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# rp-only locations | | Malaise and 26th
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| Nickel and 26th
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| Heliport
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| Malaise and 27th
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| Nickel and 27th
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| The block of Malaise and Twenty-Sixth is dominated by a single massive building, Art Deco modern archetecture spreading into the sky like some concrete and steel mushroom ripped from a backdrop in Metropolis or some pulp-fiction magazine of an earlier era. It extends straight up, office windows peering down to the streets below, until it clears the buildings of the blocks surrounding it, then it expands out in geometric flutes, graced by the robotically precise lines of Modern Realist figures of bronze, their arms out and faces looking up at the sky, holding up the club-shaped ceiling like Atlas of old.
Invisible from street level, the clover-like ceiling is made up of circular helipads, three to a 'leaf', then up to a smaller terrace of more helipads supported by clearly-defined arches and curving structural members. Here is the real action, with battered and abused--but still fully functional--cargo helicopters of varying kinds gracing the pads, wheeling or being lowered under the terrace to be refueled and passengers exchanged from their converted interiors. Some of these vehicles are military relics, some still sporting the same cargo webbing that they did when ferrying around hapless troopers and rotors that sound like medieval flagellants whipping the air; others are modern luxury models with whisper-quiet blades and comfy interiors.
When it was first erected, the Monolith Heliport must have been the glory of its time, sparkling white concrete and glistening glass windows, the polished bronze of the titans boasting their strength with brassy brilliance. Now, after years of use and abuse, the bronze is faded, tarnished with the wear of time and rusting with the cruelty of the indifferent elements. The concrete facade is pitted and eroded by years of pollution and waste, layer after layer of graffiti legends painted on street level, markings so interwoven as to be ultimately illegible. The bottoms of its leaves are now nearly black with soot and exhaust from the traffic below, stains so ingrained that no sandblasting could ever hope to work.
The lobby of the Monolith--essentially the entire ground floor--is a giant hemispherical room, hanging clocks and timetables reminiscent of the great train stations of bygone eras. The floors, originally depicting zodiac designs mirrored in tiled mosaics on the ceiling, are now scuffed beyond recognition, small paths carved into the material with the movement of many feet through many lines. Cleanliness is an afterthought; at an average of five coins a flight and a surprisingly high mortality rate, maintaining a cleaning staff is a less-than-profitable concept. Papers, timetables, boxes, and other flotsam distributes itself across the room in a chaotic not-quite pattern, wafted to build up along the walls by the movement of people inside until it blocks an important door or simply topples over from its own weight, finally spurring its removal. The center is dominated by the Core, a bank of elevators, spiral staircases, and escalators that lead up through the ceiling of the dome.
The Core runs the height of the building, connecting the lobby to the middle office floors, then to the upper hangar floors, and finally to the helipads, the turnaround maintenance area below the terrace, and the top of the terrace. Unlike the lobby, the top of the building is seemingly meticulously kept, swept clean by the constant helicopter traffic.
(description © ?) |
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