"One hundred and thirty-two million,” the man said, teeth gritted, his pale face growing red. He was obviously near the limits of both of his patience and his purse.

“Why not make it an even one thirty-five?” the man across the table asked, his attention trained on a long, fat cigar that he was trimming with titanium clippers.

“That’s a three million dollar difference, Barun,” the first man said, “which is a lot of money.”

“Not to me, Max,” Barun said, sticking the cigar in his mouth and circling a jet lighter around the tip. He puffed until a haze of smoke obscured his wide, confident smile. This meeting had taken almost twenty minutes, but now that the deal was in the bag, it had certainly been worth it.

Barun’s age was indeterminate, but he seemed young for the cigar and for the tailored business suit that hung from his underdeveloped frame. He wore a pencil-thin beard that traced his jawline, outlining his cherubic face.

Max, sitting across the conference table, took his look right from a catalog. He looked to be in his mid-forties but talked like an old man, with a heavy Russian accent, and had an outsize mustache—the sort that appealed to cheap businessmen and mobsters. His interest was undoubtedly commercial exploitation—probably the sale of custom firearms. That was something Barun would have preferred keep outside the capital city, but the man had money and Barun needed it. Immediately.

“My time, however,” Barun added casually, “is as valuable as it comes.”

The man who called himself Max stood up and turned away, surveying the city below through the conference room’s large bay windows. They were at the high, narrow part of Barun’s office building, and the room had three walls of glass, offering panoramic views of the metropolis under construction around them.

This building had been Barun’s first, and he had sunk his every penny into it. It was so ambitious that most of the floors remained unfinished. But you had to spend money to make money, and you had to look like you had plenty more to spend. This building, and this conference room, was a gambit, one that had already paid off a hundredfold. So far, every meeting here had gone his way, but this Max was a big fish and the first professional Barun had ever negotiated against.

“The city looks big from here,” Max said, waving an arm at the spread of cement and glass. This high up, the capital was a gray puddle between the endless desert and the crystal sea. A dozen high-rises competed to be the second tallest, and three times as many were under construction. Cranes towered over steel frameworks, and the pounding of pile drivers penetrated the room in dull thuds. But among all the clutter, nothing grabbed the eye so much as the large, empty lot beside the harbor, a four-square-block expanse of tan that was the site of Barun’s most ambitious project: the Grand Tower Hotel, the tallest building in the world.

“But how big is this city, really?” Max asked. “How many real citizens?” He turned to Barun. “How much real estate have you simply given away, creating empty spaces that will never be used?”

“Everyone paid,” Barun said truthfully. “Even my own friends. But will they choose to live here? Who can know?” He waved his hand as if this were a trivial concern, when in fact nothing was more serious. Land was cheap, planets were expensive but valueless, and the only metric that mattered was the number of active citizens.

“And it is hot,” Max said. “Why did you pick here to build?”

“The desert offers solar and oil,” Barun said. “And the heat doesn’t matter if you’re inside and everything here will be—sidewalks, roads, even the parks.” He omitted his real reason, far more whimsical, that he was paying homage to the greatest city on Earth.

Max continued to gaze out the window. The hot desert air distorted the rooftops, but the room’s climate control made the world outside nothing but a living picture.

“My island will be there?” Max asked, jabbing a finger at the city harbor.

Barun nodded, tapping a thick cigar ash into a crystal ashtray.

“And you’ll lay in the land yourself?” Max asked. “For 135 million, I expect it turnkey.”

“That was understood,” Barun said. “I wouldn’t have you building in my harbor, anyway. You’d certainly hog all the best views.”

“And I want a bridge,” Max said, ignoring Barun’s attempt at levity.

“No bridge,” Barun said. “I’ll build you a ferry terminal.”

“High-speed ferries?”

“You provide the ferries. Any speed you like, so long as they’re electric.”

“And I want a subway.” Max said. “From downtown to my island.”

