The wedding I sense is due in three months. It is irrelevant what the other shift reads. “I hear they read Dumas last night,” says Bola. There is a room adjacent to ours in which the night shift is winding down.

It consists of random swirls of light right now, but within a few minutes it will come alive with text. Rising from the centre of the table is a holographic teleprompter. I try to relax and concentrate on the bank customers. My education was peripatetic biology was never a strong interest, except for microbiology, which I had to master later. I am an only child and I never grew up around pets or livestock. I’ve known her two years and she has been pregnant in each of them. She also eats a lot, but I suppose that’s to be expected. She is pregnant and gets very tired these days. The climate in the room is controlled despite the open skylight, a waste of energy for which Integrity Bank is fined weekly. No blazing sun yet, but that will come later. A skylight is open above us, three foot square, a security grid being the only thing between us and the morning sky. The window is to my left, and I’m at one end of an oval table with four other contractors. Blocks, roads, streets, traffic curving sluggishly around the dome. This high above Rosewater everything seems orderly. In my seat by the window I can see, but not hear, the city. This time it’s because of a wedding and a final exam, though not my wedding and not my exam. I’m at the Integrity Bank job for forty minutes before the anxieties kick in. Chapter One Rosewater: Opening Day 2066 Now

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