Grantt swept a surface clear of junk, found a particular screen, and poked around until he got an aerial image. ‘We run drones to keep an eye on things.’ He showed them a diorama of the battle they’d glimpsed from the airship. ‘I guess that’s what you saw. This is the reality.’ He tapped an icon, and most of the battle scene evaporated – the vehicles, the warriors, even most of the thrown-up dust. Only a handful of scattered figures were left behind, running or crawling in the dirt. ‘Gaming, see? Mars has a lot of desert, and sadly there are only so many earthworms who want to spend their money on exploring rock and dust and sunsets. They go shopping in the arcologies, and gawp at the Age-of-Heroes space probes, but as for the landscape . . . Well, some bright spark saw its potential as an empty canvas. So we mount fantasy games and historical re-enactments.
-Xeelee: Vengeance, Ch. 25