The Hackworths' building was one of several lining a block-long garden 
where a few early risers were already out walking their spaniels or touching 
their toes. Far down the slopes of New Chusan, the Leased Territories were 
coming awake: the Senderos streaming out of their barracks and lining up in the 
streets to chant and sing through their morning calisthenics. All the other 
thetes, coarcted into the tacky little claves belonging to their synthetic 
phyles, turning up their own mediatrons to drown out the Senderos, setting off 
firecrackers or guns—he could
never tell them apart—and a few internal-combustion hobbyists starting 
up their primitive full-lane vehicles, the louder the better. Commuters lining 
up at the tube stations, waiting to cross the Causeway into Greater Shanghai, 
seen only as a storm front of neon-stained, coal-scented smog that encompassed 
the horizon.