City Flight Control

This spindly traffic-control tower juts up above the rest of Rutherford, high enough that it often gets lost in midlevel clouds. From here, flight-control officers monitor and, when necessary, control all skylane traffic in New Angeles. In the peak of the tower, flight control maintains “the tank,” a two-story holographic display of the entire city that tracks every registered hopper in real time. Surrounding the tank on two levels are consoles that let officers zoom in on particular sections to view lines of hoppers snaking through the city. At the consoles, they can watch the feeds from the various AIs that control the skylanes, assign fines for minor traffic offenses (although most of this is handled by AI), and maintain contact with NAPD patrol and response teams during a crisis.

The highly visible and seemingly vulnerable location of City Flight Control is necessary to maintain a clear broadcast signal to as much of New Angeles as possible (signal boosters scattered throughout the city handle any coverage gaps). To ensure that no accidents disrupt the flow of traffic through the city, the CFC maintains a half-kilometer flight exclusion zone around itself.