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reorganizing Living Dream’s hierarchy to suit his own policy. Not obvious, but it had a lot of potential: Corrie-Lyn.

    The courier case arrived at Troblum’s apartment an hour before he was due to make his presentation to the navy review panel. He wrapped a cloak around himself and walked out to the glass elevator in the lobby as the emerald fabric adjusted itself to his bulk. Ancient mechanical systems whirred and clanked as the elevator slid smoothly downward. They were not totally original, of course; technically, the whole building dated back over 1,350 years. During that time there had been a lot of refurbishment and restoration work. Then, five hundred years ago, a stabilizer field generator had been installed, which maintained the molecular bonds inside all the antique bricks, girders, and composite sheets comprising the main body of the building. Essentially, as long as there was power for the generator, entropy was held at arm’s length.
    Troblum had managed to acquire custodianship over a hundred years earlier, following a somewhat obsessional twenty-seven-year campaign. Nobody owned property on Arevalo anymore; it was a Higher world, part of the Central Commonwealth—back when the building had been put up, they had called it phase one space. Persuading the previous tenants to leave had taken all his energy and mass allocation for years, as well as his meager social skills. He had used mediator Councillors, lawyers, and historical restitution experts, even launching an appeal against the Daroca City Council, which managed the stabilizer generator. During the campaign he had acquired an unexpected ally that probably had helped swing the whole thing in his favor. Whatever the means, the outcome was that he now had undisputed occupancy rights for the whole building. No one else lived in it, and very few had been invited in.
    The elevator stopped at the entrance hall. Troblum walked past the empty concierge desk to the tall door made of stained glass. Outside, the courier case was hovering a meter and a half above the pavement, a dull metal box with transport certificates glowing pink on one end, shielded against field scans. His u-shadow confirmed the contents and directed it into the hall, where it landed on his cart. The base opened and deposited the package: a fat silvered cylinder half a meter long. Troblum kept the door open until the case departed, then closed it. Privacy shielding came up around the entrance hall, and he walked back into the elevator. The cart followed obediently.
    Originally, the building had been a factory, and each of the five floors had a very tall ceiling. Then, as was the way of things in those early days of the Commonwealth, the city had expanded and prospered, pushing industry out of the old center. The factory had been converted into high-class apartments. One of the two penthouse loft apartments that took up the entire fifth floor had been purchased by the Halgarth Dynasty as part of its massive property portfolio on Arevalo. The other apartments had all been restored to a reasonable approximation of their 2380 layout and decor, but Troblum had concentrated his formidable energies on the Halgarth one, where he now lived.
    In order to get it as near perfect as possible he had extracted both architect and interior designer plans from the city’s deep archive. Those plans had been complemented by some equally ancient visual recordings from the Michelangelo news show of that era. But his main source of detail had been the forensic scans from the Serious Crimes Directorate that he had obtained directly from ANA. After combining the data, he had spent five years painstakingly recrafting the extravagant vintage decor, the end result of which had given him three en suite bedrooms and a large open-plan lounge that was separated from a kitchen section by a marble-topped breakfast bar. A window wall had a balcony on the other side, providing a grand view out across the Caspe