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The Fourth Rail by Manuel A. Dominguez, dystopian railway thriller novel, book cover

Book II · 96 chapters

A Farbound Union novel

The Fourth Rail

A Novel · Book Two of the Farbound Union · by Manuel A. Dominguez

  • Dystopian Railway Novel
  • Political Science Fiction
  • Institutional Power Struggle

About the book

“I am Ayida.” That is how the book begins. Ayida gathers what people tell her beside water, and since the Aftertone she can stay with a story long enough to hear the rest of it. She has no eyes. The first tellings reach her in Gotham, at the harbor steps, at a ward’s water riser, and in the tank of an old rail car.

It is the summer of 3004. Three Strongholds grew up along the corridor, Gotham, Liberty and Garden, each with its own language, and they are at war. In Gotham the lifts are failing in the heat and the war office is checking household registers floor by floor.

On Platform Eleven, one level below the old subway, a green rail car called Car 404 has been home to Ruth Calder for eleven years, and to the people who gathered around her. Its continuity bridge was built to draw three kinds of supply, if anyone could find the missing piece. Inland, the Commonwell is running out of the carbon that keeps its water safe, and the carbon is on the far side of a closed crossing.

Through the tellings of a cook, a clock-room attendant, a rail aligner, an apprentice and a boy with a lock box, Ayida follows the people who decide to move the car, and what it costs them. Span, Latch and Switch are spoken on the page.

Book Two of the Farbound Union.

Description

On a rail platform at shift change, three authorities arrive with the same demand in different forms: the east booth prints it on blue stock, the upper office speaks it through a voice, and the passage authority sends a runner with a lacquered baton and no paper at all. They want the Car. They want the civic credential. They want the recorder.

Car 404 sits on the platform with forty-three people waiting for onward care, a disputed count, and not enough water for another day. The crew can move the Car, if compatible power remains live and an operator accepts the route. What they cannot do is satisfy all three authorities at once.

Narrated by Ayida, who was not on the platform when the demands arrived, The Fourth Rail is assembled from the released platform recorder, freight tallies, the security inventory, and testimony given years later by people whose names were cut from the first civic edition. It is a story about credentials, who holds them, who answers them, and what happens when no one does.

The second book of the Farbound Union.

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RECORDS OFFICE CROSS-REFERENCE

Filed before this record: DISSONANCE, Book 1 of the Farbound Union.

Neo New Orleans, Year 19. The Anvil is a household and a workplace at the corner of Palmer and Dauphine in Ward 7, keeping each other fed and keeping the record.

The full record: https://mudnewspackage.com/dissonance

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Reader questions

What is The Fourth Rail about?

Set in the summer of 3004 along a corridor of three Strongholds at war (Gotham, Liberty and Garden), The Fourth Rail follows the people who decide to move a green rail car, Car 404. It is Book 2 of the Farbound Union.

Who is Ayida?

Ayida is the narrator. The story is told by Ayida, who gathers what people tell her beside water. Since the Aftertone she can stay with a telling. She has no eyes and cannot see into anyone’s head.

What is Car 404?

A green rail car on Platform Eleven, in the lower city under the fourth borough, one level below the old subway. Ruth Calder has lived in it for eleven years. Its continuity bridge carries collector gear for three kinds of supply.

What languages are in the book?

Span in Gotham, Latch in Liberty and the Commonwell, and Switch in Garden. English is Imperial Standard, the war office’s language. You do not need to learn them.

Book details

About the author

Manuel A. Dominguez writes the Farbound Union: two novels of work, family, music, faith, and political ambition sharing one fictional world. The books and their covers were developed with generative AI tools under the author’s direction. More about the author

