In the morning light, the silhouette of the Marina Vertical 2 biodome rose faintly above the southern sector — an enormous, almost unreal construction that looked as though it were floating above the water. Six hundred meters tall, no central spine, held up by a handful of slender supports anchored in a digitalium field. One of the most beautiful and most fragile buildings in the world, it resembled a majestic glass sculpture of a mushroom cloud.

The capsule slowed before the harbor entrance. Arjun got out and stopped for a moment. Every time he saw the biodome he felt the same thing — a mix of professional admiration and quiet unease. If the field failed for even a second, none of this would be here five minutes later.

He walked toward the entrance. The security check read the data from his Synapse, and the doors to the glass elevator slid apart without a sound.

— — —

The Marina Vertical 2 biodome arched above Arjun like a transparent wave. The supports were thin, absurdly subtle, held by an active digitalium field. That field, among its many other functions, damped the vibrational modes and optimized the tension of the structure in real time.

The digitalium field constantly recalculated the stability of the construction and turned a static structure into a dynamic organism that resisted wind and weather changes. Because of that, the biodome was always slightly in motion.

From inside, the place was even more fascinating. The agrosegments, most of them shaped like gigantic shallow pans, didn't form continuous floors. Some hung from thin beams resembling spider webs, others from actively stabilized filaments so fine they were almost invisible to the naked eye. Walkways stretched between the segments — most of them for staff, but the longest was open to the public. After dark, a walk through the biodome could be magical. The supports glowed gently in the dark, unambiguous proof of their active link to the digitalium field.

On the Synapse he brought up the work interface. A topological model of the biodome unrolled around him — a network of differently colored dots, which didn't represent the supports themselves but the density of the digitalium field. The redder the dot, the closer to critical load. The biodome's local optimization module automatically calculated the required material densities, but for substantial structural changes someone had to come in person and adjust the parameters of the stabilization model.

Segment 385. Lines 3, 4 and 5 needed stabilization to bring the field in this area into balance. Arjun worked quickly and precisely — this was his environment, his language. Here there was no uncertainty, only numbers and their relations. Interesting — the dome would probably hold even at twelve percent thinner.

For a while he lost himself in the work. No social distraction. Just equations and their solutions.

— — —

It was genuinely late by the time he was finishing the validation of the final segment.

CHIME

The Synapse announced a missed call from Meilin at 21:17:08.

Arjun looked at the time. 21:17:04.

For a moment he frowned. The notification was reporting a missed call at 21:17:08. The Synapse did sometimes reorder notifications by priority.

But still…

It was strange to see a missed call four seconds before it was supposed to start.

Four seconds later the device vibrated again. Incoming call — Meilin. He didn't pick up, because he was just finishing the last validation and didn't want to be interrupted. Whatever Meilin needed, the optimization came first. For a moment he felt a strange, empty pull in his stomach. The sense that something had slipped past him.