Leo still worked at the Blueprint Bureau. But now, at the bottom of every blueprint, in tiny, wiggly letters, he wrote:
The outside was a myth to most citizens. Beyond Ortho’s perfect walls lay the Unshaped—a gray, featureless expanse where nothing had form. It was a place of pure possibility, and Ortho had been built precisely to avoid it. shape bender
In the pixel-perfect, grid-locked city of Ortho, everything had to be straight. Roads ran at perfect ninety-degree angles. Windows were exact squares. The clouds, citizens joked, had been trained to drift in perfect lines. The city’s greatest hero was the Aligner, a stern figure who could straighten any curve with a glance. Leo still worked at the Blueprint Bureau
“You’re bending the rules,” the Aligner said coldly. It was a place of pure possibility, and
“It’s a comfort cube ,” Leo said softly. “Potatoes are friendly.”