Contents · 96 chapters

Show all 96 chapters

Part One: Source

Engraving for part one
  1. Ground-level view of the foot of a public water riser with its small street market spread around it: the riser and its concrete skirt with children crouched on the skirt trading stickers, a handcart ice box of cut melon with one short chalk
    Nine Hundred Liters
  2. Interior of the crowded kitchen seen from the eating side of the counter: about a dozen people stand eating from bowls and watching a lit screen above the service hatch, a woman with a paddle at the range behind the counter, an elderly woma
    Eight Twenty-Eight, Eight Thirty-Nine
  3. A narrow apartment kitchen at night: a small table with an elderly woman seated at it, her bare feet in a basin of water on the floor, a pencil in her hand and a paper list before her; a teenage boy seated across from her; behind her the sh
    Pages Turned Faster Than Anyone Can Read
  4. Wide, low view along an empty summer beach at dawn: a ridge of pale hollow horseshoe crab shells and dried eelgrass at the wrack line in the foreground, low dunes with pitch pine and beach plum behind, a man kneeling small at the water's ed
    Horseshoe Crabs
  5. Straight-on view of the landing wall at floor level: a thick painted water pipe rising through the floor, a brass tap at hip height over a drain grate, a steel flap open on four sockets beside it with a meter and a handwritten roster, a wom
    Onions Unchanged at Zero
  6. A large black-painted board covered in chalk columns, propped upright at a small table between two stalls: a man standing before it with a box of chalk and a closed ledger, a woman leaning in to lay a wager, and a small cluster of neighbors
    Notes for the Familiar Face
  7. Long view down the length of the shed: a soot-clouded glass roof letting in brown light, old tram rails running along the floor, hundreds of small figures in neat ranks between the rails like vegetables in rows, a horn on a pole at each end
    If They Get to Forty-One
  8. A deep brick railway cutting seen along the track: weeping red brick walls with fern and moss in the weep holes, an old road bridge on iron girders overhead throwing shade, swallows under the girders, a set of points with a point machine be
    Train or Movement Served
  9. Interior of a small station room at night, seen from the doorway: on the wall a duty board lit red, a gray steel safe with a round dial bolted to the wall beneath it, a handset on speaker, an older woman seated with a half-knitted gray slee
    The Station Safe
  10. Wide, low view across a bare concrete apron under a white sky: the gate in the foreground with a banner hung across it and a photographer in a wide hat standing on a crate beside it; beyond, the Guardians in tight ranks with helmets on, off
    Her Father’s Face
  11. Interior of the hall from the high shallow end looking down the sloped floor: hundreds of small people on folding chairs and on the tile, a folding table at the east wall where a woman ladles soup from a very large pot, old men playing tile
    Nobody Asked for a Household Line
  12. Looking up from rooftop level at the old brick boiler stack against a gold and gray dusk sky, with hundreds of swifts wheeling in one slow funnel above its open top; the long north wall of the hall with its row of clerestory windows lies be
    Swifts in the Clerestory
  13. The flat concrete roof at dusk, seen at roof level: a big riveted steel water tank raised on its frame of riveted legs in the middle, strings of glass lamps lit on a wire from the tank's legs to the parapet posts, about three hundred small
    The Tank on the Roof
  14. The same roof at night in heavy warm rain: glass lamps swinging on their wire between the tank's legs, hundreds of small soaked people dancing the same silly dance with arms flung out and faces turned up, children running in circles, roof s
    The Dog Dance
  15. Inside a tall concrete stairwell at night, seen from a landing looking up the flights: a strip of emergency light glowing green along the wall at each landing, two uniformed Guardians climbing, and a stair window looking out over dark tower
    Forty-Eight Flights
  16. Interior of a long upper-floor room in an old mill in the evening: three long tables set with rows of small plain receiver units, a book of offsets open on the nearest table with loose papers, a woman in her fifties bent over them in profil
    A Shrug with a Decimal Point
  17. Looking out from a small footbridge across a floodable park drowned by the tide: flat black and silver water lying over the lower lawns under a few street lamps that show only as yellow smudges in thick fog, and beyond the park an old unuse
    Upstairs Is a Drawer
  18. Long low view along the platform: a vaulted brick ceiling, black with soot and white in patches, over a row of pillars; a wedge of dusty yellow daylight lying on the platform floor as far as the fourth pillar with a few chairs set in it and
    Platform Eleven
  19. Low view across the track bed from the platform edge: the side of the old green railcar, with its wheel trucks and the dark gap under the floor where a steel tank hangs, and two pairs of legs sticking out from under the car onto the ballast
    He Paints the Rust
  20. Night inside the vault of Platform Eleven, seen from roof level at one end of the old railcar looking along its length toward the closed tunnel mouth: the car's flat roof of warm steel with dead moths scattered on it, two boys lying side by
    Because Nobody’s Holding Him Up
  21. Straight-on view of a bare concrete ground-floor landing: the closed doors of a dead lift, a blue paper interruption notice pasted beside them, and a board hung on the wall covered in rows of small chalk entries, with a short line of small
    On Restoration of Lift Service
  22. Seen from behind the last row of the audience: rows of children sitting on the concrete facing a blanket hung over two trestles that glows like a lantern, lit from behind by two work lamps clamped to the handrails of a green railcar standin
    The Knees
  23. A rail cutting on a summer day: a very small relay hut beside the rails with its door propped open by a brick and a few crew members standing at the doorway watching; in the middle of the picture a thin teenage boy with his sleeves rolled c
    Unbeaten

