The worlds

A mecha yard where a thirty-centimeter preacher steers a cathedral on legs from its shoulder. Communion juice comes in thimbles. They won't take your money, so the tithe is a bolt, a rivet or a plate off your own ship, weighed at the altar scale.

A ring of gray Stack satellites where a chime sounds every fifteen minutes, whether or not anyone has spoken. Time gets billed to whoever talks first, debts pass to your heirs, and no one may open fire until an injunction's been filed. A lawyer presides from a leather chair.

A stretch of space where the star charts have holes in them and the radio goes blank in matching shapes. Every ship must carry a paper log, handwritten and stamped at the edge. Skip it and your record deletes itself, then your insurance, then your registry.

White stone, seven lamps, and a hundred Vael mourners holding the dead's last breath as one note until the body's been composed. If the note breaks, they begin again, and it can take hours. Hot broth comes round at the wake. Two rival composers are keeping score on cards.

Gray felt cubicles spread across a hall the size of a hangar, bolted to bare rock. Anything filed in triplicate and unchallenged for forty cycles becomes the filer's property, and objections must be made in person. You take a numbered cup of decaf and wait your turn.

Gold plaster, falling feathers and a chorus that never stops rehearsing, so every conversation has a key change. Applause is the only money. A bid stands when the hall claps for it, a booed bidder loses the lot, and nobody may bid until a thrown feather lands.

Six hundred gilt seats bolted into the raw basalt of a hollow asteroid. One note stays held in the rock at all times. Anyone who sings must agree with it or stay silent, because disagreement cracks glass, and you'll be charged for the panes by the light-year.

A warlord's conquered capital with smoke machines bolted to its ruins and a karaoke stage built on a tank. The Sticky Mic passes clockwise, always, and if it's handed to you, you sing. The song's over only when he claps first, and he likes the long ones.

A forty-meter canvas disc towed over a hillside town by a very small engine, and from the ground it's a perfect pale moon. Traffic crawls for a hundred kilometers around, since a hard burn tears it. Once an hour the wedding guests get handed brushes for a touch-up.

A thin steel tower on a bare plateau, wrapped crown to base in wool and wire, with cozies on the dishes. Each signal in the sector must recite the next row of a knitting pattern to pass. Get it wrong and you're jammed and mailed a cardigan, too small.

One looping course runs across five moons, with grandstands on every rock and the far crowds arriving half a second late. Before the start, each racer has to name their machine after an ex, in public, at a microphone and say one thing that ex did. Sometimes the ex turns up.

A racetrack that's a living animal the length of a small moon, lying between two towers with pit stalls bolted to its flank. You press your bare palm to the hide, and the lights won't go green until your pulse agrees with the road. Furious drivers wait.

A bridge-road built in slabs across red cliffs, and each slab drops into the canyon as soon as the lead car clears it. Nobody in second place can finish on solid ground. Everyone behind has to cut a new route or retire. Red dust gets into the sandwiches.

A freight train circling one planet on a ring of track, with wood-paneled coaches, oil lamps and a very bored conductor. It leaves each station at the listed second, and pulling the brake gets you billed by the minute and put off at the next stop.

A hangar holding one mecha whose cockpit is a bunk bed. Two pairs of boots stand by the ladder, near one tuna sandwich and one jam. The ignition fires only when both pilots' pulses agree, and any quarrel locks the controls until somebody says sorry.

A gray stripe painted across bare rock, ten lanes wide, visible from orbit and running to both horizons. You cross at a walk and your skin may not change color until your back foot's clear. A flushed cheek is a confession, and the guards pin swatches to every booth.

Mud streets, adobe houses and a doorway for each flag, in a town of people who've fled other people who fled. Leave a passport in a kitchen drawer long enough and it's yours, debts included. Asking anybody's real name means carrying a stranger's papers for a year.

A stone fortress with paper calendars layered on its walls and a kettle on every landing. The monks hold that the day can't advance while a hostage sits in the chair, and hostages are treated beautifully. A monk who tears off a page gets sent outside to wait.

Empty streets lie knee-deep in the mail nobody ever sent, around a tall Stamp Tower, and a mecha stands in paper to its waist. If you lift a letter you must read it aloud to the room, every word, and you'll remember it. Then it goes back in the pile.

A chain of hollow stones, locked boxes and lantern posts running along the border. You never look at who left the drop. It only counts as delivered when the receiver leaves a cup of cold tea on the ledge. Slide, click, tea, and keep walking.

A neon casino town bolted to the back of a sleeping giant, on a hillside that lifts and settles with each slow breath. Dealers count on the heartbeat under the floor. No payout may be large enough to wake it, so the cage settles anything bigger in favors.

A mossy stone arch carrying a double line of trucks, and now and then the road surface shrugs. It's a kaiju who believes it's a bridge, and it's been very good at it for forty years. You cross at a walk. Go any faster and the span walks with you.

A gladiator arena where a squeaky snack cart rolls to the center of the sand before every fight. Each challenger eats first. Once you've had the Queen's food, nobody can strike you down until your plate's come back washed, so a bout lasts as long as the dishes.

Vending machines the size of a hangar wall, glowing under neon menus on behalf of a monopoly that spans whole planets. Opening any wrapper means you've accepted the terms printed inside the foil, and you can't read them until it's open. Cheese powder gets everywhere, including your legal standing.

A drowned world of coral and glowing polyps owned outright by a living reef, thousands of small bodies with one will. It answers every eviction notice by growing another tower. No reply counts until a growth ring has closed, so diplomats come home years older.

Ten thousand battleships turn slowly around a dead moon, each taking days to pass, and a lot of them are still thinking. A wreck belongs to whoever can still get an answer from it. Salvagers ask three times, wait, and give their own names before they cut.

A ring of lounges and waterslides skimming low over the black hole, with a fountain of something pink in the lobby. One restful week here costs ten years back home. Checkout requires sitting through the presentation, and every polite decline earns you a free upgrade and another week.

A moon-sized heap with a town on top, and the mayor's hat is made of crushed cans. Only what's been thrown away counts as money, so you toss your payment over your shoulder and the seller catches it. Offer anything shiny and you'll be politely recycled.

A moon of living libraries, where tall Tomen stand in rows wrapped in pages, each one holding a life. To ask a question you must hand over a memory of your own, which they keep on a shelf. Ask it as a threat and the price doubles.

Velvet ropes and dioramas under glass, and in a hard white spotlight, the last of the Dray, living in his own exhibit. To ask him something you ring a bone and wait for the note. He has opinions about the placards, and nothing leaves without a Return Date.