Monday, April 3rd 2420, Piccadilly, London.  The weather was yellow and brown, the heat, even in the early morning, up to 80 degrees.  The roads still glistened from the washing they had received at 5 a.m.; the over-staffed road-cleaning crew had gone home to sleep away an unburdensome day.  This was the new climate cycle and it had started badly.  The last had been wet, to be followed by a cooler control, but along the line someone had touched the wrong controls and the satellite was raising the temperature too high.  Everyone grumbled and phoned up the meteorological offices, cursing them hourly.  By the next day, things would be adjusted.

At 7 a.m. there was no one around, and neither would there be at 8 or, indeed, 9.  Maybe, soon after 9:30, a few stragglers would appear from the subway stations.  They would wander about the streets looking for something to occupy them, or they might, a few lucky ones, head purposefully towards an office or a factory, to make a half-day's work; never a full day.  There weren't any full days anymore.

London was like an olympic city erected in a desert; vehicles were parked and unused on the upper levels that jutted out the side of massive high-rise buildings, twisting impossibly away to form other levels where escalators and cantelevators waited for travellers to be carried down, up, round, or sideways - empty.  Bridges spanned from naked surface to naked surface; arrows pointed, letters directed, computered banks ticked, and at this time, all to no avail.  The spring sky was clear blue above the city, with a brightness that permeated slowly down into the lower depths.  The windows of the buildings were scrupulously clean and shining, fresh washed and brushed from yesterday.  They would be cleaned again today and tomorrow, for window-cleaners love to clean windows and everyone seems to understand.  The shops would be manned, where manning was needed, or womanned where womanning was preferred.  The men and women would stand in the shops and on the corners, mostly idle, and hand over reluctantly to other men and women at midday and they too would wander off to their apartments, mostly to sleep, maybe just to eat, or pace a floor, sleep some more and wait for the next half-day of work tomorrow.  Down on ground level, the lights were all off and the people inside.  A security man might be standing at the entrance to a subway, waiting as much as anyone else for his job to begin; putting in an extra unpaid hour or two.  It was no less boring than being at home and his wives were a weight on his time.  He scuffed his foot against a fire hydrant cover set into the ground and looked down to the figures imprinted in round raised metal on the top surface. "1964".  The one sound set off another, a gentle "swiff", the familiar shifting of air around the base of a ground car approaching.

The car, long and voluptuous, with broad vulgar headlights, colorful patterns across the roof and a single red star on the bonnet, shifted through the still dank air and parted currents and eddies in the narrow alleyways of the lower levels as it settled gently to the ground and stopped.  The security man's eyes narrowed.  There was no real reason for suspicion, the occasional character could be found about the streets at this time.  But he was a security man and security men are trained to be suspicious.

He watched as the side door opened and a small, crouched, skinny man slid from the seat, stepping on to the pavement at the side of the road.