Story Excerpt Sunday: from Rotten Row by Chaz Brenchley

Rotten Row

by Chaz Brenchley

Sometimes you wait a long time, at a ’Chute. The network’s busy all over: at any node people are always arriving, leaving, passing through. And whatever the pressure, they can still only process one discard at a time, coming or going. You get delays. Everywhere, you get delays.

Not at NeoPenthe, when you’re going up the line to Rotten Row. They hustled me through the concourse as though I were political, as though the taint of my ambition might rub off if they let me...