From the high point of the arch, Hackworth could look across the flat 
territory of outer Pudong and into the high-rise district of metropolis. He 
was struck, as ever, by the sheer clunkiness of old cities, the acreage 
sacrificed, over the centuries, to various stabs at the problem of Moving Stuff 
Around. Highways, bridges, railways, and their attendant smoky, glinting yards, 
power lines, pipelines, port facilities ranging from sampan-and-junk to 
stevedore-and-cargo-net to containership, airports. Hackworth had enjoyed San 
Francisco and was hardly immune to its charm, but Atlantis/Shanghai had imbued 
him with the sense that all the old cities of the world were doomed, except 
possibly as theme parks, and that the future was in the new cities, built from 
the bedrock up one atom at a time, their Feed lines as integral as capillaries 
were to flesh. The old neighborhoods of Shanghai, Feedless or with overhead 
Feeds kludged in on bamboo stilts, seemed frighteningly inert, like an opium 
addict squatting in the middle of a frenetic downtown street, blowing a reed of 
sweet smoke out between his teeth, staring into some ancient dream that all the 
bustling pedestrians had banished to unfrequented parts of their minds. 
Hackworth was heading for one of those neighborhoods right now, as fast as he 
could walk.