“You can have either the subway or the ferries, but not both, and you provide the power. This deal includes one quarter of the output of the southern Savahan solar farm, which is...” Barun paused, checking a spreadsheet. “Thirty-two MW average daytime power, with battery capacity for nineteen MW nightly. If you want more nighttime power, you build and house your own batteries. You can also collect your own solar and wind, but no tidal generators—nothing that affects the aquatic life in the harbor. And no fossil fuels, either. Not even for cars. My smog index is high enough already. Also nothing pink. You build any pink buildings and I’ll bulldoze the entire goddamn island myself.”

“So many rules,” Max said. “If I do business with you, will you pick over every little detail?”

“The details make the difference, Max,” Barun said. “It’s what’s gotten me this far, and it’s the reason you want to do business with me.”

“I do,” Max said, staring at Barun with both respect and animosity. After a moment, he extended his hand.

Barun smiled, took the hand, and gave it a solid pump.

“The money is transferred now,” Max said. “I’ll expect my island by the end of the week.”

“I’ll put someone on it tonight,” Barun said, stepping into his elevator. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Barun waited until the elevator had dropped five floors before allowing himself to sag against the wall. He released an exhausted woot, then started to type a message to Wadi, his best friend and business partner. His fingers were shaking.

“I did it!” he typed, but was interrupted by a message from his mother, asking him about the shelter. He checked the time; he still had fifteen more minutes. He’d reply to her later. He went back to typing his message, but then Wadi stepped into the elevator.

Wadi was a short man with a full, square beard and round eyeglasses. He wore a cleric’s robe and walked with each hand tucked into its opposites’ sleeve. He was the very image of peace, yet most people felt uncomfortable about his appearance, so Barun handled the negotiations without him.

“Well?” Wadi asked, bristling with excitement.

“We got it!” Barun replied, his joy bringing tears.

“The Grand Tower Hotel?”

“Every penny we need.”

“And the ministry building?”

“We build the tower,” Barun said firmly.

“Of course.” Wadi said. “It’s just that we can’t have a government until we have somewhere to put it.”

“Wadi...”

“We’ll build the hotel,” Wadi said. “I’ve already loaded your diagram into the computer. Now for other business.” Wadi scrolled through his messages. “Inine wants to expand her jurisdiction west.”

“The swamps?”

“Yes,” Wadi said. “She feels the city needs a second airport.”

“We need the swamps for our wildlife integration index.”

“She’ll pay to move them.”

“We can’t just drop them in the middle of nowhere. It’s an integration index.”

“So the answer is no?”

Barun started to answer, then sighed. “I can’t just tell her no,” he said. “She’s the principal minister of the Narrows. Set up a meeting for Wednesday.”

The elevator opened to a lobby that was large enough to house a trapeze act. They crossed the empty room to the front of the building, where a marble-paved driveway encircled a massive steel fountain featuring a lion and a horse. The sound of construction echoed through the city in dull thuds.

Barun walked to the black Lamborghini at the curb, lovingly running a finger along its red pinstripe. He opened the briefcase-size trunk and exchanged his silk jacket for a leather bomber.

“Moving on,” Wadi said, “GMajor wants more southern territory.”

“He wants to annex New Alcardia?”

“No, he wants to extend Moltana farther south.”

“The whole continent?”

“Just a spur. He wants more beaches.”

“We gave him more beaches last week,” Barun said, pulling on lambskin gloves. “The Sacardian Delta is already tightly pinched, and our worldwide land-to-water ratio is dangerously low. Why won’t anyone look at the bigger picture?”

“Because that’s your job.”

“But I want to have fun, too.”

“Building this planet was your idea,” Wadi said with a shrug. Barun grimaced. “On the plus side,” Wadi added, “you have your own planet.”

“Yeah,” Barun said, flashing a grin as he lifted the Lamborghini’s scissor door and slipped inside. “The answer is no to expanding Moltana, but give GMajor a permanent suite in the Grand Tower Hotel and let him design it himself. Consolation prize.”

Barun settled into the driver’s seat and set the car to manual. A message appeared on the dash—his mother again. He checked the time; he still had eight minutes left. He motioned to Wadi.

“Get in,” he said. “I want to see the hotel before I leave.”

