All sectors are identified by a number prefixed by two letters:
Sector designations are therefore: CN 1, UT 39, SB 102, DT 666 etc...
- Central - CN
- Uptown - UT
- Suburbia - SB
- Downtown - DT
Central is the jewel in the crown of Progress. In not one of SLA Industries' gloriously varied worlds has a construction project taken place to compare to the spectacle of Central.
From the air, Central is a thicket of polished titanium needles, clustered around the platinum spire of Head Office, where Progress is co-ordinated and shaped before structuring the known universe. The buildings of Central possess an eerie beauty, rising floor upon floor into the rain in fantastic and improbable shapes, resisting gravity's pull with nothing but the ego, apparently, of their conceiving architect. Near Head Office the buildings of Central often approach 200 stories in height, sloping down to about 120 stories where Central blurs into Uptown.
Most of Central is devoted to office space, keeping the wheels of Progress grinding onward day and night. There are also uncountable restaurants, clubs and other recreational diversions, as well as subterranean car parking and tube hotels. The only thing Central really lacks is residents, as there is no permanent housing in the entire area.
Criss-crossing the pin cushion of spires at a height of about forty stories is the grid of flyways and ramps connecting the pulsating heart of Mort with it's arterial network of transport systems. The flyways stretch for hundreds of kilometres and are used for all mid-distance traffic. For short journeys vehicles take one of the numerous exit ramps, negotiating the ground level lattice of roads to reach their destination. For any journey of real length the Gauss trains are the only practical method, accommodating passengers as well as vehicles. The Gauss stations are concealed deep beneath the buildings, as are the gargantuan concrete pipes that the Gauss trains careen through as they are shot from sector to sector.
Uptown shares Central's splendour. The buildings here are tall and graceful, the product of a legion of overpaid architects. These buildings serve a different function to Central's gleaming spires, however, as they house in style the richest citizens of Mort. Every conceivable luxury and convenience are available within the penthouse apartments and all tastes are catered for.
Outside the bay windows, the Mort Transport Network ferries billions of vehicles around Uptown's Sectors, forty stories above the shadowed ground. Beneath the crust, the car parks and tube hotels of the cities elite see constant use, whilst Gauss trains roar through their tunnels only metres below.
The endless sea of housing blocks in Suburbia is grey and faceless and drab. The towers are generally about 80 stories in height, and were mass produced in Mort's construction era on a scale unheard of anywhere since. Hundreds of square kilometres are covered with the same model of block, replicated again and again, evidence that what the cities founding construction firms lacked in creativity, they attempted to compensate for with over productivity. The only interruption in the hall-of-mirrors effect of the housing blocks is the occasional, uncommon appearance of a square or, rarer still, a park.
The Mort Transport Network in Suburbia is unremarkable, bland roads threading between buildings, overshadowed by a grey layer of flyways interlaced at a height of about forty storeys, as if a skin were forming on some unimaginable vatgrown broth.
Beneath the conformity of the housing blocks, the earth of Mort is honeycombed with factories and industrial units. This subterranean warren of manufacturing facilities extends deep beneath the surface, spreading laterally beneath Uptown, and some say, even Central.
There are also vast underground reservoirs, with their attendant filtration and extraction plants.
Downtown was once, on the whole, identical to Suburbia. The same anonymous blocks sprawled from horizon to horizon, the same labyrinth of industrialised zones lurking out of sight underneath. The only difference between Downtown and Suburbia, and the single quality which has produced the great dissimilarity between the two areas, is the distance from Central.
When the Fall of 300 SD plunged Mort into disarray, SLA Industries attempted to preserve what it could of it's stricken city. Salvation Tower fell into a great, hidden, body of water, like a precious stone into a still pool. The ripples of that pool were mirrored in the city above, as shock waves of darkness emanated from the fallen Tower. Across the millions of square kilometres that made up the Central Outskirts development, a wave of power shortages and failures crashed through the cities power grid, bringing black outs and chaos.
Sectors of Central Outskirts that were near to the heart of Mort were suckled from the energy farms of Uptown, preserving light and television and Order. An invisible dividing line ran sinuously around Central, separating those towers with electricity from those without. On the outer side of this line, in darkness, the outreaches of Mort tore themselves apart. SLA Industries reacted swiftly, razing every crippled towerblock to the floor that stood directly adjacent to a functional block. A blasted string of rubble several blocks wide encircling Central, and before the smoke and dust of the explosions had fully settled a great barrier wall was being thrown up, a fifty metre tall concrete necklace around the city, protecting the fortunate blocks of what was to become Suburbia from the anarchy without.
Then came the calculations, as the great minds within SLA Industries tackled the enormous problem of how to save the rest of their beset city. Estimates were made, simulations modelled, and finally a compromise was negotiated. With the resources at hand not all of the stricken areas could be brought under control. The damage already done was extensive. SLA Demolition and Construction teams were airlifted out into the midst of the chaos, accompanied by teams of Shivers, DarkFinders, Soldiers and Operatives to safeguard their mission. Another wall was thrown up, greater than the first, with a radius some 1500 Km greater. Inside this protective barrier the aid workers set about supplying food and clean water, while the technicians attempted to restore the precious source of electricity. Outside the barriers, the city was left to follow it's own course, to degenerate into the nightmarish landscapes of the Cannibal Sectors. The numerous desperate citizens that made attempts to breach the wall and seek aid on the other side were shot by the forces manning the barrier.
In this way Downtown came into existence. To escape the filth and danger of what was to become Lower Downtown, the day to day lives of most citizens were hauled way up into the higher floors of the looming tower blocks, with all the most affluent citizens moving into the upper floors of the city.
Across the vast expanse of Downtown a new street level was being jury rigged high above the ground. The housing blocks, originally interlinked by walkways and service gantries, as well as the ever present flyways, ramps and expanses of the Mort Transport Network, have had mezzanines hauled into place to form an artificial ground level. This thin crust of metal and concrete held precariously above the forty floor drop into Lower Downtown has been named The Deck.
Where the Deck meets the buildings that it clings to a new commercial level has sprang up. Shops, cinemas, offices and bars can all be found on this level. The vast majority of the population live at this level or above, in what has come to be called Upper Downtown. Those with apartments below the level of the Deck look up from the shadows enviously at those above. Beneath the Deck the density of population becomes thinner, tailing off to almost nothing at level zero. Nothing human, anyway. The majority of the block's stairwells have been filled in with concrete about fifteen floors beneath the Deck, to try to discourage visitors from Lower Downtown interrupting the precarious lives of those above.
Where once, on the blueprint of Central Outskirts, some long forgotten utopian planning developer had intended to have a plaza or a square, Downtown now had a vast hole in the Deck. Sometimes the gantries would enclose the open space, roofing over the inevitable statue or memorial in the square below, creating on it's upside an open space for markets where stalls jostle for space and customers, and all manner of dubious pleasures can be bought or sold.
Where once the distant minds of the planning developers had envisaged a park or lake (A *very* rare decision, as space was always at a premium) the Deck would project out into the space as much as it dared. This would still leave a yawning hole into Lower Downtown, where sometimes a rust encrusted set of swings could be glimpsed, or the hoary, mould infected stump of a tree 600 years dead. These areas, always in deep shadow, were never-the-less the lightest areas in the new world beneath the Deck. Sometimes Upper Downtowners would be able to make out shapes in the gloom, and witness details of the other world's operation, such as horrifying parodies of markets where unspeakable merchandise is traded amongst the obscure denizens.