Allocation Night hums through the dome like a timer on a heartbeat. In the Dock Market, steam minutes trade hands like prayers, ribbons flicker where cameras pretend not to see, and the pipes hold their breath for the Glass Sleet.
Verity Dunn walks the queues, bargains with a steward, earns steam in the shadows, and tunes the old lander’s bones while a club under the keel warms itself on defiance. Scarcity bites, kindness hides in corners, and the music at the Pink Valve rises just loud enough to drown the sound of policy.
Welcome to Arrow-Far, the first story in The Minute Economy.
A planet where air is currency, time is rationed, and kindness is a regulated act. In the Dry Room, policies are written to look like mercy. Beyond the glass, the wards learn what scarcity sounds like when it hums through the pipes. One chapter at a time, the world unfolds, measured, monitored, and always a little too dry.
Allocation Night
Prologue
Chapter One
The planet had a sense of humour. Arrow-Far-09 looked brown from orbit, like a loaf left in the oven past good manners, yet the air by the domes always smelled faintly of lemon and hot plastic. The colony kept itself clean because it had to, and a little bit prissy because people will. Inside the main dome the evening lights warmed to a soft amber, and every pipe sang the same nervous note that meant the condensers were working overtime. Allocation Night. Showers, rations, the whispers that travel faster than paper.
“Formal,” said the gate steward, not looking up.
“Verity Dunn, Coil Systems, C-Nine,” I said, and tried to look like a person who had never once stolen a minute of water.
He lifted the scanner as if my name might be written on my forehead in sympathetic ink. It hummed, disapproved, and hummed again. The Red Seal airlock behind him wore its comforting row of green lights like pearls. On the other side lay the Dock Market, which lived in the ribs of the first lander. The ribs had been cleaned and blessed and rented in neat rectangles. Everything lay underneath a roof that had once fallen through a planet’s sky like a knife.
The steward glanced at my crate. “Contents.”
“Shower hood, personal,” I said. “Gift for a friend.”
He smiled without teeth. “All gifts are declared in coins or minutes.”
“Vee will do,” I said.
“In this queue,” he said, “we use names in full.”
This is how it works. Formal binds you to law. If you want the friendlier price, you must earn the mouth that says it. I kept my lips polite. Behind me the queue breathed in and out as one creature. The dome made people into a chorus whether they liked it or not.
He tapped the slate. “Verity Dunn of Coil. Allocation variance two weeks ago. Unauthorised humidity spike in Greenhouse Three at twenty-three oh seven.”
“I was pruning.”
“At eleven o’clock at night.”
“The basil does not keep banker’s hours.”
He did not laugh. He wrote a note whose shape said fine later. The rule on Arrow-Far was simple. Money existed, but minutes were louder. A shower cost one minute forty. A variance cost five. Pruning after lights out cost your dignity in front of a man with tidy hair.
“Open the crate,” he said.
I cracked the seal. The lid sighed. The hood lay inside like a smug umbrella. A colony shower gives you a stingy spout and a stern timer. The hood turns the sting into rain. It catches spray and rebounds it as a cloud around your head. Ignore the paperwork. It is a small miracle that fits in a lunchbox and offends every person who has ever written a policy.
“It is legal,” I said. “It is a device for comfort. It does not steal.”
He lifted it as if it might bite. “Your comfort is not my concern.”
“Whose concern then,” I said, and he did not answer because everybody knows. Comfort belongs to Founders’ Row and to the few stalls on the Dock Market that sell fruit with skin as thin as gossip. The rest of us share rain with a stopwatch.
A woman behind me coughed a vowel that meant, this could take all night. I turned enough to see her. Grey coveralls, white ribbon tucked under one pocket seam. The ribbon was new this week. People had started sewing them where the cameras could see and the managers could pretend not to. A small stitch for fair water shares. It was pretty and it cost warnings.
The steward held the hood like an accusation. His badge read SHADE. I had never asked if that was a joke. People on Arrow-Far collected names the way the condensers collected ghosts. A formal name that fit into a ledger. A familiar name that fit into kitchens. A shadow name kept for work in corners.
“Confiscated,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“Or you can pay the variance now.”
“How much.”
“Seven minutes.”
That was two showers and a half, or a week of kettle steam and face towels. I looked at the hood and thought about what my hair did when the air grew grumpy.
“Write it,” I said.
He wrote. He slid the hood back into the crate as if he were tucking a child into bed, then stamped my wrist with his tidy machine. The stamp hummed against skin. Coil Systems markers always did. They loved to sing at home.
“Next,” he called, and the queue moved on me like a tide. I passed the seal and stepped into the Dock Market, which had put its roof back on with tarps and hope. Warm yeast air hit my face. The rib of the lander to my left wore the names of donors and the names of the dead. People had scratched initials near the bolts where the inspectors would not think to check. The colony pretended it did not keep shrines. We kept shrines inside the machines.
