Manzoor is seventy and walks a route nobody in the lane knows is a route: Fatima’s stall, the Agarwals’ shutter, a widow upstairs who needs nothing. Twenty-nine doors, every morning, between two glasses of tea.

For fifteen years Aisha has told strangers how a grain convoy saved her mother. Her mother was twenty-three that night, not nineteen. She does not remember any headlights. She remembers diesel.

The terminal heard every word the dhobi said and reduced it to a line: Refer to Sector Utilities, Tier 2. Chhaya missed six seconds of it, and she wants them back. In her second drawer is a pad of paper slips kept since 2071.

Chhaya Deshmukh has not typed a word at work in nine years. Her job is to be looked at while a machine listens. Twenty-two grievance categories, four sentiment values, and no field for an old man’s father.

In 2058 a routing pilot ran sixteen futures for one evening’s grain and sent a convoy down the wrong lane. Aisha’s mother was three doors from home. Aisha has defended the machine ever since.