The car took off, its foot-wide tires chirping. He turned down Main Avenue, which carved a ten-lane canyon through the heart of the city, and quickly worked the shift up to fifth gear, driving so fast that he could almost feel the force of acceleration.

The city’s towers surrounded him, silent giants that blocked the afternoon sun and left the empty street in dark shadow. The asphalt of Main Avenue was smooth and fresh, but the roads it crossed showed the unfinished city: paved in rock and dirt, woven with the frameworks of half-finished buildings, and backlit by the bland desert. This city would soon be complete if he could just keep the money flowing.

As the blue waters of the Magean Sea came into view, Barun crinkled his brow, his eyes searching for—and not finding—the Grand Tower Hotel. He jerked the car to a stop and stepped out, confused and angry. The sound of construction grew louder, its dull thudding shaking the very earth, but there wasn’t a machine in sight. Just an empty lot—four square blocks of flat tan.

“You said you’d loaded the diagram?”

“And I did,” Wadi replied, stepping out beside him.

“So build it.”

“Not like that,” Wadi said.

“Then like what?” Barun asked.

“By hand.”

“But I only have six minutes,” Barun protested, checking the time and brushing aside another message from his mother. She was getting frantic; he had to reply soon.

“It’ll be a challenge,” Wadi said. “And it’ll be fun. Fun like we used to have.”

Barun looked at Wadi and realized that his friend was offering him a gift.

“I’ll need your help,” Barun said.

“Then let’s get started,” Wadi replied, pulling up the diagram for both of them.

The building was a tapering spire, a rapier thrust upward through the skin of the earth. Covering a modest half-million meters at the base, it rose a precarious two kilometers into the air, a feat that required the most advanced—and expensive—materials available. Barun had spent weeks sketching designs and working out the details, then invested hours of precious computer time rendering a model. All that was left was to build it.

Barun shucked his coat and pulled on a hard hat, then called up the heavy equipment. The first step was to excavate a pit across the entire site, twenty meters deep. For this he used dozers and trucks, then brought in backhoes to square the walls.

Next came the pile drivers, towering monstrosities that pounded I beams as wide as a truck a hundred meters into the ground. Then came the eight-meter-thick foundation slab, requiring four million yards of concrete and five hundred thousand trucks to deliver it.

The heavy steel framework started four stories underground, along with the massive carbon fiber tubes that would rise the entire height of the building, allowing for both strength and sway. These tubes also doubled as the elevator shafts—Barun’s own idea—freeing up more floor space.

The lobby was at ground level, and the first step was to install a decorative sculpture that Wadi had designed, titled Returning Fire. It featured a man whose outstretched arms cast a stream of doves into the air, and it was so expansive that the lobby had to be built around it.

The lobby was five stories tall, and Barun levitated alongside the cranes as they assembled the framework. He used his fingers to direct them, moving so fast he broke a sweat. He sped upward, focusing on the skeleton and leaving the skin to Wadi who, a few floors below, corkscrewed around the building as he installed low-conductive glass panels.

The Grand Tower Hotel rose rapidly now, and the building’s floor plan morphed from square to a five-pedal layout, which would reduce weight, add strength, and allow for more windows. Floor by floor, the taper of the building was bare millimeters, but each piece of metal and glass had to be custom-made to allow for it. The machines were moving faster now, laying in steel at a speed Barun’s eyes could barely register. He used his fingers to direct them, and they grew sluggish from the effort.

By the time a hundred floors were framed out, the building had narrowed to a single city block, and Barun’s shirt was soaked. He had to move slower for the next few floors, to sort out the framework, which had begun to crisscross, and to merge the sixty-four elevator shafts down to sixteen. Wadi had slowed, too—the building was pressurized above the eightieth floor, which meant putting seals on the windows and joints. Barun checked the time: two minutes. He wiped his face and worked faster.