Part Two: Uptake

Engraving for part two
  1. Seen from the dam along the walkway: a concrete intake tower on the face of an earth-and-stone dam, a narrow steel walkway out to it, and on the steel grating over the gate well at its end one woman standing alone with a thermos, looking do
    Color, Green
  2. Wide view across the main body of Crown reservoir at sunrise, seen from the dam: the whole surface drawn out into long swirls and loops like marbled paper, low sun laid across it from the east ridge, swallows skimming just over the swirls,
    Clarity Is a Feeling
  3. Ground-level view up a steep mixed stair between terraced houses: concrete flights, stone flights and an iron stair bolted to the rock; in the center a woman, not large, climbing without stopping with a can in each hand and a third can in a
    Four Hundred Steps
  4. Night in a brick railway cutting: in the foreground, on the ballast at the edge of a hand lamp's circle of light, a toad; beyond it a man standing at a set of points with his hand on a short hand lever and the lamp at his feet; old soft red
    A Toad on the Ballast
  5. Interior of the meal hall seen from near the door at the back, looking down the room toward the low stage: a long room with a pitched roof on timber trusses, twenty tables with benches crowded with people turned toward the stage, a woman st
    A Quarter-Bell Late
  6. Looking down the length of a very long hall table set up for a seed exchange: an older woman at the left end behind tins of seed envelopes, a younger woman at the right end behind glass jars with a small card propped against them, between t
    The Balcony Above Low Steps
  7. Interior of the hall seen from the door end, looking down its length: a vaulted ceiling over a floor of worn marble; down one side a row of windows with a clerk behind each and a card above each; on the other side rows of benches full of wa
    The Most Honest Room in Liberty
  8. Interior of a plain basement archive in the evening: a row of old dehumidifiers along a wall, each with a steel tank at its base; a young man lifting one tank and pouring it into a drain in the floor; in the corner just beyond him a locked
    The Other Side of the Account
  9. A long hospital corridor receding in perspective: a polished floor, doors of old wards, a wide lift door set in the wall, and at the far end a small office with a window onto the corridor; along the near wall a long plain hospital bench wit
    Thirty Days
  10. Low view from the edge of a floodable park at evening in fog: a thin sheet of tide water lying over the lower lawns with grass tips showing through, three or four children wading in it, a man at a cart selling fried clams at the water's edg
    A Tin of Sugar
  11. Interior of a long old mill room on a winter evening, seen from beside the trough: in the foreground a long shallow zinc trough, about the length of a coffin, with sheets of paper lying in clear water and one wet sheet lifted dripping; behi
    The Damping Trough
  12. Interior of a long old mill room packed with about ninety people, some seated on benches and the long paper bench where the children sit, others standing at the back and in the doorway, all facing an old woman in the one good chair beside a
    Five Hundred Names in Lead
  13. Interior of a long old mill room in deep winter, early morning: in the foreground a zinc trough with a skin of ice over the paper in it; beyond it the iron hand press with a flat ink slab, a small lit lamp under the slab and a printer in fi
    Comfort Minimum
  14. Interior of a long plain hall in the early morning, seen from a few steps back from the counter: on the wall beside the service counter a wooden board ruled into weeks and days, with many small cards pinned in the slots, each with a tiny co
    The Blue Tab
  15. Ground-level view at the foot of a steep hill stair in the dark before dawn: a line of about thirty people standing close together, each with a lamp or a candle in a jar on the ground by their feet and water cans in their hands; at the head
    The Sponsor Chair
  16. View from beside the path partway up an orchard slope: two small figures carrying one big water can between them up the middle of a path, each with one hand on the handle; about three hundred people lining both sides of the path, counting a
    Under the Old Pear
  17. Ground-level view at the top of an orchard slope in evening light: a big wooden radio set on a wooden crate under a very large old pear tree, a cable running from it to a battery bank, and two older women standing on either side of the crat
    The Radio Fight
  18. Close view beside a stone washing trough on an orchard slope on a summer morning: a single block of stone cut into a deep basin, a spring pouring cold from the hillside into it and spilling over its lip into the grass; two older women stand
    Four Hundred and Six Glasses
  19. Interior of a long plain hall packed for a public hearing, seen from the front beside the low stage: in the foreground a single plain empty chair stands to the right of a long table set on the stage, facing the crowd, with nothing on its se
    The Empty Chair
  20. Interior of a big timber packing barn at night, seen from the open doors at the back: lamps hanging from the beams and swinging a little in the warm air; about eighty people sitting on crates and benches on a bare concrete floor; a small st
    The Last Line
  21. Long view down a bare railway platform under hard midday sun beside a stopped passenger train, with a tangle of overhead wires and insulators where two sets of wires meet above the junction; at the near end a locomotive backing away along o
    The Dark Cloth
  22. The flat concrete roof of a very tall tower at first light, seen at roof level from beside the low east parapet: in the foreground a small nesting box on the parapet, with two falcons just dropped from it, wings folded back, diving headlong
    A Falcon over the Harrow
  23. View looking down through a square hatch in a floor, with a rug rolled back and a short ladder leading down into a dim cramped space under a railcar: at the bottom a steel cabinet the size of a wardrobe bolted to the underframe, its hinged
    A Garden-Shaped Hole
  24. Interior of a long plain meeting room in flat afternoon light, seen from the foot of a long table with about a dozen people seated along both sides: at the head of the table a small quiet person in a plain yard jacket with a wheel-in-a-squa
    Possession Is Not Permission

