After a simple dinner of beer and pasties in a pub on the fringes of the City, 
they rode south across the Tower Bridge, pierced a shallow layer of posh 
development along the right bank of the river, and entered into Southwark. As 
in other Atlantan districts of London, Feed lines had been worked into the 
sinews of the place, coursing through utility tunnels, clinging to the clammy 
undersides of bridges, and sneaking into buildings through small holes bored in 
the foundations. The tiny old houses and flats of this once impoverished 
quarter had mostly been refurbished into toeholds for young Atlantans from all 
around the Anglosphere, poor in equity but rich in expectations, who had come 
to the great city to incubate their careers. The businesses on the ground 
floors tended to be pubs, coffeehouses, and music
halls. As father and daughter worked their way east, generally paralleling the 
river, the lustre that was so evident near the approaches to the bridge began 
to wear thin in places, and the ancient character of the neighborhood began to 
assert itself, as the bones of the knuckles reveal their shape beneath the 
stretched skin of a fist. Wide gaps developed between the waterfront 
developments, allowing them to look across the river into a district whose 
blanket of evening fog was already stained with the carcinogenic candy-colored 
hues of big mediatrons.