The car began the journey through the silent town and its lit domes. When she reached the edge of the slab, she saw the robots that tended to it. Someone like her husband was manning each one, patrolling, stepping off the slab and cutting back the plants. And the plants—they grew thicker and thicker on the earth they’d laid claim to.

She was glad she didn’t live too close to the edge, where she could hear the whirring blades of the robots, the mechanics of their moving bodies.

Going past the refrigerated warehouses, she imagined the activity inside. She’d seen pictures where the people were bundled for winter temperatures, then covered in vinyl suits, then aprons on top of those, hairnets and gloves. They cut fish into neat serving sizes.

She knew there were incentives for those jobs, so people wouldn’t only take the basic income, but she wondered if the incentives were worth it. She thought about the propaganda of the new world—that we must work together to succeed, that we all depend on each other. They were convincing slogans. They seemed wholly true not too long ago.

And incentives were better than the alternative, better than taking these jobs out of desperation and still not being paid enough to do them.

Izabel tried to imagine a woman who took a warehouse job because she wanted the most elaborate house she could have. She imagined that every week she saved her extra money, and then every year, she had something remodeled, something tiled, fixtures of gold, an indoor infinity pool dug into the concrete slab, if that were allowed.

Then she imagined a woman who had a plain house, but so many children, every one of whom she dressed in velvet and silk, in shirts with intricate beading along the collars and cuffs and hems. She imagined that, on the weekends, the woman dressed herself in wedding dresses covered in Swarovski crystals, like the ones Izabel saw on Say Yes to the Dress.

She could imagine a dozen women and how they might spend extra money on frivolity and extravagance. How they might create their lives to resemble something entirely out of place in the new world.

At the car park, she paused the car. It prompted, Do you want to get out here?

No, she pressed.

She watched all the automated things the cars did, covered, but outside. They went through the car wash, they pulled into spots, they plugged in. A robot rolled up next to them and changed their air filters. This one was not manned by anyone. It was a programmable action. But there was always at least one person in a dome alongside them all, watching live feeds from different angles.