Images flashed by: An enormous, shattered dome, the glass blackened from the explosion. Ice that had melted and refrozen after the fire had been put out, into eerie, indefinable shapes. And the crops. The rows and rows of crops, now all dead and wilted. They were throwing them out into the desert to be covered over by snow and ice. That was on the television too, the ice-drones carting the crops over the barren landscape until they disappeared from the sphere of the camera’s light. A year’s supply of food, the newsman had said. Eliana had watched with her hand at her throat, hardly believing. All those stupid advertisements the past year, with Marianella smiling into the camera as Lady Luna, Alejo Ortiz beaming at her side. They were asking for money to build domes just like this one, domes that could sustain the city without interference from the mainland. “We kept it a secret,” Marianella explained later that afternoon.