Part Three: Custody

Engraving for part three
  1. Low view from the water, behind and to one side of a small open boat crossing a vast dark harbor at night with no lights: three people aboard, one at the stern with a hand on the motor, one bent over the side, one sitting in the bow turned
    The Second Try
  2. Ground-level view at the crossing: in the foreground a long black-painted timber board under a little tin roof, covered in rows of small hand-painted white marks (names, none readable), with a few dry flowers stuck into a crack at its lower
    Every Accident Is a Failure of Attention
  3. A long raised planting bed like a big timber box, hip high, built of old weathered railway sleepers with a heavy cloth liner, standing on bare packed ground at the edge of a town with a line of pines beyond: dark imported soil crowded with
    Dara’s Soil Table
  4. Close view across the end bench of a dark brick hall: a large glass basin of clear water standing on the bench with nothing in it, and beside it a very small brass and steel clockwork pump lying on a folded cloth; one lamp on the bench; an
    The Teacup Pump
  5. A ruined plant nursery on flat ground at the edge of a salt marsh: in the foreground an old cast-iron hand pump on a stone plinth with a handle worn bright, a wooden well lid and the open mouth of the well beside it, where a woman sits on t
    Saltbend
  6. A gentle slope of young fruit trees running down toward a flat salt marsh: trees in uneven rows, every size, some taller than a person and some only knee high, each tied to a wooden stake, with clover growing under them and a few bees over
    Lark Pardo’s Orchard
  7. Low view along the flank of an old green railcar standing on the track bed beside a long platform: a hose running from the weeping hydrant on the platform to the car, where a boy kneels beside the water-tank filler under the car's floor bet
    The Last Thing I Have from Tavi Kells
  8. View along the platform from near the foot of the freight ramp toward the closed tunnel mouth at its far end: the track bed beside the platform empty, with two long lines of rust where wheels stood, a darker oblong where a drip tray stood a
    Under the Rear Overhang
  9. View along the bank of a long pond choked with tall reeds toward a low old brick pump house at its end with its door open, a woman standing small in the doorway with a hand on the frame; over the water a black sky off the bay and a gray wal
    The Pit Fills
  10. Interior of a plain small room at night: a young man seated on a bench under a window with both palms turned up on his knees; a woman close in front of him winding a strip of wet cloth around one palm, more torn strips in a pile on the benc
    Assistance to the Inquiry
  11. Long view down a steam-filled laundry room: a row of heavy presses down the middle with women in aprons at them, white shirts and sheets hanging from overhead wooden drying racks hoisted on ropes, a plain sign board over the press line with
    Compassionate Unpaid Leave
  12. Wide, low view across a bare concrete yard apron: on the left a small plain yard office with one step at its door, and across the apron a low clinic building; on every wall, step and post a clean horizontal line of dried gray silt at shin h
    The Glove in the Apron
  13. Ground-level view just inside the cemetery gate: a plain standpipe with a brass tap over a long stone trough, two mourners at the trough, one with both hands under the running tap; beyond them narrow paths of pale crushed oyster shell betwe
    Nine Units for Washing
  14. Interior of a small plain room seen from the doorway: under a window that opens onto a narrow dim shaft between two towers stands a table made from a door laid on two trestles, covered with oilcloth, folding chairs around it; two women at t
    Acceptance of the Record Is Not Required to Grieve
  15. Looking across an open grave toward the upper wall of a hillside cemetery: a plain pine box with rope handles on trestles beside the grave under a white sheet whose sharp creases stand up in a grid; a woman in an apron standing at the head
    Tavi’s Chalk
  16. Interior of a small plain kitchen at night, seen from the doorway: on the left an old stove with a louvered fan grille high above it, its blades turning; in the middle an ironing board set up with a woman in an apron standing at it pressing
    The Iron Hissed
  17. Night view along the forge end of a long brick workshop hall: in the foreground the quench tank, a steel drum cut down to waist height full of black water with an oily rainbow skin and a puff of steam rising from it; on the bench end beside
    The Quench Tank
  18. Close view of the end of a long work bench at night under a single lamp: a plain sack lying beside a small bent-metal figure of a woman with her hands empty; a gray steel box the size of a brick with a small cloudy glass window on one side,
    A Relay in a Sack
  19. Interior of a long plain repair shed seen from one end at floor level: a long old green railcar lying in two halves on stacks of timber blocks on the bare shed floor, the broken ends a meter apart with the torn steel of the underframe showi
    Declined
  20. View down through a square hatch in the floor of a railcar, a rug rolled back beside it and a short ladder leading down into a dim cramped space under the car: at the bottom a steel cabinet the size of a wardrobe with its hinged door open;
    The Set in the Cabinet

