An impenetrable blanket of thick cloud and filthy smog hides the beauty of the clear, star lit sky from citizens down on the ground. Mere mortals fighting for scraps, surviving, existing, not living. You wouldn’t call this living. The official state channel blares out toneless, monotonous, relentless sounds from battered speakers that hang off every lamp post. On the hour, every hour, a booming voice hammers out the latest statements from the Office of the High Chancellor, praising the endless successes of the regime, detailing the severe punishments inflicted on those unfortunate souls who dared to have opposed it. For months now, the Chancellor’s troops have been on high alert on the Citadel’s dirty, cramped streets. People go missing in the night, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers snatched from the sidewalks, taken from stinking alleyways, arrested at dimly lit street food cafes. They are thrown into interrogation rooms, questioned endlessly, relentlessly. But the people stay silent, stubborn traitors refusing to give up a name whispered more and more in the darkness... Somewhere from deep within the city slums a signal emerges, broken at first, barely audible, crackle and static distorting the sound. The Listener turns the dial on the clapped out radio, the needle making its way across the broadcast frequencies, the music dipping in and out. Then suddenly, the crackle clears, the white noise gives way. It is the sound of the The Open World... the sound of Trilane…