Delaney didn’t get the terminology at first. Finally she spelled it in her mind, in the Every way. He meant Final Crime. “Oh,” she said. “Like the last crime.”

  “The world’s last crime, yes,” he said. “Then we move on down the line, eliminating the unknown, the unexpected. When everything is seen, nothing bad can happen.”

  “Stands to reason,” Delaney said.

  “One of the things we do now is move trogs into smarthomes,” he said, and assessed her. “You know, I might ask you to do a testimonial at some point. We’re doing a series, where former trogs explain the advantages of smart living. But only if you want to.”

  “Of course, anytime,” she said, and hoped he’d forget. She pointed to the (ten? twelve?) glass silos on the kitchen counter. “So they fill all these?”

  “Right. You’ll meet those folks,” he said, finishing his apple and dropping it in the compost bin. “All the basics are replenished daily. The grains, vegetables, fruits. Did you fill out your survey?”

  “I did,” Delaney said. “But most of it was in my med-eval.”

  “Of course,” he said. “So if you have any variants to the diet they laid out, you make the request and they source it sustainably. If you want an orange, you know the orange you’re getting has been sustainably farmed, the workers well-paid, the transport to campus has been done without fossil fuels. And if it’s out of season, you’re out of luck. You heard of Bananaskam?”

  Delaney almost did a spit-take. “I have,” she said.

  “So brilliant. That guy Wes Makazian is astounding.” He pointed to his kilt. “This is one of his things. The whimsy of it stimulates idea-flow. And he’s why they got rid of doors. We had them until like a week ago. They stop creativity-streams.”

  Delaney smiled. She loved this so much. She’d been wrong to worry. It was a boon to have Wes on campus, to watch him move through the company, see how he was perceived, admired, deified.

  “If you need something irregular,” Soren said, “like cough medicine or flan, you can order it here, too, and they’ll usually find it same day—a lot of products are already here on campus. But again, it’s all been sourced properly. Just takes all the guesswork out.”

  “It’s a relief not to have to think,” Delaney noted.

  Soren smiled wanly. “I mean, that’s the tradeoff,” he said. “We’re supposed to be showing the rest of the world how it can be done. Last year our pod ended a twelve-month cycle with exactly one bag of actual landfill waste.”

  Soren’s watch emitted a faint whistle.

  “Shit,” he said. “I better go.” The color left his face. “I shouldn’t have said that first word. You’re staying?”

  Delaney remained, happy to be alone. The pod had an open floor plan, with the bed-tubes discreetly tucked into corners at the edges of the room. In the middle, the kitchen bled into the sitting room, which was dominated by a large paisley-shaped couch large enough for seven or eight adults to splay themselves. It faced a large screen, around which were a grid of shelves, where eleven or twelve books had been collected and arranged by the color of their spines. Otherwise, the pod was devoid of objects or clutter. Delaney got a few minutes of churning in, sending smiles to a Thai nurse who sang “Over the Rainbow” to a dying patient, and a sham to a Peruvian parent who had allowed his daughter to walk in the rain unjacketed. In the bathroom, she used the mirror to take a Popeye and sent smiles to the Popeyes of three dozen others. Her father was using Concensus and needed help deciding on a brand of butter. She added her vote to the majority—vegan, organic, unsalted—and put her phone down.

  The bathroom was large and airy, dominated by a sunken expanse of poured concrete stained a Mediterranean blue, candles lining the rim. She didn’t know when she’d be alone again, so she slid the frosted glass door closed. Her phone dinged. She’d gotten a Personal Encounter Satisfaction Survey from Soren. She pressed remind me later and undressed.

  The shower head, directly above the sunken tub, emitted a most perfect rain, heated just so. The sun was bright through the skylight overhead, and Delaney lathered a faintly fragrant handful of soap until she was immersed in an intoxicating mist of steam and jasmine. No shower she’d ever taken was so soothing, but after two minutes, a polite ding sounded from somewhere beyond the walls, and the flow of water slowed until, a few seconds later, it ended. She hadn’t touched a knob. The steam evaporated and she was left standing in the sunken shower, looking for a towel, when a shape appeared in the frosted glass.

