I shoved open the top of my room and climbed up to stand and look at the sky. I smiled to the clear blue sky and took a seat. The baby settled onto my lap and seemed more than ready to fall back asleep. “It is alright. We will pick a name for you soon enough and then things will be a little easier for you. It seems like that is the meeting where everything gets settled and a nice schedule is made for you.”

I heard a soft knock on the covering I had already put back in place over my room. It moved over and a woman pushed open the covering and smiled up at me. “Hello, Jonathan.”

“Hello, Sophie. You are awake early.”

“You are as well, but you always seem to wake before the rest of us.”

“The curse of the top apartment,” I smiled to her.

“True,” she sat beside me and closed the cover.

We looked around and saw the bare walkway on top of all of the apartments. She stretched out her legs and put her hands down beside her and our hands touched slightly. I smiled and our fingers wove together for a moment. The child in my lap giggled and we both jumped and then laughed at ourselves. Our hands slid away and she held up her hands to take him.

“You had him all night, I can take him while you go and get your breakfast and do your work for the day.”

I smiled to her and handed her the baby. I opened the covering and swung my legs down into my room and then paused as a thought struck me. I smiled to myself and I was glad she wasn’t focused on me, since I was almost sure my cheeks went red. While she was preoccupied with the child in her arms, I leaned over and kissed her cheek before nearly falling into my room. The cover shut behind me, but before I left, I heard her gasp in surprise. Since she didn’t follow behind, I can only hope it wasn’t in anger.

***

Since people started looking at the possible capacities of the earth, one of the mainly questions was of the absolute carrying capacity of all of the resources and space that humans could use. The largest number that was ever ventured was 60 million billion. He was ridiculed, but living when I do now, he was definitely the closest. The world is now close to holding 58 million billion people. That might see impossible, but trust me, it isn’t. The world is fully covered in rooms that about three feet by three feet by seven feet and stacked about ten deep. Our rooms are simple. We have our sleep chamber that takes up a full wall and stands out a foot. We also have a computer that is positioned at a comfortable height to be usable from the fold up chair in the floor. Besides that, we have our ladders that go all the way up, through people’s rooms, and too the surface. The surface is simply the place on top of the apartments that is lined with the covers to rooms below. The earth is covered with a canopy that reflex the weather that the controllers want us to have that day, and still maintain day and night cycles.

It is a nice life. All meals come in nutritional pills and all work is done on our computers. Jobs are maintained by data organization and school is funneled through the computer. We are all required to stay within one hundred feet of the covering to our apartment, but there is really no need to travel and waste the energy. It was a nice, calm life. Or at least it was while it lasted.