“This is an Unsafe Zone,” Brazil explained in his best police tone. “We’ve been having an epidemic of Jeeps broken into around here.”

“Ohhhhh,” she said as it dimly came to her. “I’ve read about that. The cabbage thing.”

“You definitely don’t want to park your Jeep here, ma’am,” Brazil told her as Hammer flew by again, going faster the other way.

“Well, gee,” Ms. Moody said, finally easing up and appreciating how good-looking and helpful the cop was. “I sure am glad you told me. You new around here? Some way I can get hold of you if I need further information about U.Z.s and the cabbage problem?”

Brazil gave Ms. Moody his card and moved her along. He managed to flag down Hammer as she was racing through the intersection again. He motioned her into the space at the curb, got back into his car and had to park five blocks away, close to a rundown section of West Cary where citizens stared at him from porches and calculated how much a chop shop would pay for his car.

10

BUBBA HURRIED ALONG in his blue uniform and safety shoes and earplugs, already getting sweaty as he race-walked through two filter rooms. He trotted under the observation deck that had not been used since Philip Morris had started giving scheduled tours on small trains.

He ran and walked and ran and walked over shiny floors filled with spotless beige Hauni Protos II and G.D. Balogna making machines, computers and OSCAR units in bays where the roar and rat-a-tatting of production never ceased and there was no such thing as dirt or killing time.

Driverless, bright yellow robotic cars loaded with cases of cigarettes hummed back and forth, pausing to recharge at computerized magnets, never tiring or loitering or forming unions. Gray-uniformed maintenance workers zipped back and forth in supply carts and were careful turning corners and passing through busy intersections.

Huge spools spun cellulose too fast to see while thousands of pristine white cigarettes flowed down tracks and were fed into veins that configured them in rows of 7-6-7 for soft packs and 6-7-7 for flip-top boxes before a plunger kicked them into a pocket where they were wrapped in double-wide foil which was married to blanks that were labeled and glued on the sides and fed into big wheel drying drums and finished in cellophane and tear tape and marched single file into stacker towers where ten-packs were pushed into cartons that were carried by elevators up to exit stations with conveyor belts that eventually carried cases out of the building to awaiting trucks.

Bubba was breathless when he reached Bay 8, where he was a maker operator, or more formally, a tech 3, the highest pay grade. His responsibility was huge. He was the sole captain of a module that had been predicted to produce exactly 12,842,508 cigarettes by the end of this day’s twenty-four-hour period, or 4,280,836 cigarettes during Bubba’s eight-hour shift.

No module was ever unattended at Philip Morris, and Bubba’s supervisor, Gig Dan, had been forced to fill in for the last half of second shift and the first sixteen minutes of third. Dan was relieved but unhappy when Bubba appeared, dripping sweat and panting.