Summary

In Part 4, “Bad Chickens/2401” (101), Chapter 1, Gaspery-Jacques Roberts recalls his friend Ephrem, an arborist, telling him about visiting a cemetery with his four-year-old child and seeing the grave of a child who died at age four. Ephrem's daughter said, “If her parents loved her...it would have felt like the end of the world” (104). Gaspery then recalls watching footage in his sister's office at the Time Institute where they both worked featuring the Chinese president's press conference announcing initial plans for the moon colonies.

In Chapter 2, Gaspery explains that Colony Two, where he spent most of his youth, was also called “Night City” (107) because the dome lighting that was supposed to mimic light on Earth, regulating days and nights, broke soon after the colony became populated. During childhood, he and his parents and his older sister Zoey lived down the street from the...