Opening of The Stars Askew

The opening of The Stars Askew is currently a bit like this:

A revolution, it is said, is a festival of the oppressed. In those early days, Caeli-Amur seemed at times to be one long public meeting. Between the whitewashed walls, the squares and plazas filled with citizens. In the criss-crossing alleyways, hardy washer-women and grim-faced tram drivers debated the new world; in the red-brick factories, committees discussed the running of affairs; avant-garde theatre acts performed bizarre agit-prop on street corners; at the university, students carried on neverending parties, breaking into orgies or fisticuffs before returning to their dwindling stocks of flower-liquors and their nasty yensa-fudge, to begin again. Love affairs were begun; hearts were broken; new ways of living invented. Life itself seemed to have taken on a new intensity and time itself expanded, so that each moment seemed to last forever. And yet, everything was moving at such a pace!

In the heart of the city, the grand Opera building was abuzz. Rough seditionists coursed up and down its grand stairs in and out of its immense doors, heading on their urgent business – for in truth, the city was falling apart.