“Vee,” someone hissed.
“Do not call me that in here,” I said.
“Sorry, Verity,” said Sine, drawing my arm under the shadow of a stall that sold coils like bracelets. He had the polite, guilty grin of a man who just got exactly what he wanted and would pay for it in a small, honest way. Sine worked algae beds. He always smelled faintly of seaweed and pride. I liked him right up until he said the thing he had come to say.
“I need the hood,” he whispered. “My bunk’s under a vent. The air tastes like old mint.”
“Confiscated.”
He winced. “How much.”
“Seven.”
He peered at my wrist stamp as if he could rub numbers off with luck. “I could… Vee, listen. Lint says there is a job tonight. Four minutes’ credit if you keep your mouth.”
“Lint,” I said, and my mouth forgot to be polite. “Do not say Lint in the Market.”
Sine shrugged apology. Shadow names live where cameras are bored. Lint did salvage between seals. If a crate turned up in the wrong corridor, Lint discovered it and walked it home. I had no moral stance on Lint. I simply liked my job and my oxygen.
“What job,” I said.
“Linen season starts,” he said, then corrected himself with a quick smile for the superstition. “Glass Sleet. The micrometeor swarms skirt us tonight. The old lander skins creak. Lint wants a coil key and a pair of hands that know what not to touch.”
“Which I have,” I said.
“Which you have,” said Sine. “Four minutes, Vee. And a kiss if you want it.”
“I want the minutes,” I said, and then, because he had good shoulders and allocation nights made people kind, “and the kiss after.”
He grinned. “Done.”
We moved through the Market with the good shuffle of two people who knew which stalls sold disgorged luck and which sold lie. The Dock was a ring. Salt at the edge. Greens in shade. Knives away from children unless a mother asked to test an edge on a tomato. Under the lion-mouth intake that still dripped cold air, a stall sold loaves darker than the planet. A small sign read, Turnout tomorrow. Prices behave today. The colony paid wages every thirteen shifts. The word had travelled from cities that did not look up at stars and had never seen a lander’s rib. Language survives without permission.
At the far side of the ring stood the Founders’ Gate, a polite arch cut from a panel whose bolts told a story nobody fully believed. People touched it with two fingers and pretended it did not matter. In front of the arch a boy in a neat jacket sang the oxygen safety song in a voice the size of his head. His mother minded the notes tin with a hand turned sideways to hide a thumb that had gone white from cold at some point and never come fully back. Arrow-Far kept its past in mouths and under sleeves.
We ducked behind a cloth marked TEA, which meant conversations with no receipts. Lint sat on a crate with his hood up. His formal name was Skander Lin-C, ironically neat. People called him Lint because he was always where pockets met rules.
“Verity,” he said, making my name into a joke I tolerated only from people who could fix a seal with one elbow. “You still own the coil key.”
“I am the coil key,” I said. “What breaks.”
“Nothing breaks,” he said. “Something wants to sing in the wrong pitch. When Glass Sleet starts, the old skins complain. The noise scares the people up on Row, and fear makes complaints, and complaints make inspections, and I like my corners tidy.”
“What do I get.”
“Four minutes, paid as steam,” he said. “No coins. No ledger. A hot room and a door guard who knows the difference between privacy and theft.”
Steam minutes are not transferable. They make skin soft and tempers better. They also do not fix a seven-minute variance. I looked at Sine. He lifted a shoulder. I looked at Lint. He lifted his entire face as if it were a lid on a pot. Arrow-Far had a way of pricing your pride exactly, then charging slightly more.
“Fine,” I said. “Where?”
“Under the ribs,” he said. “By the old filter. And bring a laugh.”
“What,” I said.
“Bring a laugh,” he said. “We are going to the Pink Valve.”
The Pink Valve was a club. The Valve sat under a stair in the lander’s keel section, which is to say it had a low ceiling, a live band on good nights, and emergency tape over a dent in the floor where someone had danced too hard the year the dome seals got frisky. The Valve had a reputation for two things. People took their clothes off without panic. People put them back on without shame. Both made the inspectors nervous. Inspectors prefer sins that can be counted.
We slipped down the service steps where the rails kept the hand-smell of disinfectant, citrus fighting the skin. A sign at the bottom said, Oxygen at dance-level. Keep your lungs polite. A hostess in a soft suit the colour of a bruise looked up and down and made that micro-expression that welcomes working hands.
“Lint,” she said.
“Mother,” he said, and I realised why the corner by the bar always stayed safe. The Valve had a keeper, small and tired and able to turn a crowd with one finger.
