Aether's Obsession
I stopped and looked at it for a while because I could not look at it.
The planet, I thought, not for the first time, but with more certainty than usual, was extraordinary. The kind of extraordinary that made the word feel insufficient. I had thought this in the desert too, in a different way — the desert's extraordinariness was vast and harsh and indifferent, the beauty of something that would kill you without malice. The capital's extraordinary was intentional. Built. The beauty of something that had decided to be beautiful and had put significant resources toward the goal.