The Tampa Bay Grand Hotel was the only building in town that was actually from the time period it depicted.

  It had mostly Victorian styling: five stories of red brick and arched windows, so solidly built it likely would have survived even without magical preservation, but its roof held curved towers topped with domes and minarets, stainless steel shining against the blue sky like the palace of some out of place sultan.

  Inside was pure old-style European. Carpeted hallways too long to light with themed crystals, relying on arch-shaped gaps above the doorways which light could shine through even when the solid oak doors were shut.

  Every surface was saturated with ornaments of dark wood and old iron.

  Stepping into the lobby, Roy tapped a bronze statue with his knuckles and heard a dull thunk. No foam and fiberglass here. This whole place had the weight of real history behind it.

  The world around it rose, fell, and began to rise again, and through it all the Grand Hotel had been here. Not just ignoring the end of the world but becoming stronger because of it.

  Further in, they found the reception desk manned by a boy wearing a blazer several sizes too big for him.

  “We’re here to see Mayor Big Time,” Roy said. “Tim sent us.”

  “Tim? Oh yeah. I’ve got instructions about that. I’ll let the Mayor know you’re here.”

  The boy moved over to a brass speaking tube that snaked up the wall and disappeared into the high ceiling. “Hey, Mr. Mayor. Tim sent some treasure hunters over to see you.”

  “Send them up. I’m more than ready.” The voice that echoed out of the pipe had a slight drawl to it. Reeeady.

  Roy and Bastion headed for the wide stairway, but as they were about to step onto the runner, the reception boy ran out in front of them and pointed them toward the elevator instead.

  He’d shed his oversized blazer behind the desk, and once he’d pressed the elevator button he did a quick costume change into a red polyester bell boy outfit, complete with fez.

  “They let us trade shifts,” he explained, adjusting the tassel beside his cap. “So I take as many at once as I can.”

  “I don’t think that’s how jobs work,” said Bastion.

  “How would we know?” said Roy.

  “Well, it wasn’t how the cadets worked.”

  The elevator carriage was cramped with the three of them inside, especially since Roy and Bastion were still holding their boxed-up gear. When the concertina door creaked shut, it felt somewhere between a prison cell and a coffin.

  It was also slow. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Roy realized that breaking it was up to him.

  “Does that costume let you do anything special?” he asked.

  “It lets me lift bags real easy. They all feel as light as pillows. Doesn’t work so well outside the building though. Sometimes I’ve gotta go get stuff from the boathouse and then they’re only a little lighter.”

  Roy nodded. That was about what he expected. With such a specific theme, the setting mattered a lot more than normal.

  “We’re still putting our costumes together from what’s in these boxes,” Roy said.

  “You’re treasure hunters, right? Is that as exciting as it sounds?”

  “So far, yes,” Roy said. “But we’re just getting started.”

  “Does it pay well?”

  “It will,” said Bastion. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “Oh yeah, but Mr. Big Time’s real generous. He hands out diamond tokens whenever he passes by. Me and some of the other guys started letting each other know when he leaves his office so we can be in the right place. Once the word comes down the tube thingy, you’ve gotta haul ass over to the stairs. He never uses the elevator, says it’s a death trap.”

  His eyes went wide as he realized what he was saying. “Uh…Don’t tell anyone I said that please.”

  “You got it,” Roy said, handing him a green five-token gem as a tip after he effortlessly pulled the doors open. He couldn’t afford to be as generous as Big Time yet, but it seemed like the Mayor’s tipping really made people like him around here, and Roy liked being liked.

  The elevator opened directly into Big Time’s office, a cluttered sanctum filled with blueprints, books, and a scale model of Bay Town. The latter appeared to be made mostly of Bill-Blocks, and a small camera from the “Bill-Blocks James Lightner Movie Maker” set was aimed at the town square.

  Every wall was either lined with shelves or layered with sticky notes. The air had the sweet scent of an old bookstore, shot through with the sharp tang of glue. Lots of glue. It was the kind of glue that best survived the years since the warp: synthetic, glittery paste in bottles shaped like unicorn heads. The empties lay scattered across tables like the trophies of a mythical beast hunter.

  Mayor Big Time was a large man in a baggy suit, with a leonine mane of hair and a gold chain hanging around his neck.

  He looked up from his blueprints and greeted them with a handshake. “Welcome. The name’s Big Time.”

  “Is it?” said Bastion, raising an eyebrow.

  “It is now. Everyone likes to reinvent themselves when they come here. I’m just taking it one step further. So, Tim sent you?

  “Yeah,” said Roy. “When we sold him a trident, he said we should see you about a bigger prize. I’m hoping it’s something good, because he didn’t tell us how dangerous getting the trident would be.”

  “He said you told him not to,” added Bastion.

  “Well, that’s wrong. I told him to be discreet, and it sounds like he took that much too literally. He could have said it was dangerous. Anyone good enough to get the trident wouldn’t have backed down if they had known, right?”

