LAPINS

It was one of the most select restaurants of Time. Beyond Knot Pitt, marked on any chronotopic map of the Tourism Special Offices, one could enter a huge Gothic hallway with walls in massive rock having icy colors that iterative reverberated the chords of the famous adaggio of the Solemn Mass.

Once gotten in here, every human, Tourist or Regular, was welcome as an old friend by the stylish and courteous Ober, then walked into the saloon: to the Golden one, Silver, Blue, Mauve or even to the Black one, depending on his mood.

El-Eftis, a Regular, was ushered into the blue saloon.

The modular walls, feigning immensity, were engraved, in an apparent mess, with large sparkling saphyres. These walls supported the ceiling, whose vault had crystal spheres with delicate corellias gracefully rippling and becoming luminiscent when someone was stopping by or just passing them.

Moldings in Brazilian rosewood in bud, covered with gold, were caressing with their light the mahogany panels, imperial version, blue-pearl, whose arabesques evoked the sensation of the Universal Genesis.

Here and there, embedded in the aggressive ironware (especially programmed to alleviate the inedia syndrome), the spherical fireplaces in metaglass – where there were smoldering the Kollodoc chicks illegally brought all the way from Galla – provided, through excruciating trills, a pleasant and lucrative environment.

According to some esoteric laws, the tables were spread on the petrified ebony floor, with their legs looking delicately arched under the burden of the panels in Kyonos marble; around them, there were biomorph armchairs covered with impala leather. Luminiscent flap doors indicated the places harboring the clearing innocentias, some carnivorous plants extremely congenial, result of some genetic engineering experiment, abandoned at the end.

In the center of the saloon, an oasis of verdure; obviously, blue verdure: the hemocyanotic natives freed from Opallonia's sands were showing this way their gratitude, through the artesian wells. These wells, by the clusters of ray of light thoroughly distributed, supported the dancers, whose movements, no matter how clumsy and unwieldy, once reflected in the liquid mirrors with golden ivory frames, became elegant and masterly.

But El-Eftis knew all that. He was the architect. The interior programmers did nothing but follow his indications. And the restaurant erected magnificently, a perfect self-portrait. It was the material representation of his soul, made with an absolute honesty. No detail was overlooked. The general idea that each saloon was both part and whole of the ensemble, expressed, as a matter of fact, the main principle of its interior structure.

Inside this space, El-Eftis was feeling as if he was inside himself.

Even the androids on duty were his creation: exact copies of personalities in vogue.

As a matter of fact, vogue was something established here, in this place. No one was a true star unless there was at least one waiter bearing his face. In order to get acquainted with the new looks of the personnel or to ensure the continuity of the old ones – status that called into play fabulous amounts of money, careers, lives – the restaurant was visited frequently, despite the exorbitant prices, by all those who thought they were stars, they would be stars or they had stars in their power: sportsmen, artists, programmers, politicians, businessmen, priests.

El-Eftis stopped within the floating space limit, programmed the table for one armchair and sat. The bluish aura of the corelia above, deeper around the tentacles, surrounded him with a warm light, sticking to his face, coloring him, integrating him to the saloon. He reached out for the menu and slowly browsed the real paper pages, with vignettes representing the plant or animal of which each food was made.