A City Full of Almost

Leonardo City never slept, but it did something almost as nice — it glowed.

Every morning, the sky above the city blazed in layers: deep coral, electric violet, warm gold. Humans, humanoid lions with their thick manes, and fluffy humanoid sheep all stopped on the sidewalks to look up, coffee cups raised halfway, eyes wide.

Super Artist Woman landed on the rooftop terrace of Solitude Art Gallery and took a slow breath. The gallery's towers jutted into the sky like giant paintbrushes and oversized colored pencils. From up here, she could see the whole city spread below her — the tram lines, the market stalls, the little school near the plaza where kids pressed their noses against windows.

She pulled a fat crimson crayon from her belt and twirled it between her fingers.

"Best view in Leonardo City," she said to herself.

Then she looked up again.

Something about the sky didn't look quite right.

What the Drones Heard

The sky above Solitude Art Gallery had a patch in it — a circle about the size of a football field where the coral and violet had simply gone. Like someone had pressed erase on the morning.

Super Artist Woman squinted at it. Not dramatic. Just wrong.

A sharp buzz cut through the air. Three delivery drones — small, boxy robots about the size of lunchboxes, each branded with a tiny Leonardo City postal stamp — came zipping past the rooftop. Then stopped. All three hung in the air, completely still, pointing upward at that bleached patch of sky.

That wasn't how delivery drones worked. They never stopped.

"Hey." She waved a hand in front of one. Nothing.

Then a voice crackled from below. Standing on the fire escape one floor down was an elderly sheep woman — a humanoid sheep, fluffy and small, with enormous round spectacles and a yellow raincoat — pressing a battered radio to one ear.

"It ate my station," the old sheep woman announced flatly. "Every channel. Just gone."

The drones' lights blinked out at exactly the same moment.