Midnight, Australian Eastern Standard Time, last seconds of the month named December, in the year numbered 2101. A new year birthing, but this year there are no celebrations to mark the change of date, floundering state and territory governments more concerned with collapsing economies and their failure to coerce elderly citizens into unpaid work for the sole reward of a meagre pension.
Behind the crumbling cliffs and degraded foreshores of twenty-second century Port Phillip Bay, apartment blocks stand like grey sentinels rising into a pollution-smudged sky. In daylight, they stretch as far as the human eye can see, yet if one could zoom in on a small stretch of coastline halfway down the eastern side of the Bay, a tall man and a petite woman would be visible, bathed in the silver light o
