Large green hills surrounded the city. The hills were compacted rubble, from the former urban structure of Stuttgart. Stuttgart had suffered very harshly during the plagues of the forties. Most of the city had burned down after the panic-stricken population had abandoned town. The scorched infectious wreckage had been demolished by the returning survivors, and Stuttgart had been entirely rebuilt during the gaudy and visionary fifties and sixties. The architects of the new Stuttgart had had nothing left of their past to restrain them, so they’d rolled up their sleeves in a fine biomodernist frenzy and attempted to create compelling icons for their own cultural period. People often got a bit hysterical when they were trying to prove to themselves that they had some right to be survivors.