  “That you, Delaney?”

  “Joan? I’m in here. Does the shower turn off automatically or …?”

  “Two minutes, yup,” she said. “Are you still sudsy?”

  “I’m fine. I just didn’t know. I’m getting out now,” Delaney said, hoping Joan would realize the awkwardness of their proximity, and exit the bathroom. She sensed no such movement, though, so she looked in the tub area for a towel, or a perfect arrangement of sumptuous towels, and found none.

  “Are the towels here or …?” Delaney asked.

  “I’m getting the impression someone didn’t read their EveryoneIn contract carefully …”

  “It was a hundred and ten pages long,” Delaney said. “I might have drifted.” She began to shiver. “So towels?”

  “Step out,” Joan said. “I’ll explain.”

  Delaney stepped out, covering herself with her beaded arms, feeling slightly warmer as she stood closer to the skylight. Joan had politely turned away.

  “We do something here,” Joan said, “called meditative air-dry. Look up.”

  Delaney looked up to the skylight as its glass slid open, allowing air to flow in.

  “I don’t know the physics,” Joan said, “but these are positioned in such a way to capture the wind off the Bay and lead it inside. It’s why you don’t need towels. Breathe. Breathe slower. You’re almost dry.”

  Delaney did her best to regain control of her body.

  “Obviously,” Joan continued, “I don’t have to mention the billions of gallons of water that go into making and washing towels. Think of the insanity. You get into the shower, where you get clean. You step out and you have a bit of water on you. You use a towel, fine. Then you wash the towel? You just cleaned yourself, so how is it that a towel gets so dirty drying clean water off you?”

  “I’m still cold,” Delaney said.

  “It’s good to be cold!” Joan said. “That’s the other thing. Think about cold-water swims, ice baths, the polar-bear club. The health benefits are undeniable. Here you’re drying under the sun, helped by a gentle breeze. If you surrender to it mindfully, it’s really lovely. Just close your eyes.”

  Delaney closed her eyes. She was almost dry now. Her shivering had slowed. Her skin tingled. But she was still naked before Joan Pham, which seemed too odd, too soon.

  “We call it madding,” Joan said.

  Dear Baby Jesus, Delaney thought.

  “How good does it feel to do without?” Joan asked, “to eliminate something from your life?”

  “Podmate arrived!” a man’s voice said.

  “We’re in here,” Joan said, stepping into the space where a door had recently been. “Francis,” she said to Delaney. “He’s the other roommate. Stay out there,” she said to him.

  Delaney’s skin went cold again. It couldn’t be the same Francis. But when she was dressed again she found him in the kitchen. It was that Francis. She would be living with him. At the moment, he was glancing, with extreme caution, at Joan’s ass as she bent over, her bodysuit shiny with exertion. When he sensed Delaney’s presence, he turned to her, unabashed.

  “You! We meet again,” he said. “Now I can get you to finish that survey I keep sending.” His tone attempted good cheer but was laced with grievance.

  Delaney had already committed. She’d signed all the contracts and NDAs. She couldn’t leave.

  “What survey?” Joan asked. She walked past him, en route to a low kitchen cabinet full of dried fruit. Her body language indicated comfort with him, trust, even respect.

  “Initial meeting questions, basic,” he said. “Never got an answer.”

  Joan walked toward Delaney, rolling her eyes.

  “Was it lack of time?” he asked. “If so, there are myriad tools to help with that. Tools that were made to prevent anyone feeling slighted.”

  “Maybe I’ll start using them,” Delaney said. She looked around the pod for something she could claim she was allergic to. She had to leave. She could not live with this man.

  “Maybe, maybe,” he said. “You’re a puzzle, you know that?”

  “Okay, Francis,” Joan said.

  He smiled meanly at Delaney, then softly at Joan. “It’s just that much of my work at PrefCom is about the elimination of maybes.”

  “Of course it is,” Joan said, and patted him gently on the cheek.

  When Soren returned, just before ten, Francis called a pod meeting, at which the topic of pod aggregates and quotas would be covered.

