The Neon City

A woman crosses a flooded neon city at night, through knife fights and gunfire, into mirrored corridors of light.

After three slower, more muted worlds, this one is about colour and speed. In the later chapters, the corridors and frames of light repeat shapes from The Machine That Dreams, the first world in the set.

Palette
Rain and wet asphalt, magenta, cyan, one red
Made with
Midjourney

Streets

Rain, crowds and a flooded road.

A woman alone in an empty rain-soaked street, seen as a silhouette against blurred lights
A young woman walking through a crowd, magenta and cyan pooling on the wet ground
A woman submerged to the shoulders in a flooded neon street

Faces

Close-ups in magenta and blue neon, and rain on glass.

Close on a woman's face lit by shifting neon, magenta and blue
Extreme close-up of the same kind of face, magenta on the cheek, mostly shadow
Macro of rain droplets on glass, each holding a speck of pink light

Violence

Knives, pistols and a chase.

Knife fight in the rain under a giant magenta sign
The same knife fight read in cold blue, blades apart
A brutal frozen hand-to-hand strike, city lights smeared behind
Firing two pistols against a red wall, muzzle flashes either side
Firing a pistol in teal rain, one bright flash
Sprinting across a rooftop as searchlights cut through the rain
Frozen motorcycle chase, everything streaked by speed
Silhouette firing a pistol inside a rectangle of white light

Corridors

An empty intersection and mirrored corridors of light.

An empty neon intersection in the rain
A lone figure standing still while neon streaks past
A tiny figure under an enormous red arc of light in fog
An endless mirrored corridor, thousands of reflected lights
Mirrored neon corridor with a lone figure at the vanishing point

Horizon

Columns of light, one tiny figure.

An impossible neon city folding up into the sky, a tiny figure on the ridge
Columns of light on a dark horizon, one tiny figure

The Machine That Dreams

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