‘She’s just getting into a groove, running clean, or as clean as anyone ever can, when she runs out of server time. Xia hasn’t got much money, so there’s only one way to pay: trade dreams for dreams.

The manager’s name is Panda, probably because he’s old enough to have stark patches of white in his closely shorn hair. There is always a way to buy time. Afterward, and in spite of it all, Xia runs, and runs well. Maybe it’s the oxytocin, or the thrill of getting her account topped up. Maybe denial, or the impermanent relief of getting ahead of her pursuers. Or maybe it’s just a good run.”

“Rather than landing in a cloud of scintillating vapor and turning this world into another Plymouth Rock, humanity petitioned. We floated free, lost bone density, and waited to be heard, entombed without warmth or seasons. There were doomsayers and hawks who suggested that we had an avian’s right to kill snakes. They were overruled. We learned this much conquering the Earth; we must do right or nothing at all.”

“Khloé Kasahara runs. Her feet splash in mossy pools on the aqueduct’s floor. Scummy water soaks her shoes. Her breath rasps in, hisses out. She’s been working on her cardio. You can’t overthrow the system without good cardio.

The sun sets over the rim of the waterway, sets on the city behind it, sets on everything that matters. Khloé runs in and out of the long shadows. Behind her, the Hunter-Killer drone follows.”

“The village was built inside the old renewable diesel refinery. James looked this up, because it seemed too cool to be real, and found that the engineers and gardeners who lived there shared a profession with him. He was used to working in a lab, but that was all the village really was; an experiment. A space reclaimed from the old hydrocarbon biofuels business, full of people who worked on the city’s solar and tidal grids. James felt utterly out of place, and strangely at home. They were doing what he did; using something living to change an inert world, trying to make something dying go un-extinct.”

“Alina wants to brush him off, just get the little ritual done. She tries to think of something to say.

‘I’m not sure why all of this has to be so hard,’ she says.

‘No easy answer to that. We all have a lot to answer for, except maybe Ensie.’ He shrugs, gestures with filthy gloves at the broken city. ‘Sorry, Alina, but good work doesn’t make you clean, it makes you dirty. No way around it.’

Alina looks down at the little vial of ashes. Of carbon and soot. Takes a deep breath.

‘I’ll be done in a minute,’ Alina says.”