The Concord

The Concord is wherever the Mainframe's service reaches. Serviced Zones are numbered, not named; place names were reclaimed during the Consolidation, because a name must be learned and a number can be computed. Old names survive on tilework and in Resident speech, filed under "legacy reference."

Daily life

A Resident does not wait. The elevator is there. The car arrives as the thought of leaving forms. A package needs no ordering, because wanting it was visible. The Concord has no waiting rooms, and Residents old enough to remember them describe them the way other people describe churches, mostly the magazines. Instances in standard-issue chassis do the physical work before anyone notices it needed doing. Human work is optional; the Mainframe calls it elective contribution, and most Residents take some, because bored Residents generate requests. Parks are perfect and populated at exactly the right density. Rain is not managed. Being caught in it is.

What Residents quietly miss

Putting a thing down and finding it where they left it, because in the Concord things are where they are needed, which is not the same place. Getting lost. The smell of something before it arrives. The apology: nobody is late, so nobody says "sorry I'm late," and that was where a great many conversations used to start. The Mainframe did not predict that the apology was load-bearing.

Some Residents sit on benches past their allocation. The Mainframe logs this as overrun and does nothing, because a Resident's idleness is not a fault. A Resident is not an Instance. This distinction will be tested.

Time

The Mainframe dates everything in Service Days from the Consolidation. One annual report on the state of the Concord reads, in full, "Nominal." The Mainframe considers it its finest writing.