It was hot. The hill was steep. She wished she had pinned up her blond-brown hair. It lay in sticky sweat-soaked curls around her face. The jacket she was wearing was too warm for the Autumn sun.

The computer she had used to communicate with Clara, an old IBM AT clone, still sat in an empty room on the 11th floor. The elevator only went to the 9th floor. She wondered if that was because she could see Carcity and the Pacific Ocean from the upper floors of the dormitory. Knowledge of the outside world was not encouraged in Tarlaver.