Behind every wall, someone remembers
2061. Nobody quite remembers who printed the cities back. Only that one morning they were there. People call them Printcity. Nobody has been to the top of one yet. They say that is for the best.
The Great Collapse
By the end of the wars the continent's cities were dust. Then came Trösztcorp with its printers: palm-sized cubes that set into stone, brick, concrete and glass. In a single night it raised a whole Printcity. Then the next one. People wept with gratitude.
The Core
The new cities are run by Trösztcorp's system, the Core. It hands out flats, jobs and power; every wall holds its camera and its microphone. Whoever objects gets "relocated" one night. By morning the flat is empty and the name is gone from the stairwell board.
The secret
Dzsoni "Dynamite" Vadas, demolition master of the Repesz Crew, blew the wrong wall in the Old Town. Behind it stood a warm, humming node, and in it, names: the names of the disappeared, by the hundred. The Core is not a machine. The Core is built from them, and it thinks with their brains.
The Core Must Fall
The Crew says every node blown sets someone free. Gárd Security says whoever is inside dies in the blast. Colonel Kevin Kállai swore not one node will fall. Dzsoni swore every one of them will. One of them is badly wrong.
The brains
The Crew's hackers found out the Core buried its most important brains underground, under gardens and parks. If a Digger digs one out and a Hacker jacks in, a piece of the Core goes blind. Or wakes up. Nobody knows yet.
The Core strikes back
Since the nodes started blowing, the Printcities behave strangely. Rocks fall from the sky. The ground shakes, the river floods, a twister sweeps the farms, and sometimes, for a few seconds, gravity just leaves. Trösztcorp says it is climate change. The Crew says the Core is sneezing. Nobody comments on the walking robots yet.
"We are not tearing down walls. We are tearing down cages." Dzsoni "Dynamite" Vadas, demolition master of the Repesz Crew
Italy
Harbor
Desert town
Industrial
Mountain village
Old Town
Sunshine Coast
Quarry
Campus
Suburb
Agyfarm
Kukacland
Liftakna
Trakkstop
Windmill Valley
Railyard
Fairground
Train Battle
D-Day
Giza
Paris
Rome
London
Budapest
Venice
Central Park
Meteors
Bolides
Star Shower
Earthquake
Tornado
Flood
Carpet Bombing
Dive Bomber
Cluster Bomb
Weightless
Volcano
Sandstorm
Robot Town
Metropolis