Nighttown is a sleazy neighborhood or district in the Sprawl. The Nighttown is the 3 southernmost kilometers of a 40km mall, a ragged overlap of Fuller domes over a former suburban artery. Illuminated by a gray approximation of sunlight filtered through layers of acrylic, that mall resembles the prison sketches of Giovanni Piranesi.
For many generations sharpshooters clipped away at the neon lights, forcing maintenance crews to replace them, until they gave up. As a result it became dark very early and the arcs were soot-black against faintest pearl. Its geodesics have been smoked black by decades of cooking fires. Tiny harsh windows showed candlelight, with only a few by battery lanterns and carbide lamps. Nighttown pays no taxes, no utilities.
Beyond a bright tube platform the corners and alleys were in shadows. Concrete walls with years of layers of gaffitis "twisting into a single metascrawl of rage and frustration". People set up makeshift squares littered with rotting fruit and fish heads and water vendors pass crying their trade. Plywood shanties with wash hung out on poles, and below them old men playing dominoes. It contains a Funland and a travel office of a broadcast pirate.
The upper parts are rafters, gantries and maintenance yards since the time the domes were being built, connected by concrete stairs, steel and aluminium ladders with perforated rungs. These have been abandoned and disused since the previous century; left-behind tools are dust-covered and all surfaces are covered with spray bomb graffiti of gang names and dates back to the '00s. The upper levels of Nighttown are sagging sheets of plywood and corrugated plastic, connected with unstable aluminum ladders through crookedly sawed holes. Everything is hastily, sloppily and unsafe, jury-rigged with the cheapest and most unwanted scraps.
The highest levels (afer 2 hours of climbing) lead to The Pit the territory of the Lo Teks.