're writing your own lessons," Cal said, "I'm just showing you the literature.
"You're not going to change my mind, you know."
"On us?"
"On anything," said Holt, laughing. "I'm a man of firm convictions."
Cal had taken a form that was visually unremarkable: no glowing blue eyes, no protruding rib cages, no fur. The people here mostly looked close to Earth-human, with a few twists. Although there was nothing like Locque's diverse population, the humans here nevertheless were slightly askew - a little taller, or thinner than they should be; or perhaps it was that their eyes were large, or their foreheads?
Over the treetops, several miles away in the distance, could be seen the spires of a gleaming city, shining silver in the midday sun as it stretched out over an expanse of water. Holt couldn't tell if it was a lake or the edge of an ocean. Specks flew around the buildings, the air filled with flying vehicles. The architecture was bold, both in design and construction.
Holt squinted against the glare. "What is that city? I don't recognise it. And a city like that, I'd remember."
"There's nothing quite like it on your world," Cal said. "Or mine, for that matter. Come."
Cal led them onto one of the descending platforms, which instantly lowered to below the walkway, without giving any sensation of movement. A series of train carriages were slung beneath the walkway.
"We're catching the train?" Holt looked unsure.
"They're really quite good here," Cal said, stepping aboard.
Holt followed, and they took seats near a window. "We don't need to get tickets?"
Cal shook his head. "They don't do any of that stuff anymore."
"What stuff? Train tickets?"
"Money. Payment."
Holt snorted. "Sounds awful."
The train pulled away and accelerated rapidly without causing its occupants any discomfort. There was a pulse of air outside as it breached supersonic speeds, still without impacting on its passengers or surroundings.
In only a couple of minutes they had pulled in to a station in the centre of the city. Stepping out, they gazed up at the spires, which up close were covered with exuberant colours that lit the streets with soft rainbow shades.
There were no vehicles in the streets, only people. They all looked to have purpose but there was little evidence of hurrying. In the city there was more overt variation in people's appearance. It was evident that there was major body modification going on, although Holt couldn't quite identify its nature.
"They're augmented, right? What is it, mechanical? Nano?"
Cal shrugged. "Some of that. I think they've tried it all. They're doing something different now, but I forgot its name. There's also genotyping, although it's quite highly regulated."
"Genotyping as on Locque?"
"That's right," Cal said, "the same technology you've been using on us for centuries. People use it here to customise themselves, but consensually."
Holt turned around on the spot, gulping in the sights and absorbing everything that was around them. "Their technology is more advanced than ours," he noted. "Than Earth's, I mean. It doesn't take much to be more advanced than you lot."
"There's something else you should see," Cal said, moving off down the street. He nodded at a musician, and sampled some food from a stall.
"And you don't have to pay for any of this?"
"I've not quite figured it all out," Cal said, "but it seems that their tech has taken care of pretty much everything. Feeding people isn't a problem. Construction is easy, and automated, and fast. Disease is rare, and easily treated when it does show up. Most labour is taken care of. The planet runs itself."
Holt grimaced. "What about all the people?"
"They just do whatever they want to do," Cal said with a shrug. "Seems to work pretty well for them."
"Fucking hippie heaven," Holt said, his face looking as if he'd just eaten something unpleasant. "What's the point of living if there's nothing left to do?"
"On the contrary," Cal said, turning down a side street, "this world has enjoyed growth and prosperity like nothing I've seen anywhere else. They've settled on four of the other planets in the system. Their first interstellar exploration ship is mid-transit. Their art and culture is thriving. Think about how much human brain time is freed up when you don't have to worry about shelter or where your next meal is coming from."
"Sounds too good to be true. What's the catch? Nothing comes for free - so who's losing out? Are there slaves? Is it slaves? Gotta be slaves."
"Not as far as I can tell." Cal looked back at Holt and grinned. "So you want to know how they've done all this?"
They emerged from the alley into a huge open square. The buildings still towered above but seemed smaller and older. Some of them had semi-transparent scaffoldings erected around them.
"Holy shit," Holt said.
"Thought you might recognise it."
Holt took a step forwards, and turned his head slowly one way then the other. The facades of the buildings were covered in advertising screens: enormous, glowing billboards that flashed from one brightly coloured image to another.
"Holy shit," he said again, more slowly. "It's Times Square."
"It is. You have one on your world too, yes?"
"Not anymore, really. It went in the floods, a couple hundred years back. Still there, I guess, it's just that it's underwater now."
"They've still got theirs," Cal said, waving a hand. "But that's not even the best bit," he continued, pointing behind Holt.
On one edge of the square, at the base of the buildings and perhaps fifty feet tall and one hundred wide was a slab of glowing blue energy; the same blue that sometimes roiled in Cal's eyes and which could be glimpsed through the windows of the turbines back on Earth. Here, it was a huge rectangular mass of shifting, undulating blue, framed by a mechanical structure that made the whole thing look not unlike an enormous television. At its base was something of a stage, with wide steps leading up to it. People were climbing the steps and disappearing into the rippling blue, just as others were emerging and wandering off into the square as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
"It's a portal," Cal said with some satisfaction. "A dimensional portal."
"I don't understand," Holt said, staring. "Where are they going?"
"To this place's equivalent of Locque."
"You mean-"
"We have a lot in common with these people," Cal interrupted. "They started off in the same place as us. This world broke down the dimensional door and discovered another world on the other side, just as you did on Earth. They observed, for a very long time. There were some experiments, even. The same experiments that we're all very familiar with."
"But it's all so different."
Cal took a step closer. "That's because they made contact. After only a few decades. There was a rapprochement."
Holt continued to gape, open mouthed.
Cal waited a moment, then continued. "That's how they've done all this," he said. "They worked together. There's a free flow of people between the two worlds. They share their worlds, and their lives, and their resources, and their knowledge."
"I don't believe it," Holt said, shaking his head. "There's no way people would go for it."
"People can do a lot if you give them a chance," Cal said.
Holt sighed. "I get the point of all this, Cal," he said, sounding tired. "But two things. First, I still really, honestly don't give a crap. Second, none of this is workable with our planets. It's all too far gone. It's too late."
"That depends who's running the show," Cal said.
"You think you're the man for the job?" Holt laughed. "I've seen people with power. And, no, I'm not talking about me. I just do my job. But I've seen what power does to people. Nobody gets that much power without losing something of themselves. Not even you."
"We'll see." Cal put some distance between him and Holt. "You should check out the other world," he said, pointing at the portal, "it's pretty different to Locque, as you can imagine."
"That where we're off to next, then? How long is this magical tour of yours? How many more lessons?"
Cal took a breath and his face became one of concentration. "This lesson's not over yet, Holt," he said, and his skin flushed as his eyes glazed over and blue fire erupted once more. "You should be grateful. I could have left you on the post-nuke planet."
"Cal, don't you even think-"
"It's done," Cal said, and then the air puckered and popped and he vanished in a shower of sparks.
Holt stood alone in New York and gazed upon a portal to another world, watching as hundreds of people passed through it as if it were the most natural thing in the universe.