Do you remember your life before?

Like most inhabitants, I have started having another bad night. Incredible as it might sound now that it is still officially early June, the first heat waves are making most of the apartments already oven like. Summer is going to be hot. Alas.

I used to look out of the kitchen window as I wait for the coffee maker to finish its work. There is the dawn in Farmont; it splits the separs over the breached ridges and makes the last snow twinkle. This is the thousandth time when I witnessed this performance since I chose the twenty-eighth floor of the Tower as my permanent address. And even though in my mind I know this is not real, again it is a manifestation of magic.

It wasn’t ever an option for anyone, that is what it became our duty. The Great Renewal was opposed by sheer self-interest. This is how it was sold to us.

Greenbay, too congested, has been settling its valley bottoms for decades. Gigantic real estate operations have tied the capital to the megacity. They allowed only a few acres to be sectioned as vegetation at some intervals. They only capture nice scenes to be used when printing the Tourist Office flyers. By the hundreds, buildings had risen almost overnight. They convert every available flat space into another fairly densely populated area, like a poultry attendant to an industrial farm.

But that was