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Once inside, fairy lights shimmered on a shop called "Celeb Boutique"; a full moon glowed dreamily on the O2 shop's massive plasma display; the centerpiece of the Samsung store was a three-piece sofa around the biggest flatscreen TV I've ever seen, while pumping house music made the surfaces and the floor reverberate like the nightclubs of my memories. It could have been two in the morning, or two in the afternoon, any season, any day of the week. An overlit, hermetically sealed domain that could be anywhere—that could have been built on the surface of the moon for all anyone knew. Mars will probably have a Westfield by 2050, the crossroads and the focus of life for that first generation of new world pioneers.I reached the Apple Store, a big metallic box full of tablets on wooden desks. The boy in the daft glasses had no idea what was wrong with my computer. The Mac ninjas were all booked up today. The boy told me I had to email them to book an appointment online. "But my computer's broke. That's why I came here on foot," I growled. He hastily booked me an appointment for two weeks later. His helpful advice was I was running a very old program (six years old), but I could buy a new one off him now that might fix the problem ($138). After resisting the urge to hurl the kid into one of the huge hi-definition screens, I lobbed the useless, antiquated, soiled-white machine back over my shoulder and scuttled off down the theatrical curving swoop of the mall's central arcade, a cross between Regent Street and the X-Factor set, where inescapable corporate RnB piped too loudly and all the teenagers' directional haircuts looked CGI'd.READ ON MOTHERBOARD: What Rising Rents Mean for London's Tech City
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