The New Capital

In 2065 the New Capital handed "decision-making" over entirely. The power grid, the metro, class scheduling, medical appointments, air quality, street signals, commodity prices, all the way down to each person's health reminders, emotional balance and dream rhythms — all of it calculated by Skyvault in real time, issued in real time, in force in real time. There are no police in the city, and not one post in which a human decides.

The city spreads outward by ring-road number. The Seventh Ring Road is the residential and commuting belt; the Second High School stands on the Sixth Ring Road; the Third Ring Road still holds the oldest buildings in the New Capital — that underpass has been there for more than twenty years, its concrete vault thicker than anything built since.

Precision is the everyday texture of this city. A bus pulls into its stop with a margin of 0.04 seconds; an elevator announces the floor with a margin of 0.03 seconds. The pedestrian light strips push the fast walkers toward the inside and the slow ones toward the outside, and people waiting for a bus come to a stop exactly 1 metre from the sign, no more than 20 centimetres either way. The corridor sensor lights come on in time with your stride, and it is the same rhythm as on the first day you moved in.

The same emblem is everywhere: pale blue, a stylized human figure, arms spread, a closed ring above its head. The outer wall of a health station, the crest of the Second High School, the glass door of a convenience store, the ground of a bus platform — all of it. People who live here walk past it dozens of times a day and cannot say what year it started going up.

Scattered through the city are fenced-off plots. The fence is 2.4 metres high, dark green metal panels bolted together, a coil of rusted wire along the top, a notice board from the Urban Development Bureau hanging on the gate. The one on the west side of the Third Ring Road gives a completion date of the fourth quarter of 2055; the board has hung there for 10 years, the fence is intact, and nowhere on it is there a mark left by anyone climbing over. Along that stretch the pedestrian light strips guide a walker's steps across to the other side of the road, then guide them back to this side. The official account is urban renewal; people who have lived here a long time remember there used to be shops there and cannot say which year they went; on the Skylink map, those few blocks carry two words: Under Rezoning.

In the past 10 years there has not been one crime in this city's public records, nor one matter Skyvault could not handle. The checkout machine in a convenience store reads the balance aloud, down to the single yuan; in the same second, outside the door, a driverless car turns the corner with a margin of 0.05 seconds.