  “Given we have a new podmate,” he said, nodding to Delaney, “and given there are some new numbers the Havel as a whole is shooting for, we should go over expectations. I’ll make it brief, given the best practices say six to eight minutes is ideal for meetings like this.”

  Joan was smirking at him. He stared at her, through her, and continued.

  “So quotas. Delaney, this was in your onboarding but just to refresh: the Every goals begin here, in the pods. The podmates’ data is collected and aggregrated. If we hit our numbers, that’s good for the whole floor, which is averaged together. Then the floors are averaged into the building as a whole. If we do well, the floor does well, the Havel does well, the Every does well.”

  Now Joan was fake-yawning. Francis pursed his mouth but otherwise did not react.

  “First, laughing. The updated research says 34 to 36 minutes is ideal. That means each person should be shooting for that, individually. It’s not cumulative. We’ve been slagging here, with …”—he flicked at his tablet—“Soren at 12 minutes, Joan at 14 and me at 21.5. So let’s enjoy ourselves a little bit more, okay?” He looked at the group with a frozen smile and sour eyes.

  “Next, consumption and waste. We’re doing fine here but could be better. We’ve consumed 82 percent of the food delivered, with 16 percent rollover and 2 percent waste. That’s high for the floor and in the upper 7 percentile for the dorm. So kudos. But we can always improve.” A ding came from his oval. “Okay. We’re almost out of time. You can look at the majority of the quotas on your own but I did want to mention the most important one, which of course is sleep.”

  Joan yawned again, this time for real.

  “As you know,” Francis continued, “the company’s taking sleep seriously, as they should. The Everywhere goal, as per Wes Makazian, is at least 10 hours per person. And recent studies say that group dynamics are a big factor. Some pods have very low aggs, and they’re attributing that to, for example, one or two podmates staying up late, or being noisy in the morning, that kind of thing. So the hope is that the pods self-police a bit, work together to make it a conducive environment for measurable rest and creative minds. Are we in agreement?”

  He looked at Soren, who shrugged, and then Joan, whose eyes were filled with mirth but hinted at something else, too.

  “We have some of Wes’s helping tools coming—shrouds and a firepit—but until then, we’ll make do. Keep your ovals on so the system knows when you’ve hit REM. You can’t get into the tube and scroll for two hours. Everyone good with that?” His oval dinged again. “Okay, that’s nine o’clock. We should get to bed. Ideally you’re asleep in twelve, thirteen minutes. If we all hit that, we’re good. If not, penalties will ensue.” He looked meaningfully at each of his roommates, saving a bit of extra eye-menace for Delaney. Finally he bowed and slunk to his own bed-tube. “I wish you all a restful and rejuvenating sleep,” he said, and ducked inside.

  Delaney crawled into hers.

  “Are you ready to sleep?” a voice asked. It sounded like Judi Dench.

  “Yes,” Delaney said.

  “Excellent,” the voice said. It was Judi Dench. It was a repro, but a good one. “You have forty-four unanswered messages. Would you like to take care of those now through dictation? Many people find it easier to rest when they know there are no loose threads or unfinished work.” Her tone was warm but with an acid fringe.

  “No thank you,” Delaney said. She was wide awake now, fascinated by this voice and what it might say next.

  “I’ll dim the lights now,” Judi said. “Can I play a soothing selection from your musical preferences?”

  “Yes please,” Delaney said. A Chopin sonata began. Delaney hadn’t heard it in years, but the algorithm had easily found it on her playlist.

  “The music will fade over the next eight minutes,” Judi said. “A slight increase in ylang ylang is being added to the air.”

  Delaney lay flat in her bed, waiting for Judi’s next utterance.

  “Your preferences indicate you’re a side-sleeper,” Judi said. “Would you prefer to turn to one side now?”

  Delaney smiled. “Thank you so much,” she said, and turned to her side. She closed her eyes but found they were rattling. She opened them, turned over to the other side.

  “Should we increase the ylang ylang level?” Judi asked.

  “No thank you,” Delaney said. “Silence for a few minutes, please.”

