Next she returns to the jogging trail on the outskirts of Mumbai she found a year ago, the heavy green of the mangroves running alongside her like an ominous wall. Up and down the railing she trots, a half mile up, a half mile down, until she finds it: a little owl painted on the sidewalk. She touches the owl and the mangroves tear away and a wall of red-brown water, full of debris and garbage, gushes into place. It obliterates the people, submerges the path, rides up the sides of the apartment towers. Boats are tethered to second-floor balconies; someone is frozen atop the roof of a submerged car, her arms raised for help, her scream blurred off her face.

Queasy, quaking, Konstance whispers, “Nannup.” She rises; the Earth pivots, inverts, and she drops. A once-quaint little Australian cattle town. The faded banners strung across the roadway read,

DO YOUR PART

DEFEAT DAY ZERO

YOU CAN DO WITH 10 LITRES A DAY

In front of the public hall, shaded by cabbage trees, the begonias stand sprightly in their boxes. The grass looks as green as ever: five shades greener than anything for thirty miles. The fountain sparkles; the bright-blooming trees stand proud. But as with the plaza in Lagos, as with the jogging trail outside Mumbai, something feels altered.

Three times Konstance laps the block, and eventually, on a side door of the public hall, she finds it: a graffiti owl with a gold chain around its neck and a crown cocked on its head.

She touches it. The grass bakes brown, the trees fly apart, the paint on the public hall flakes off, and the water in the fountain evaporates. A tractor trailer with a six-thousand-gallon water tank shimmers into place, a ring of armed men around it, and beyond that a line of dusty vehicles stretches into the distance.

Hundreds of people holding empty jugs and cans press against a chainlink barricade. The Atlas cameras have caught a man with a machete leaping from the top of the barrier, his mouth open; a soldier is in the process of firing his weapon; several people sprawl on the ground.

At the spigot on the water truck, two men tug at the same plastic jug, every tendon in their arms standing out. She sees, among the bodies against the chainlink, mothers and grandmothers carrying babies.

This. This is why Father left.

By the time she climbs off the Perambulator, it’s DayLight in the vault. She limps through her scraps of sackcloth and disconnects the water line from the food printer and puts it in her mouth. Her hands shake. Her socks have finally disintegrated, all holes becoming one, and two of her toes are bleeding.

You just walked seven miles, Konstance, says Sybil. If you don’t sleep and eat a proper meal, I will restrict your Library access.