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

The capsule slowed before the harbor entrance. Arjun got out and stopped for a while. Every time he saw the building, he felt a mix of professional admiration and slight unease. If the field failed for more than a few seconds, the biodome would collapse like a house of cards.

He walked toward the entrance. The security check read the data from his Synapse and the doors of the glass elevator slid quietly aside.

• — • — •

The Marina Vertical 2 biodome arched above Arjun like a transparent wave. The supports were impossibly slender. The digitalium field, among its many other functions, damped the vibrational modes and optimized the tension of the building in real time. It also constantly recalculated the biodome's stability, turning a static structure into a dynamic organism that resisted wind and weather changes. The building was therefore always in subtle motion.

From the 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 spiderwebs, others from actively stabilized filaments so thin they were almost invisible to the naked eye. Walkways stretched between the segments. Most served the staff, but the longest was open to the public. After dark, a walk through the biodome could be magical. The beams glowed faintly in the dark, a clear sign that they were actively connected to the digitalium field.

On the Synapse he brought up the work interface. A topological model of the biodome unfolded around him: a network of differently colored dots that represented not the beams, but the density of the digitalium field. The redder the dot, the closer it was to critical load. The biodome's local optimization module calculated the required material density automatically, but for major structural changes someone had to come in person and adjust the parameters of the stabilization model.

Segment 385. Lines 3, 4, and 5 needed stabilizing to balance the field in this area. Arjun worked quickly and precisely. This was his environment, his language. Here there was no uncertainty, only numbers and the relations between them.

Interesting. The dome would probably hold even with twelve percent less material.

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

• — • — •

It was already very late by the time he finished validating the last segment.

CHIME

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

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

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 begin.

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, optimization came first. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had missed something.