The walk back home gave no excitement, only the same autopilot course she completed every cycle from the second tier of Jakarta to her small dorm room in a midsection of the Ximen Warrens. With a population in excess of ten million, Tianjin Station had elected for a more compact form of housing. Those who could afford it bought space in the upper levels—Bali, Bhutan, Kyushu, and Shaanxi—with larger, more beautiful, upgraded spaces and easy, fashionable commutes to Tianjin’s upper-level niceties. For them, the sprawling, segmented complexes of the New Hong Kong-Kolkat Museum, Divine Lotus Museum of Art, and Guilin Forest Park were just a stone's throw away.

For the rest of them...

Well, the lower-quadrants weren't so bad. And they had their own entertainment.

Jiayi worked on the second tier, Jakarta, but lived on the eighth, Ximen. Only a forty minute commute if she didn’t meet any traffic, and, with the way her extended work schedule played into the station’s cycle hours, she rarely did. If she could gain the elevators by 05:10, she could guarantee her workplace arrival by 05:50.

And she didn't have time for museum visits anyway.

The second wave of exhaustion hit her when she got home. The door closed behind her with a hiss and a rattle, sealing off the space of the corridor outside. Metal walls separated her from the hall and the rest of her dorm-mates. They blocked out most sound but, always, for the first few moments on the inside of her door and the hall less than a step away, her brain conjured the image of them all packed inside like human peas in permanent metal pods.

Except they weren’t peas and the pods showed more than their fair share of use. She didn’t need her engineering knowledge to tell that the door closed too slowly, or to see the signs of abuse embedded into its panel. A section about waist-high on the edge had blackened from overuse—probably people shoving it open when it moved too slow—and the rest of its surface carried multiple dents and scuffs along with the remnants of a few stick-on decals.

It was better on the inside, but not by much. The small counter on the left tripled as kitchen, bathroom, and desk. A toilet pulled out from a false cupboard in the corner next to the door, and she’d stacked her hot plate and kettle in the far corner. The cupboard next to the toilet held her toiletries, and the counter-space folded overtop of the sink when she didn’t need it. Beside it, in a small plastic tote, she kept her stores of ration packs, noodles, coffee, and tea bags.

She put her bag on the desk chair and took a moment in the dark to close her eyes, tilt her head forward, and listen to the silence. Then she let out a breath, pivoted to her left, and leaned over to turn on the light.

A screen popped up from her desk as she set her netlink down. As it transferred the files to her computer, she busied herself filling the kettle from her water jug. Several minutes later, she sat down with a steaming mug, a bowl of spicy beef-flavored ramen, and set up her work-kit and timer. A notification popped up as she flicked through her e-mail files, and she gave a small snort when she spotted Kapil’s name.

He’d sent the forms, then.

That’d give her something to do in the morning, at least. But, for now, she had work to finish. One last, final project and she’d be free from her internship and on track to permanent full-time.

She smiled at the thought.

Finally, after all her work, it’d be over.

***

Eight hours later, she was done.

She rubbed the areas next to her eyes with her forefingers. It hadn’t taken her as long as she’d thought, all told. She’d even managed a few timed naps during the process, jolted awake by the alarm after twenty or forty minutes. The headphones helped. Huge, monstrous, over-the-head things, she’d found them at a vintage passage-shop on Sumatra level for just under two-hundred. It’d been a gamble if they’d even work with her setup, but all they’d needed was an audio jack bypass and they’d booted up fine. The weight felt nice on her head, and they worked very well to cancel out any noise from her surroundings. They were probably the only reason she’d gotten through half of the extra, late-night project load she’d done in the last year. With those around her ears, her tiny dorm became a cocoon of music and dim light, the screen of her computer taking up the focus.

(The character count limit per episode has made me split the chapter into two. Keep reading for more!)