In the vertical sprawl of the city, Brud Linden — Shoothis — chose to live at the very bottom, on the lowest floor reachable only by foot. Elevators and escalators were mere figments of the past, replaced by transfer stairs that functioned through neural connections. A human could traverse from one location to another in an instant, provided they had visited that place in the metaverse first.
Brud's apartment was simple: a monochromatic space interspersed with furniture fashioned from reclaimed materials. He had the essentials, nothing more. The hub of the home was a neural docking station — a physical extension of the metaverse that enabled instant transport.
To use the transfer stairs, an individual's neural pattern had to be registered at both the departure and arrival points, simulating a kind of conscious teleportation. And one had to pay — a single quantlit, the quantum-token currency unit of this futuristic era, riding on the quantum network.
Brud, always valuing his privacy, seldom used the stairs. He was comfortable on his lowest-floor holding, away from the perpetual hum of neural transportation. His choice of residence was his fortress, a sanctuary in the bustling city, his hideaway where reality and metaverse converged.