“Glass Sleet in an hour,” she said. “Do it quick. The band will need the floor.”
“Verity is Coil,” said Lint. “Verity has the ear.”
She pointed with her chin. We ducked the low beam that made tall men bow even when they did not have a religious bone. At the back of the room a panel juddered in a way that told a story I could read with my teeth. When little stones whisper along the dome, the old skins answer like a kettle that thinks it is clever. The trick is not to hush the song. The trick is to shift the note to something that sits under the human voice, so fear cannot use it as a ladder.
I laid my palm on the panel. Coil systems are nothing but manners. The colony breathes if everyone keeps to their lane. I listened until the judder spoke in a rhythm, then tapped back with two fingers, slow, patient, as if I were a grandmother and the panel was a child with a plan to run in socks. It calmed. The room took a breath. The hostess let her shoulders drop.
“Good,” she said. “Stay for the band.”
“Minutes first,” said Lint.
She rolled her eyes, then nodded to a boy with a tray. He led us to the steam room door that pretended to be a cupboard. It held heat like a secret. Four minutes. No ledger. The room smelled of eucalyptus and old conversation. Sine closed his eyes and grinned like a man who had chosen correctly at last.
“Death by thrift,” he said, and kissed my cheek.
“Later,” I said. “The planet is listening.”
He laughed. We do not have gods on Arrow-Far, only seasons. People name them anyway. The Glass Sleet would rasp the dome all night. The Linen Wind would come in spring, a steady cross-breeze that made laundry into flags and sensors into liars. The First Condense would drip from the bolts and make everyone generous for ten minutes, then feral for a week of mould. Naming makes weather into a colleague. You can complain, and it will not take offence.
We came out pink and damp. The floor in the Valve had turned into a map of hedonism. Two men practised a dance that would scandalise nobody in a city with real rain, yet made Arrow-Far look away and then look back. A woman stepped into their space with the authority of someone who had moved crowds for money. The hostess clapped twice. The band found the note the panel had left behind. The room behaved.
“Verity,” said a voice at my shoulder.
Shade. The steward had found the club without letting the cameras marry his face to the door. He had taken off his badge. People looked like people when they undressed their jobs.
“Steward,” I said.
“In this room,” he said, and touched his elbow where a thin strip of blue ribbon lay under the cuff. “You can say Shade.”
That strip of blue was illegal only if a guard with a quota needed it to be. Dye had come in on a crate of tape, and somebody had cut it into courage. I had seen it flash on stairs this week and felt my ribs enjoy the sight.
“You fined me,” I said.
“You spiked the humidity,” he said.
“The basil thanked me.”
He tried not to smile. He failed. People fail gracefully when they are tired. He glanced at the pink steam on my skin and calculated something I could not quite read.
“I am not here for you,” he said. “I am here because the Valve pays its licences, keeps its exits clear, and Lint sends messages that are boring in all the right ways. You have friends with manners. Keep them.”
“Then give me my hood back,” I said.
“Bring me a petition with twenty names for longer shower slots on Founders’ Row,” he said. “Make the rich spend their minutes at the same speed as yours. I will print you a hood myself and write your name on it in lemon ink.”
“Deal,” I said, and meant it, and watched the cost walk in ahead of me like a man in a nice coat.
The band grew lovely. The Valve filled with people who worked too hard and stood too close and did not ruin each other. Glass Sleet began, a faint hi-hat on the dome. The old skins around us answered in their new note. Somewhere under the ribs a child asked a question about death, and a mother lied in a way that would do for tonight. On the Dock above us, the boy with the oxygen song tried a harmony and it did not fight him. Arrow-Far was a planet and a joke. We laughed along and paid carefully.
I took Sine’s hand. He kissed me properly this time. It was warm and a bit algae. I did not mind. He pressed his mouth to my ear.
“Next week,” he said. “Allocation again. We make soup. We feed Lint. We bring twenty names.”
“And the hood,” I said.
“And the hood,” he said.
When we left, the Dock Market had thinned to a soft hiss of people who found any excuse to linger where air is social. The Founders’ Gate watched with its polite lie. The ribs hung their names and pretended to be architecture instead of luck. Shade held the Red Seal with two fingers and looked bored for the camera. He winked when I passed and then pretended he had not done it.
I walked back to Coil with seven new minutes owed and four paid in steam, which is to say I owed three to myself and to anyone I would ask for a signature. My boots tasted the deck through their soles. The dome above ticked in a rhythm that had learned how to live with weather. Behind me the Valve found an old song and taught it to a young crowd. In front of me, the corridor smelt of lemon and hot plastic and the sour of old laughter that never became cruel.
Arrow-Far-09 looked brown from orbit. Inside, it had a sense of humour. We would see how long it kept it.
