Lot 49 is moored to the small asteroid 28349 Pynchon in the amorphous Vonarburg-Shadyside neighbor- hood, toward the center of the L4 Greeks. Vonarburg- Shadyside is named after two rocks that roughly delimit its 500,000-kilometer length along the arc of Jupiter’s orbit. Neighboring habitats within 100,000 kilometers (with populations) include Craftsbury (450), Greenview (28), and Blackhawk (1020). With a population of 400, this station is more or less typical of the Trojans in terms of layout.
From the outside, Lot 49 looks like a shiny, meshed-over geodesic sphere, 800 meters in diameter, with numerous protruding instrument spars and some triangles left open to space so that shuttles can pass through. The mooring to the asteroid is temporary in case a potential collision is detected. Inside, a central utility module with a communal reactor, factories, and machine bay is surrounded by evenly spaced but irregularly shaped habitat modules in a riot of colors and lighting schemes. Structural spars and oatways connect everything. One entire spar is given over to a rotating cylindrical module that generates about 0.7 g and contains medical, cloning, resleeving, and darknet egocasting facilities.
Lot 49’s population and most of their neighbors in Vonarburg-Shadyside tend to align with the scum and anarchist factions and speak a mixture of English, Portuguese, and Thai. Lot 49 is in a densely inhabited part of the Greeks, placing it near a crossroads. Main economic activities include shuttle design, whaling, and ferrying people and goods around the region.