THE THIRTY-SEVENTH
Everything will suddenly fall into order, everything will settle and become real. Even the Stage 4 estate grew as familiar as a washtub to become simply another place to live. People grew old, kids stopped scruffing up the lawns, breaking the saplings and the bushes, and bellowing over the staircases. Nothing but peace. Even steel gets tired, even steel set in concrete. The prefab towers sagged a bit, cracked a bit, just like the people who live in them. Nobody remembers any more the days when all of this was new, shapely squared buildings arising from the marsh, and everybody young, with small children, as if in those days no other families but young ones even existed.
So many preschools, so many nurseries, so many elementary schools — transformed today into secondhan