Part Four: The Fourth Rail

Engraving for part four
  1. Interior of a long plain hall seen from the door end along a clear lane marked in chalk on the bare floorboards, two tables pushed aside to make the lane from the door to a counter along the back; a queue of adults waiting along the lane, m
    Boiling Makes It Worse
  2. Foggy harbor night seen from the seaward side of a low stone hut at the end of a breakwater: the hut no bigger than a kitchen, a short horn on its roof, its seaward door open and glowing with lamplight and a stove's glow inside; in the door
    Mica Came
  3. Interior of a plain basement archive packed with people: along one wall a row of old dehumidifiers, each with a steel tank at its base, gurgling; shelves behind; in the front row on the bare floor nine people in identical gray coats sitting
    The Original Beside the Amended
  4. Interior of a long upper-floor room in an old mill in the evening, seen from the doorway: long plain tables set with small plain receiver units, none of them a wall clock; on the nearest long table, between two of the receivers, a dozen alm
    Say Her Name at the Table
  5. View from the wharf edge looking straight down the face of an old iron ladder that descends into gray harbor water in thick fog: rungs worn silver along their tops and black underneath, furred with weed, barnacle and small mussels below the
    The Ladder at Cinder Quay
  6. Interior of a long dance floor built on the end of a wharf, at night in fog, seen from the door end: bare oak boards covered in long straight rows of opened letters lying in their rows like a field of snow, with narrow aisles between the ro
    The Freight Night
  7. Interior of a bare concrete room that was once a wash bay, seen from the doorway end in gray light: a narrow cot against one wall with a woman in work clothes standing on it, holding her boots in one hand, small and still; in the middle of
    The Block
  8. Interior of a small plain kitchen at night, seen across the table: a woman seated at the table still in her outdoor shoes, papers spread out in front of her, her palm flat on a printed card lying between two teacups; the card has a round se
    Her Good Blouse
  9. Long low view along an underground platform at night under a vaulted brick ceiling, black with soot and patched white: an empty track bed beside the platform; across half of the vault overhead a huge painted green railcar with tiny painted
    Nine Lines in Yellow Chalk
  10. A gray morning in a railway yard with rain coming, seen from outside a wire fence across a wide yard of wet ballast and a ladder of tracks: a long repair shed with its big doors open, and in the doorway an old green railcar with its pantogr
    Come Back
  11. Wide view of a small industrial clearing in pine forest in steady rain: a long brick kiln house with chimneys putting blue smoke into the rain, a steam plant and a store beside it; a short siding running to a loading dock where an old green
    The Carbon Works Siding
  12. Low view deep underground in a narrow old brick-lined railway bore, looking toward the front of a single old green railcar creeping toward the viewer at a walk: the arched vault overhead hung with thousands of thin white straws, some as lon
    Nine Locks Under the River
  13. Night view along a railway line toward a brick signal box raised high on stilts beside the track, a steep set of stairs climbing to a single lit window; in the window a tired man holding a paper in the lamplight, looking down; at the foot o
    The Crews Say Yes
  14. Night view across the stopped car's embankment: in the foreground the silent crowd of hundreds standing close together on the wet grass slope above the track, backs and shoulders in the rain, one umbrella held over a notebook wrapped in a b
    The Shift Changes
  15. Interior of a plain laboratory seen along its bench in low gold light: on a long bench under a window, six identical glass jars stand in a row on a stirring bench with a small paddle shaft above each; the water in each jar is still, and fin
    Six Jars
  16. Ground-level view on a steep hillside terrace in the early morning: a man in a wheelchair that he pushes himself, seen from the side and behind, sits at a public tap on the terrace path and holds a jerrycan under the running water; empty je
    It Wasn’t Me
  17. Interior of a small plain assembly chamber at night, seen from beside the side wall: about forty people on rows of folding chairs facing the front, where a woman stands alone with a page in her hand, reading; framed portraits of old delegat
    A Smaller Room
  18. Wide view over a shallow clay-lined basin at the foot of an earth-and-stone dam: half the basin is spread with fresh black sludge, thick as wet ash stirred into porridge, raked to a hand's depth and glistening; the other half has dried and
    Crown Turns Over