  “I think I heard you say, ‘Silence for a few minutes.’ Is that correct?” Judi asked.

  “That’s correct. Please be quiet.”

  Judi was quiet. Delaney thought of Wes. Outside a few days here and there, she hadn’t slept away from him in almost two years. She didn’t need his I love yous, no, but wasn’t there an animal comfort in knowing he was breathing on the other side of their paperthin wall? The Chopin was halfway finished, and she knew Judi would appear again when it ended. But she couldn’t slow her mind down. She saw Athena, the dead sheep. She saw Syl and his smarmy grievance. She saw herself as Athena, being struck by an Every bus, hurtling down the embankment. Stop, she hissed to herself. Stop.

  “Excuse me?” Judi said.

  “Please be silent,” Delaney said, and was sure she heard from Judi the faintest, frustrated, huff.

  “Would you prefer another voice?” Judi asked.

  Delaney said nothing. She was at once exhausted and fascinated at who might come next. Somehow she expected Jared Leto. Before she could answer, a new voice emerged.

  “Hello Del.”

  It was Delaney’s mother. Delaney gripped the bedsheet.

  “Are you comfortable, sweetie?”

  Good Christ, Delaney thought. She tried to discern whether these were her mother’s actual recorded phrases, or an assemblage taken from their smart speaker.

  “Is there anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable?” the voice asked. Now it was clear that these phrases were pasted together, word by word. This last one sounded awkward, with odd pauses—the product of a computer pasting together stolen sounds.

  “Please bring back Judi,” Delaney said. She surprised herself, preferring the obviously fake reproduction of a distant celebrity to an algo-pastiche of her own mother.

  “Here I am,” Judi said. She seemed quite satisfied, her tone implying a gently annoyed Told you so.

  “Good night,” Delaney said.

  “Good night,” Judi said, and the Chopin returned.

  Delaney thought of peaks. For years she’d done this when she couldn’t sleep. It was a task just mundane enough to occupy the mind, to crowd out unwanted thoughts. She started with Idaho’s, in descending order, tallest first. Borah Peak, she thought, and pictured its snowy cap. Leatherman Peak. Her mind slowed, shrinking from a frantic, thousand-tentacled monster into a simple doe, in a field, chewing fresh wildflowers, thinking of mountains.

  Mount Church.

  Diamond Peak.

  Mount Breitenbach.

  Lost River Peak.

  The eight minutes of Chopin ran out and Delaney braced herself.

  “Sleep should usually come within twelve minutes,” Judi said. “It’s recommended now that you get up, walk around, or perhaps I could read you some content. Would you like to continue reading Middlemarch? I believe you left off on page 177.”

  “No thanks,” Delaney said, and turned over again to face the window. Through a crack in the drapes she could see, below, what appeared to be a vole. There was a small island of ivy on the lawn below, and the vole would scamper a few feet onto the lawn, and then return to the ivy. She watched the vole come and go, terrified to be out of its ivy for more than a second or more. She watched the ivy island closely, but the vole stopped appearing, so she closed her eyes, and conjured a picture of the vole’s home hollow, rich with vole-smell, so warm and—

  “My sensors say you’re not asleep,” Judi said, now louder than before. “It’s recommended that you get up, perhaps walk around for a few minutes. This helps you to avoid overthinking your sleep. When a person spends too long in bed trying to sleep, it can make it difficult to actually sleep.”

  Delaney had a revelation. Could it be that Judi Dench was sending people to their deaths? Was this sleep tube and this tremulous voice part of an experiment to see what would drive a human to self-annihilation? Could she survive this, or would she wake up in Valhalla?

  “I’m fine,” Delaney said. “You can turn yourself off.”

  “I think I heard you say turn myself off. Is that correct?”

  “That’s correct. Please turn yourself off and remain off.”

  “Understood,” Judi said, and went quiet.

  Donaldson Peak, Delaney thought. She’d summited that one.

  Hyndman Peak. Hadn’t seen it from the highway.

  USGS Peak. Didn’t know what that was.

  No Regret Peak.