6000 years before the Third World War, that is, in 2026.
In a small Manhattan apartment, the midday sun filtered through the poorly closed blinds, slicing the room into strips of dusty light. Outside, the city rumbled like a beast of glass and steel: yellow taxis honked in Broadway, skyscrapers swallowed the blue sky, and on the sidewalks swarmed a human anthill eager to forget it was alive. But here, in a fourteenth-floor apartment, the noise of the world seemed muffled, as if smothered.
