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Interstellar flea market, mix of dieselpunk and steampunk and raypunk, bustling with activity where human and alien merchants display exotic wares in futuristic stalls with rounded, smooth designs, while diverse customers browse and haggle. In the background is a massive, gleaming spaceport with towering spires and advanced structures, where starships of different shapes and sizes are docking and departing. Inspired by the works of Eddie Del Rio, Luke Aegis, Alex Pronin, Jan Ditlev, and Stas Yurev. The scene is illuminated by a brilliant daytime sky with a mix of natural light and glowing holographic advertisements. Hyper-detailed, cinematic composition, dynamic lighting, and photorealistic textures.
Here, the first thing you notice is sound. Not noise—layers. Vendors calling prices in
trade pidgins and homeworld dialects, translation charms lagging half a second
behind intent. The low thunder of traffic lanes overhead. The soft whine of docking
fields cycling. Somewhere behind it all, a public announcement repeats for the fourth
time that unattended cargo will be seized, indexed, and resold by close of business.
No one listens. Everyone understands.
Then there’s the air. Warm sunlight broken by drifting shadows as ships pass above
the arcades. Aromas stack the way the languages do: spiced protein sizzling on a
portable heatplate, something sweet and floral that probably evolved to attract
pollinators the size of birds, something sharp and chemical that absolutely did not.
You learn quickly which stalls mean lunch and which mean hazard pay. The crowd
flows around them instinctively—locals, transients, crews on layover, customs
officers pretending not to browse. Credit chimes. Bargains collapse. Arguments
resolve themselves by volume.
And the goods—always the goods. Items with provenance measured in light-years
and certainty measured in shrugging confidence. Tools for jobs you don’t have yet.
Jewelry that hums faintly, as if remembering another sky. Replacement parts for
machines you hope never to own. And somewhere, buried between crates of
obsolete interfaces and bins of unlicensed curios, the thing you didn’t know you were
looking for until you saw it.
“Only thirty-five gloksniks,” clacks the vendor through chitinous mandibles, holding
out a claw.
You check your balance. You hesitate.
“Got change for a hundred?”
