There is a planet where all life larger than a mote of dust is well over a hundred miles above its surface.
This planet has humans, who have ships and farms and cities, even if the whole floating around thing causes some issues. And on one particular city in one particular back hallway of one particular building, there is a door that is misbehaving.
[Everything bigger than a quark has moving parts. If you don't know them you don't know them, though.]
"We should probably go get you some food, local clothes, whatever it'll be. I have an extra room, I can set up a hammock, will that work for sleep?"
"Almost no rigid beds here, hammocks are so much less heavy. Extra wide, rigged to be flat-ish, maybe it'll work. I could maybe hunt down a proper bed if you really need it."
"Let's go try it, then."
He fends off a couple people who want to talk about wings off and walks to a door. When he opens it, it leads to the city. Flying buildings dot the sky for a fair distance out, connected to each other by metal rails and ropes. People and big containers zip around along the rails, and airships roam the sky as well.
He turns left and starts walking, not remarking on this marvel.
"Aha. Well, we can't get to land here. The air is too hot and also acid if you keep going down. So there are floating places instead."
"Same way a balloon flies. There's lots of very tiny gaps in the rock we build everything with, filled with the same stuff balloons use, like a thousand tiny balloons in every pebble so it floats."
"That does mean we have to be careful about how much not-floating-rock stuff we have, or else we'll stop floating."
"We have practice. If you're fast at flying you could probably follow me from the air, but I'll be taking a railcar. You could get more lost than you already are if you lose track of me."
"Brainphone do pictures if get lost. Fly about forty miles an hour not carrying things?"
"Yes, I think you can keep up with the railcars given that they stop pretty often. I can only assume you like flying and would find a crowded loud box annoying, is why I mentioned it."
"No. No, but thank you for offering. I prefer to be carried by the law of buoyancy."
"Not heights. Potentially unreliable carrying-things."
Here is what is more or less a bus stop. The twisting network of rails overhead branches to one hanging just overhead.
There's a teenager wearing a big elaborate glider backpack thing half folded up waiting there, he stares at Pen with wide eyes.
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