Folding Beijing

3 ideas

1. Lao Dao's paid crossing into First Space

   Lao Dao, a 48-year-old waste sorter from Third Space, needs money for his adopted daughter Tangtang's kindergarten tuition. He accepts 200,000 yuan from Qin Tian, a Second Space student, to smuggle a love letter to Yi Yan, a woman in First Space, crawling through the gaps as the city folds. He discovers that Yi Yan is married and was only dallying with Qin Tian, and he nearly gets caught. He returns with the money, and her hush payment, having glimpsed a world he cannot change or join.

2. Class-rationed time in a folding city

   Beijing's ground rotates on a 48-hour cycle, and each class gets a different share of it. First Space holds 5 million people who live 24 hours. Second Space holds 25 million who get 16 hours. Third Space holds 50 million who get only the 8 night hours, while the other two spaces sleep sealed away. Inequality is encoded directly as unequal access to waking time and physical space, with the most people packed into the least of both.

3. Automation withheld to manage surplus labor

   Lao Dao overhears First Space officials admit that fully automated waste processing already exists. They have not adopted it because it would put tens of millions of Third Space workers out of jobs. The system keeps inefficient manual labor on purpose and sends the surplus population to sleep in sealed capsules to reduce their consumption and unrest. This is a political choice about what to do with people the economy no longer needs, not a technical limit.

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