  Roy appreciated the compliment, but he noticed Bastion had raised both eyebrows now.

  “Truth is, Tim’s been working for me on this trident business. It was a kind of audition process, to find people with the skills and the balls to go after that bigger prize he mentioned.”

  “And what is this prize?” asked Bastion.

  “More tokens than you know what to do with, if you find something I want first, but I have to know you’re the right guys for this job. You're both Star Republic boys, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Roy. “Bastion’s from Star City and I’m from a little hunting town called Wiley, near the coast.”

  “I'm from out that way myself. I grew up in Galveston, back before they fixed up any of the ships there.”

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  They'd been through Galveston on their way to Florida. When they’d got on the ship, there hadn’t been much else to look at. It was like if Bay Town had been just the docks. Without even that, it must have had nothing at all.

  Big Time continued. “That's where I got my name. You might be surprised to hear it’s not a crack about my weight. I’m large and in charge because I eat at my own restaurants too often. Back then, I was a skinny street kid who ate the scraps thrown out of the Snow-Capped Cafe.”

  Roy winced. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to go without food. His father had been the best hunter in town, and after he was gone, the cadets' chow hall had provided more than enough.

  “That location was special,” said Big Time. “It had a whole ride, a raft through a mountain hot spring with penguins and polar bears. It cost nothing to run it, so nobody bothered charging entry. Me and my old pals used to ride that thing all day long. One time, I told them I was gonna have a Snow-Capped Cafe of my own someday. When they called me big time, they meant it as a joke. I didn’t see it that way.

  “See, I’m not just the Mayor around here. I'm also a businessman and a builder. When I first got here, the shops and restaurants were all intact but no one was running them. I made Bay Town what it is today, and now I’m going to build it up even bigger.”

  “Ambitious,” said Bastion.

  “There’s no other way to be out here,” Big Time replied.

  He gestured to the model sitting on the table. Roy noticed that it didn’t exactly match the real Bay Town. Instead, it was surrounded by a series of additions.

  “You’re going to add new theming?” he asked.

  ”Yes. People have barely scratched the surface of what can be achieved with theme magic. So far, people are just moving into existing themed structures.”

  He pointed at the edges of the model. “If you add walls painted gray and shaped like crenelations, something that looks like a castle, then it becomes more fortified, even if you make it out of plywood. I’m going to put up defensive walls around the whole town and castle-ise this hotel.”

  With a sweeping gesture, he picked at some plastic leaves beyond the cardboard walls. “Further out will be a jungle trail. Rickety rope bridges all over the swamp, with pit traps and rolling boulders ready to go.”

  “Why so many defenses?” asked Bastion.

  “There’s uncertainty on all sides. Marauding looters at worst, unreliable business partners at best.”

  “Let me guess,” said Bastion. “The Star Republic are the latter.”

  He nodded with a wry smile. “We do a lot of business with the Republic, shipping things to my old hometown, but that’s not enough for them.”

  “They do like to expand,” said Bastion.

  Roy knew that well enough; even Wiley hadn’t been part of the republic until a few years ago, when Bastion’s father and his men rode in and took control.

  “They keep sending messages asking for Bay Town to join up with them, and that means paying their taxes.” He said the word taxes as though he were spitting out a slug. “And along with my dubious partners back west trying to take over, I’ve got plunderers to the south trying to make off with anything of value in a more direct way.”

  “The Key Pirates?” Roy asked. “What are they like?”

  “They were just like us once, like everyone who walks off a ship hoping to find something better. Only, instead of heading inland for the ruins, they decided to become treasure hunters of a different kind.

  “It’s a serious problem. They raid everything along the coast and haul the loot back to their islands, and they’re damn good at it, because their theme works really well. Six months ago, this place had enough pirate costumes, plastic cutlasses, and flintlock pistols to outfit an armada. Down by the docks, there were wooden ships rigged with cannons for fake battle cruises and tourist trips. They took everything.

  “The setting’s perfect for them, since they’re doing all of this along the coastline. Alignment’s easy for them too. Just throw in a few hammy lines, and boom, full thematic power. The upshot is they can sail their ships with no experience and make their own wind to do it. Their cannons hit impossible shots, and they’re shockingly fast with their blades, which definitely don’t cut like plastic.”

  “Oh, cool,” said Roy. “I can do that last part too.” It was interesting to think about the overlap that themes had.

  “To top it all off, they move around in ways that are hard to pin down while they’re onboard their ships. Rope swings, absurdly long jumps. I even saw one crazy bastard fire himself out of a cannon onto another ship.”

  “Gravity’s just a suggestion,” said Roy wistfully, wishing they’d left behind just one of the costumes.

  “Exactly. The only thing holding them back is how disorganized they are. You know the phrase ‘every captain’s a king on his ship’? It’s exactly like that. None of them will bow down to the others. But if they ever manage to sail under a single banner? He shook his head, “We’re all in for a bad time.

