Oracle Cities

Oracle Cities or Oracle Shelters are places set up every two hundred kilometers on a planet, inside Black Cubes. These are the only places where Digestors cannot spawn uncontrollably without paying the price.

However, the price of the properties and rents are in  Aether, not to mention the entrance fee to the city. These shelters are rather large but without Aether people will be sleeping in the streets.

Inside, it was forbidden to steal, injure or kill. But, loopholes in the Oracle City's rules of conduct can be found: there were plenty of other ways to harm someone without breaking those rules and some people had already figured that out.

For example, it was possible to fornicate, manipulate or extort someone without causing physical injury by using aphrodisiacs, sleeping pills, or simply threatening, blackmailing or coercion. The level of flexibility of the rules remained to be determined, but if there were only Ais like this drone to ensure their proper enforcement, he was not very hopeful.

Nevertheless, some facilitities can be found inside the Oracle Cities.

## The Oracle Playground

From the outside, it looks like a huge cylinder, about 50 meters in diameter and higher than the tallest skyscrapers on Earth.

Inside, the Oracle Playground seemed to be a patchwork of different leisure places with their own characteristics depending on the purpose and target species. Some spaces seemed mixed while others seemed to be reserved for certain types of species or individuals only.

The place was so large that it was impossible to see its limits, not to mention the countless elevators and stairs leading to the upper floors. Like the Black Cube, these buildings seemed to be equipped with a space technology that could greatly increase the size of the interior.

Every ten or fifteen meters, a terminal resembling a metal sausage with a blue light vein was planted in the ground, waiting to be consulted. Spherical drones like the ones that had hosted them were also floating around, sometimes static, sometimes shooting at full speed while carrying something, often a Blue or Silver Cube.

It turned out that the Oracle Playground was compartmentalized by species, but also by Oracle Rank. There were public spaces that everyone could go to, but others were reserved for a restricted audience.

Inside the space dedicated to human's size life form, the sky was a cloudless blue, but was different from place to place, betraying that it was actually a ceiling on which an image was projected. The plaza was paved with polished stones, just like the roads, with a fountain in the middle. Gardens and parks were visible nearby, with wooden benches at regular intervals. Hotels, houses and other villas with different architectures occupied a good part of this human recreational town, the rest being dedicated to leisure facilities. There was everything from sports complexes, swimming pools, a cinema, theater, casino, bars and restaurants, a brothel and even an amusement park. More traditional shops offered a variety of objects and foods from their home planets, but for the time being human-shaped drones were used as vendors.

## The Mission Halls

There are two of them. The regular one and the Oracle Mission Hall. The first is for jobs and assignments given by other Evolvers, while the second is for assignments given directly by the Oracle. Or else, there's the Civilian, Evolver, and Player Hall if you want to meet people who match you or register a faction, guild, or business.

The two Missions Halls were easily recognizable because they formed a sort of pentagon empty in the middle, in the center of which stood a huge Red Cube comparable to the one in which he had completed his First Ordeal.

Each side of the Pentagon had different symbols on its facade and these corresponded to the two Mission Halls and the three Halls for Civilian, Evolvers and Players respectively. These Halls were connected to each other to facilitate communication between different types of missions and individuals. An Oracle Mission usually required powerful Evolvers or Players, but occasionally a Civilian with a particular area of expertise might be needed. In this case, being able to get the information to the relevant halls as quickly as possible was crucial.

## The Oracle Bunker

It is a building in the form of a pyramid where one can buy a place.

An Evolver could only own one cabin. It was the Oracle's logical countermeasure to keep everyone from renting multiple cabins at low prices. The good thing, however, was that it was easy to get into them no matter what Oracle Shelter or City you were in.

For every additional ten square meters of space, the cost in Aether per day doubled. To buy it permanently, you had to multiply the price by a thousand. The good news was that 10 square meters only cost 1 pts of Aether per day. The problem was that to add furniture, a toilet, a shower or a faucet, you had to pay extra. Simply adding a shower and toilet added 10 extra points per day and immediately it was not as customer friendly.

Inside, by borrowing the Yellow Cube, it was possible to reach his cabin by paying 50 pts of Aether, but the best was to borrow the Orange Cubes, which were free.

## The Oracle Bank

There's the Oracle Bank if you want to protect your possessions or Aether Crystals.