The manual the families had been given was twelve pages long, printed on thin, glossy paper that had already started to curl at the edges in the warehouse's humidity. On the cover, in bold, confident letters, it said "Urban Farming Cooperative - Standard Operating Procedure - One Sensor Per Cooperative is Acceptable". Inside, the first page showed a single dot in the center of a grid, labeled SENSOR, and around it, twenty-three small squares, each with a single, neat number: 6.8.
Maya had read the manual three times, first as a student, then as an intern, then as the sixteen-year-old who had just learned that the families' 2 kilos was data. On the third reading, she had not seen a manual. She had seen a baseline that had never been questioned.
"We need to write a new page," she said, not
