It’s a problem she had discussed with Purcell, who made the obvious analogy with early European communist states, like the Soviet Union before it became the SSU. Minimum labor yielded the same result as maximum, for people who measured success in terms of material rewards. Anyone who did more work than was absolutely necessary was either an idiot or a toady.

In New New you could buy exotic food and drink, imported from Earth. ‘Home’s luxuries were less exciting, but followed the same principle: fancy pastries, odd liqueurs and candies, or just extra wine and beer. You could buy services of a personal nature, sex or massage or a private portrait or concert, but paying often required an elaborate system of transferrable IOU’s, since nobody’s card could hold more than $99.99.

O’Hara instituted a system of rewards that many other departments copied. On the last day of each month, she named one of her people “Worker of the Month,” and in addition to a public pat on the back, he or she was given access to $200 in a departmental “bonus account.” Two hundred dollars would throw a pretty riotous small party, and that’s what most people did with their reward. It was a mild kind of capitalism, transmuting diligence at the workplace into a boost in social status.

Otherwise, O’Hara made the same three dollars per hour that her GP’s did; if you could drink an extra cup of coffee every twenty minutes, you could stay broke. So everyday life was pretty unchallenging. Until 9:02 in the morning, 23 September 2098.

IN THE DEAD VAST AND MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

24 September 2098 [2 Chang 293]—Midnight. I have started this entry a dozen times. Write a sentence or two and erase it. Most of the time I sit and stare at the empty screen. Nothing I write seems adequate for this.

There is no word for this feeling. No one word. Desolation. That has a good sturdy ring to it. What the hell are we going to do?

Might as well just pick the thing up where I left off, and, keep typing.

People started to drift in for the anniversary broadcast about 7:30. New New had produced a documentary program about the construction of ’Home, interesting enough. Almost three thousand people turned up eventually, filling the bleachers and packing the space around them.

Sandra Berrigan gave a nice short speech, wishing us well, and then they projected an old-fashioned clock face behind her, to tick off the last fifteen seconds, New Year’s Eve style. The crowd behind the camera began to chant five, four, three, two—and then (we’ve played this back many times) Sandra suddenly looks to her right and raises her arm, starting to point at something. And then the screen goes white, and stays white.

We’ve lost New New. We’ve lost Earth.