At floor one hundred and sixty—the height of the tallest building on Earth—Barun added a radial platform, a half ring around the building that would host an open-air restaurant with an all-glass floor. Above that, the framing became jagged, allowing for a terrace on every floor. The upper thirty-two floors were all penthouses and luxury suites, and the entire building was capped with a six-story sphere—Barun’s own office and living quarters, with a pool, a basketball court, and a TV in every room. It was to be his own private palace at the top of his own world.

He was just directing five helicopters as they lowered the curved frame at the very top of the building when his timer ran out. His world disappeared behind a blue lock screen that said “Mubarak’s Internet Café” in rotating silver letters.

Barun slumped over and breathed heavily, letting his forehead rest on the cheap keyboard whose keys were stained gray from use. His shirt, a hand-me-down from a neighbor on his thirteenth birthday, clung to his thin frame, and sweat beaded on his smooth, hairless face.

The table in front of him, made from plywood and cinder block, sagged under the weight of a dozen yellowing computers. The cool evening breeze blew through glassless windows, and buzzing fluorescent tubes supplemented the fading light. The dull thud of shelling vibrated through the room, but Barun’s attention was drawn to the sound of typing, to where Wadi sat cross-legged in front of a computer balanced on a chunk of cement. Barun hurried over to him, navigating the webwork of wires that fed the computers power and internet.

Wadi was younger than Barun by two years, but had the same dark hair, skin, and eyes. They were cousins, sharing a grandmother, but friends as well. Wadi’s small hands moved frantically around the adult-size keyboard, and, looking at the dim, discolored screen, Barun saw the glassy top of the Grand Tower Hotel.

“Zoom out, zoom, out!” Barun said, squatting down and reaching for the keyboard.

But Wadi was already scrolling his mouse, bringing the entire building into view. The tower gleamed in the afternoon sun, dominating the skyline of the modest city that the two of them had built over the past weeks. They gazed at it quietly.

“I want to see the inside,” Barun said, but just then Wadi’s time ran out. The screen went blue, locking the tower away.

“Tomorrow,” Wadi said. “We won’t do anything else until we’ve had a proper tour.”

“Wednesday,” Barun replied sadly. “I have to wait for my allowance.”

“Wednesday, then,” Wadi said with a cheerful smile. “Only three days away.”

Barun nodded at Wadi’s eternal optimism as a shell struck nearby, cracking sharply in the evening air. He suddenly remembered his mother.

“Mubarak,” he said, turning to the man behind the counter, “may I please have two more minutes? I must tell my mother where I am.”

“Your mother well knows where you are,” Mubarak said. “And you boys need to go home so I can lock up.”

Mubarak was a cheerful man, an elder with most of his teeth. His once-generous belly had shrunk to a sagging tube above his belt, and his slack skin drooped from his cheeks and arms. He grabbed a tin of rusted, restraightened nails and started for the stack of weathered sheet metal he used to cover the windows at night.

“But she’ll want to know I’m all right,” Barun protested.

“Then go tell her,” Mubarak said, shooing them from the room.

“Let’s go, Baru,” Wadi said, leading him out.

The shelling was notably louder outside, but the fighting had moved south, and the artillery was out of range of the city.

Rubble filled the street, and many of the two- and three-story buildings on either side were broken open, exposing the rooms inside. Most of the rooms had been stripped clean, but those too precarious to reach were left fully furnished, with tables set and pictures on the wall. Dioramas of life before the war.

The children made their way down the street, ducking through shredded rebar and hopping over large chunks of cement.

“I forgot to tell mother,” Barun said, skirting a building that tilted precariously, its collapsed floors overlapping like shingles. “She’ll be worried.”

“You’ve forgotten before,” Wadi said.

“But it’s late,” Barun said. “The planes will be coming soon.”

“They’ll be no planes tonight. The free army has new antiaircraft guns to the south.”

“So they say.”

“They’ll be peace tonight, Baru. I can feel it.”

“You are ever hopeful,” Barun said. “But never practical.”

Wadi shrugged as the two of them approached a mound of rubble. There were holes dug into the side, forming makeshift stoves, and Barun hunted through them, searching for discarded bread that he could bring to his mother. If the planes came, they’d be stuck in the shelter until late morning, and there was never enough food.