Ysbel’s home was further out than most, in wooded hills fifty kilometres north of Ogres Grave. She had rented a scrap of land from a farming family and given a construction bot the task of assembling a prefab cabin in a glade of live oaks, half buried in the ground in homage to traditional native burrows. Solar panels pitched on the turf roof provided power, water was piped from a nearby spring, a printer converted grass and leaves into basic food, and fresh eggs and vegetables could be bought or bartered from local smallholdings. The commute to the station’s office took twenty minutes by flitter, door to door; if Ysbel was feeling sociable, she overnighted in Ogres Grave with her friend and occasional sex partner Ilan Karasson, although lately she had been spending more time alone. She’d been a quiet, somewhat solitary child, had liked to curl up in some private spot away from the commune’s clatter and bustle, reading ancient novels downloaded from Mother’s archives, and the remoteness of her little cabin suited her. Wind in the treetops, clean blue skies and starry nights, waking to a chorus of birdsong. The crunch and pungent odour of coffee beans ground in her granite pestle and mortar – in her opinion, resurrecting the coffee bush was one of the best interventions humans had made. The earthy aroma of starchroot porridge bubbling on the hotplate.

Every morning, she ran for five or six kilometres to kickstart the day. She had discovered a love of running in her teens, enjoyed the rituals of self-care before a race, the discipline of pacing and the calculated rationing of reserves, the synergy of mind and body. She hadn’t been competing against other people; she’d been competing against herself. Reaching the finish line had always been an anti-climax.

She had a regular route, descending through the open woodland, passing the fenced pastures and vegetable plots of the smallholdings at the bottom of the hill, settling into a comfortable pace as she followed a road with a single-track railway on one side and unfenced crop fields on the other. Sometimes, when she passed one of the steadings, pups would briefly join her, galloping on all fours, hooting with delight as she outpaced them. The natives had evolved to escape immediate danger with quick, short sprints; Ysbel was a lean, long-limbed animal built for marathon chases across the African veldt.