  “I have plans for dock defenses too, but I’m split between two options. One is to build up the docks into a Spanish-style fort. I’ve been meaning to send some guys over to St. Augustine to look at the real ones.” He gestured to Roy’s belt. “That’s a job you might be interested in later, since you’re a swordsman and that place is full of knights now.”

  “You’re right. I am interested.”

  “The second option is something members of the town guard brought up. They say the best way to beat a pirate is with another pirate. So I’d build ramshackle plank forts with crooked cannons and spikes to create a magic fear effect.”

  “Why not do both?” said Roy. “I watched a movie once with a kind of Cyber Knight. A hybrid theme like that could work here.”

  “That’d be something they aren’t expecting,” said Bastion.

  Mayor Big Time smiled. “You two really are the right guys for this job, but first, let me explain why it’s so important.”

  He picked up a book, and for a moment Roy thought he was going to read from it, but then he began unfolding a map tucked into the back. He kept going until it covered most of the table, then weighed down the corners with some of the fuller bottles of unicorn glue.

  Little symbols had been drawn all over it in black marker: a skull and crossbones on the tiny island at the bottom, a sports car and a space helmet over to the right, and a sword up top. Many of the place names had been crossed out, with new post-Warp ones written over them.

  At the center was a large, crosshatched circle marked “Rabbit Country.”

  The Mayor leaned over the map, tapping points of interest with his pen. “Everything east of here is a no man's land of independent settlements all the way to the Skeleton Coast. I already mentioned the Knights of August, but there’s also a bunch of guys playing spaceman at Cape Canaveral, a huge motorcycle gang riding out of the old speedway, and dozens of other towns and bands of raiders. The Free States are like a birthday cake in a hurricane; everyone’s trying to grab a slice for themselves, but it’s just going to get ripped apart and fly all over their faces.”

  “That’s certainly a vivid image,” said Bastion.

  “And a fitting one, we just ate a cake before coming here,” added Roy.

  “Was it the Precipice?” Big Time asked.

  “Yep,” said Roy.

  “Great choice,” Big Time replied. “It took me weeks to get the design right. Anyway, I want Bay Town to stay independent, but for that, I need to be in a stronger position. That means elaborately themed defenses… and shopping.”

  “Shopping?” asked Roy.

  “Yes. Shopping. Specifically themed shopping. Theming draws people in; they knew that even before the Warp. They could have sold things in blank white rooms, but they didn’t. They knew you had to make buying things mean something. That’s what powered their entire civilization. I plan to do the same. More people, more tokens, more theming. That’s how Bay Town gets big enough to hold off the Star Republic and the Key Pirates.

  “It’s tricky, theming retail. First, malls replaced main streets. Then they turned into simulated versions of them, with indoor trees and painted skies. The most advanced version of that is north of here in The Great Mall, which has actual rivers running through it. Though from what I’ve heard, those guys spend more time fighting each other than selling anything.

  “Even that’s thinking too small. The best version of retail theming is Lightner World’s Multiverse Market.” He plucked a book from the shelf behind him. Roy glanced at the title: “Designing a Dream: The Architecture of Lightner World.”

  “It had everything. Gothic cathedrals, neon cyber cafes, chrome spaceports, and fantasy marketplaces. No one’s getting in there anytime soon though, so I want the next best thing.

  “I know the location of a shopping complex that hasn’t been looted yet and hasn’t collapsed entirely into the swamp. If you can make it past the gator-men, you’ll find a Smash-Hit Video store. Hundreds of Ultra-Discs. A larger intact collection than anyone around here has seen.”

  “Ultra-Discs?” asked Bastion. “What’s so rare about that? Even Wiley had those.”

  “We had some,” said Roy. The odd disc here and there, and most of them were scratched to hell, and theme magic doesn’t protect against that, since it was part of people’s idea of how they worked.”

  Big Time grinned. “That’s the thing. This video store was abandoned instantly after the Warp. There’ll be complete sets, still in their cases, and it won’t be mostly copies of the same thing released right before the Warp, like you’d find in a Festival Mart. It’ll have all the best movies of the 20th century.”

  “Why was it abandoned so quickly?” asked Bastion.

  Big Time’s expression darkened slightly. “Some localized theme magic, but we can get into that later.”

  “This is really about movies?” said Bastion, before catching himself. “I mean, as long as you’re willing to pay.”

  “No, I get it,” said Roy. “They held the collective imagination of billions. With those as an example, he could create new themes.”

  “Exactly.” Big Time stood straighter. “I don’t know why, but theming works better here. All the magic is amplified. This is the place to build something great. Now that you know what I’m after, are you in?”

  Roy didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stared at the book’s cover, where a small blue knight had appeared on the parapets of Lightner Castle, giving a thumbs up.

  “We’re in,” he said.

  “But first,” said Bastion. “We’re going to need a boat.”