As she power-skated down the western slope of the arch and crossed the 
coastline of China, the thunderhead of neon reached above her head, spread out 
to embrace her, developed into three dimensions—and she was still 
several miles away from it. The coastal neighborhoods consisted of block after 
block of reinforced-concrete apartment buildings, four to five stories high, 
looking older than the Great Wall though their real age could not have exceeded 
a few decades, and decorated on the ends facing the street with large 
cartoonish billboards, some mediatronic, most just painted on. For the first 
kilometer or so, most of these were targeted at businessmen just coming in from 
New Chusan, and in particular from the New Atlantis Clave. Glancing at these 
billboards as
she went by them, Nell concluded that visitors from New Atlantis played an 
important role in supporting casinos and bordellos, both the old-fashioned 
variety and the newer scripted-fantasy emporia, where you could be the star in 
a little play you wrote yourself. Nell slowed down to examine several of these, 
memorizing the addresses of ones with especially new or well-executed 
signs.