She looked through the armor-glass canopy as the Hopper crossed what used to be Central Park, the saturated colors of the plastic landscape false in the white winter light. She’d visited the park when Cortex reopened it a few years back and had hated the new version. On the surface, little had changed. The ponds were full of reprinted ducks that quacked and nibbled at food, while gray squirrels chased each other along fence tops. The new ownership was easy to spot though. Everything was too perfect. The lawns glowed with the false life of artificial grass; the trees glistened with the internal plasticizer that had mummified them where they stood. There were no benches, nowhere to sit. It was silent. No music, no conversations, just the odd chirp from the reprinted wildlife. The few people she’d seen were huddled together, eyes down, separated from their neighbors. It wasn’t a garden any longer; it was a historical sculpture park, frozen the moment Cortex purchased it.