Excerpt

Nobody notices anything because nothing has happened. Not yet, anyway.

This is how all things begin.

The electric shield thrums ominously. It cuts Apex City in two, striking across the crater that was once Bangalore.

She lives on the wrong side of the Carnatic Meridian.

They call her Nāyaka, their Champion. They pledge allegiance to her.

They're her people. The Analogs.

When Bell Corp ignored the cholera epidemic, she stole meditech from their laboratories. When Bell Corp stopped funding their water treatment, she began lifting holo-watches. She snatches hundreds each week. One solar-powered battery purifies a thousand bottles of water.

If raid-bots break into her pod-house, they'll find the 140-square-foot space filled with paperbacks. Nothing of value, no link to her crimes.

She is discreet.

Dead drops. Paper money. Forty-one safe capsules buried underground.

I am invisible.

The Virtuals know her as the Ten Percent Thief. They have a price on her head.

I'm going to make sure I'm worth it.

She strolls towards the Meridian Gate.

Pod-houses form towering aisles; their circular windows are eye sockets in fibreglass skulls. On their eastern walls, a well-known artist directs a crowd of Analogs towards the completion of a mural. It reflects their past and celebrates their present.

Children scurry to the Institute—a cluster of pod-houses that lean in dangerously towards each other. It's architecturally unsound, but the children don't notice.

A small playground made of scrap metal and other Junkyard finds is laid out before it. Trash can lids form the seats of swings; a slide is cobbled together from scavenged planks of wood. A solitary child sits on a merry-go-round made from the ancient remains of a satellite dish.

Hawkers set up canvas tents along the path. They're selling homemade sunscreen and scraps of illegally procured ClimaTech fabric.

A stab of guilt. She sourced that ClimaTech.

They'll be arrested and sent to the vegetable farm.

She nearly intervenes.

They'll be put down. Harvested.

She steels herself.

They've been instructed not to sell it this close to the Meridian. You can't save everyone.

She chokes on a rolling cloud of dust and presses on.

She passes a structure resembling a giant tin shed. It's made from the rusty shells of freight trains, painted in bright colours that will fade in the relentless sun. The salvaged doors of washing machines form its windows. Hundreds of Analogs line up before the entrance to the Museum of Analog History.

Nāyaka feels a twinge of pride—over seven hundred Analogs participated in its construction, and even more came forward to supply the artefacts that fill its cavernous halls.

At the edge of the Analog world, she places her palm over a holoscanner.

Her silicone gloves fit like second skin. Their tips bear a set of 3D-printed fingerprints. She's about to impersonate an Analog gardener.

They volunteer. They trust me.

An armed patrol-drone scans her. The Carnatic Meridian sparks blue. A gap appears, electricity crackling on either side.

She passes through the Meridian Gate.

The light dims abruptly. A wave of coolth rushes over her.

The SunShield Umbrella orbits Apex City. It protects the Virtual side from ultraviolet radiation, providing climatic conditions optimised for human performance.

Her people are exposed to heat waves and dust storms.

Twenty-six towers form ranks into the heart of the city. Thousands of employees are ensconced in bio-mat and frosted-glass spirals, absorbed in HoloTech experiences. She spies a game of Hyper Reality golf—no doubt a sizeable business deal in progress.

A block of pod-houses shares a cellular phone.

The Arboretum curves on either side of her, all along the city's borders. Thousands of trees flower in desolation.

Most Analogs have no conception of a tree.

They rely on the memories of Virtuals who have been deported to their side of the city. They hang on to the descriptions of a handful of workers who make their way through the Meridian each day.

She makes for the teleportals. Virtuals edge away from her grubby, shabbily-dressed person.

I will not claim their holo-watches. I have a bigger prize in mind.

The port-bot's cyber-arm vibrates in disgust when she produces paper money.

She steps into the carbon fibre capsule.

The Ten Percent Thief is molecularly reconstituted upon the estate of Sheila Prakash, a HoloTech mogul from the top one percent of society.

Don't throw up.

The side effects of teleportation include nausea, but she's also never seen so much open space before. A holo-sphere arcs over the property, projecting clear blue skies overhead and verdant meadows along the horizon. The illusion eliminates all trace of Apex City's jagged skyline.

We can barely see the sky in the spaces between our pod-houses.

She's scanned and approved by a patrol-droid. The entire transaction is witnessed by the tell-tale flash of light on a PanoptiCam lens.

Once she's equipped with a jetpack, a sap-scanner, pruning shears and InstaBlossom compounds, her instructions are relayed.

Bring All Trees to Flower by 3.49 p.m.

Trim buds from each tree.

Analyse using sap-scanner.

Apply appropriate InstaBlossom compound.

Repeat.

She powers up her jetpack. It propels her into the canopy.

She rubs her hands over the bark, feeling ridges and knots through her gloves. She presses leaves to her face, trailing sap and dew across her skin. She sniffs the buds that lie in her palm, prying into their scents and secrets.

Trees.

I've never touched one before.

They're the exclusive right of the top one percent.

The Arboretum can only be accessed by the top twenty percent.

The seventy percent in the middle are allowed Hyper Reality gardens, the occasional houseplant.

I'm only given the right to breathe. And barely.

She is an exile, a former member of the bottom ten percent.

The threat of the vegetable farm creeps in my shadow.

Each year, more non-performers are deported across the Meridian. The ranks of the hopeless swell.

They don't kill us; they watch us suffer.

It is immaterial that Bell Corp's system of governance came as a welcome relief to the ruins of an erstwhile civilisation. It seemed optimal—even utopian—for a world divided along social and communal lines, faced with the threat of dwindling resources and hostile climate, to be redesigned.

Every system believes itself to be the perfect solution.

The PanoptiCam scans the grounds. She locates its blind spot—a thick 'W' formed by two intertwined trees.

She begins to whistle. She works her way to it, unhurriedly.

Her heart pounds an erratic rhythm.

The resistance needs a symbol. I will give them a dream.

Three buds fall into a tight space between her glove and her wrist.

An InstaBlossom sachet disappears under her wig.

She takes a deep breath.

It can't be this easy.

She returns to the gaze of the PanoptiCam, unchanged. She finishes her assignment. Whistling.

Her palms stay damp until she's back at the Meridian Gate.

The patrol-drone's scanners don't detect the contraband on Nāyaka, covered in dirt as she is.

It is this easy.

She feigns listlessness as she enters the Analog city. She makes for a confluence of alleyways at its heart.

She tears off her gloves. Digs.

She drops a bud into the shallow pit.

She packs it with InstaBlossom, then sacrifices a bottle of water.

A sapling plunges through the earth.

Her breath catches.

It shoots upwards with a shriek, reaching for the sky.

Her eyes sting.

It bursts into flower, a whisper of jacaranda falling to the ground.

There's a face at a grimy window. Gasps of wonder. Footsteps.

She melts into the shadows, invisible.

Tomorrow, there will be consequences.

Today, there is hope.