The second buzzer rang. A second later, he felt the faint vibrating purr under his feet as the conveyor belt hummed to life. Slowly, he began to count under his breath, eyes screwed tightly shut. At 1323 he stopped and, opening them again, stepped off the belt, heading for the cubicle on his right, nodding appreciatively to himself. Four years was easily long enough to perfect the timing but, even so, he couldn’t help feeling just a little smug. He paused for a moment, running a hand through his already messy hair, looking at the people on the other side of the conveyor belt. He looked at them every day, right here. He’d never spoken to any of them; of course, they were on his floor, which meant they weren’t accessible to him on the network, but he’d made up names for them, transposing personalities on to their faces, all the while wondering what they were really like. There stood Porky, simultaneously eating and brushing crumbs off his crumpled clothes. That’s right, thought Albert, keep those jaws working and your mind blank—must be the best way to deal with things after all this time. As he watched him, Porky reached into his pocket for another candy ration, still masticating, looking at Albert with the glassy-eyed, empty stare of a man for whom resignation has long since passed into indifference. How long had it been for him? Ten years? Twenty? Forty? He’d been around ever since Albert was assigned his cubicle and, by the looks of it, a good while longer.

Albert shook his head and turned, looking two rows ahead, to where King Leer was grinning vacantly round at everybody again. Could it be he actually was that happy? Not that he seemed to have any reason to be. Maybe the fellow had a secret life of some sort that he hid under that mask of vacuity. Or maybe he just had a single-digit IQ, which was far more likely. Albert shifted again, the frown quickly vanishing from his face as he looked straight across the conveyor belt. There she was. Sorrow.

As always, she fidgeted in her place as she waited for the door to open, tapping her feet, playing with her fingers, sometimes looking one way, sometimes another, so her lustrous black hair alternately covered and revealed her pale face like a living curtain. The face itself was inscrutable, but the faraway, forlorn expression in those deep, dark eyes said plenty. Albert wondered for the umpteenth time what trauma she was reliving. It was a futile exercise; he’d never know. She was just another person, one of the thousands here. Many thousands—the whole Dome was here. Literally.