Rainbow Road [Super Mario Bros.]

10

They took their first rest break around 10 AM.

There were no benches where they stopped, but there was another overlook and a food cart, so they bought an early lunch of burritos, chips, and salsa to fortify them as they continued upward. They watched trams shoot up the Road as they ate, and waved at Rainbow Walkers as they walked, jogged, or trudged by. Above them, the sky was blacker than ever as they left the familiar blue atmosphere of Earth behind. To Luigi, it felt incredibly strange to be this far above the planet without being cold or short of breath. The artificial atmosphere Rosalina and her Lumas had installed was truly incredible.

They got going a little while later, but despite the meal, Luigi began to slow considerably as they approached the twenty-mile mark, even with breaks at the overlooks to take more pictures. The sight of the mall coming out of the cosmos made him lift his head, though.

"What in stars' name is that?" he cried.

Mario understood his confusion. The Twenty Mile Mall... Well, from a distance, it didn't look much like a mall. More like a cluster of moving satellites orbiting the Road, some cuboidal, some pyramidal, but most spherical. Mario handed his brother a water bottle, guided him forward, and explained:

"It's a revolutionary design. A developer from Defino Isle took inspiration from some of my intergalactic travels and thought about making a free-wheeling, irregularly-shaped, super-sized mall." He pointed to one of the spherical satellites moving in a giant loop around the Road — as they got closer, Luigi was astonished to find that the orbiting mass had people on it, some standing right side up, some upside down. There were also tables and chairs and a grill standing upside down on the satellite, and the cook frying a couple of burgers waved at Luigi as they passed under the Road.

"All those satellites?" Mario said. "Shops. Customers get from one to the other by way of special lifts. Or, if two shops float close enough together, they can jump from one to the other. That one there—" He pointed to a giant planetoid shifting slowly across the sky; Luigi could see several towers rising from it—"That's the Plaza, where you have the theatre, the water park, and two big restaurants—"

"Water park?"

"Yep. This place has got everything." Mario's eyes twinkled. "Wanna take a closer look?"