Coda

Engraving for coda
  1. Interior of a long old grain-store hall on a mild evening, seen from the side of the low stage looking out over the benches: a woman stands on the low stage reading from a page; at the foot of the stage, at the front, a man in his chair, wi
    The Second Evening
  2. Wide, low view along a cold autumn beach: in the foreground the wrack line of torn eelgrass and the empty molts of summer, and a gull's wing on the sand; a man sitting small on the sand at the water's edge with his trousers rolled and both
    Placed with the Record
  3. Evening view from the landward end of the raised road, the pad in the foreground: an empty rectangle of concrete with a ring of bolt holes round its edge and two rows of larger holes down the middle, weeds and a small sumac seedling in the
    The Pad with the Bolt Holes
  4. Wide low view over a calm dark harbor at night: in the lower left a small open boat stopped over the wreck, a short old man in a patched oilskin standing braced in its stern with a hand line in his hands, turned to look across the water, an
    Over the Barge
  5. Low view along a marsh edge in low morning sun: in the foreground rope-colored cordgrass lying over weathered old boards and beams, some with grass grown through them, above the tide line; below it a strip of wet mud with a bottle, a net fl
    Brant
  6. Night view across a flat wet concrete roof just after rain, seen from beside the big riveted steel water tank: about sixty people stand along and near the northwest parapet with their backs to us and their faces turned up to the clearing sk
    Eighty-One Days
  7. Low view from behind the audience along a long vaulted platform: about a hundred people sit in rows on the concrete, children at the front, facing a blanket hung over two trestles at the south end in front of the closed tunnel mouth; on a c
    Tavi’s Part Missing
  8. Low night view along a breakwater in thick harbor fog: at the end a squat stone hut the size of a kitchen with a horn on its roof and one lit doorway, the glow of a lamp the only color; a man and a woman stand close together at the door, sm
    First Frost
  9. Interior of a long brick workshop hall at night in winter, seen from the corner where a large glass basin of clear water stands on a bench: a small brass clockwork pump stands submerged in it, lifting a thin thread of water that falls back,
    The Smallest Water I Know
  10. Interior of the sloping white-tiled hall at night, seen from the high shallow end looking down the slope: forty or fifty people in pairs and threes spread over gym mats on the sloped floor, practicing carries, one pair lifting a person in a
    Sera’s School
  11. Interior of a warm tower kitchen at night, seen across the big steel table: six people sit around it in lamplight, an old woman holding a teapot, a woman with one hand raised to a small device behind her ear, a young man, a woman in a coat,
    This Was the Boat

The covers and the part and chapter engravings are AI-generated illustrations. They were made on 1 October 2026 with OpenAI gpt-image-2, from briefs written from the novels, checked against those briefs and approved by the author. The covers were enlarged with Real-ESRGAN.

AI was used for prose, editing, and artwork in this book.

Also in the union

The other novel: DISSONANCE Read its chapter 1, free Places and institutions The Notice Board The languages Research and fiction