DELHI 2099.

FICTION THE ARRIVAL · A SCENE FROM AN IMAGINED 2099

You arrive just after midnight, following the sound of a tabla that seems to be playing inside a cloud. Above the shops, rain collects on thousands of little copper petals. Each petal rings a different note when water touches it. One roof sounds like a lullaby. Another sounds like an argument between two jazz musicians who have never met.

A grandmother in a plastic raincoat is adjusting the pitch of a gutter with a spoon. She tells you this lane was once famous for traffic and impatient horns. Now the neighbours still disagree about everything: how loud the music should be, whether a thunderstorm counts as a free concert, and who keeps leaving socks on the conductor’s platform. But when the first drops fall, windows open together.

FICTION THE ARRIVAL · A SCENE FROM AN IMAGINED 2099

The conductor hands you a ticket printed on translucent paper. DESTINATION, it says, ANYWHERE INTERESTING. You enter a carriage whose windows turn slowly from ordinary glass to scenes of what this city might look like at sunrise, in winter fog, or fifty years earlier. Every passenger sees the same skyline but notices something different.

A teenager is sketching rooftops. Two friends are sharing orange slices. A software engineer with six hovering screens has come here to escape screens. At the third turn, the tram slows beside a kite trapped on a satellite antenna. Nobody can reach it. Everybody has a suggestion. For three glorious minutes the carriage becomes a committee of completely unqualified kite-rescue experts.

FICTION THE ARRIVAL · A SCENE FROM AN IMAGINED 2099

The sign flashes: CHAI / EARTH-STYLE / MADE BY AN ACTUAL AUNTY. Somewhere under a rooftop greenhouse, twenty kitchens are awake. One vendor sells samosas with meteor-shaped pastry. Another claims to have invented noodles that apologise if they are too spicy. The most crowded stall serves plain, ordinary parathas, because all the fashionable food in the universe cannot compete with something made properly.

You order chai from a woman who has memorised the favourite sugar level of every regular. Her assistant, a polished android called B-12, knows fourteen thousand recipes and still cannot understand why people say they are not hungry before eating half a plate of someone else’s food. “This is not an error,” the woman tells it. “This is hospitality.” The android writes the sentence down and looks suspiciously proud.

FICTION THE ARRIVAL · A SCENE FROM AN IMAGINED 2099

The museum opens at four in the afternoon and sometimes at four in the morning, depending on the mood of its keeper. Its shelves contain a cracked phone with a hundred unsent drafts, a pencil worn down by someone learning to draw, an old game controller, a wedding invitation that was never mailed and a handwritten list that reads: MILK, BREAD, CALL DADI.

Visitors can borrow a story, never a memory. An attendant explains that each object comes with permission from its imaginary donor, and that some boxes must remain closed. You walk past a gallery labelled FIRST ATTEMPTS. The walls are covered in terrible sketches, abandoned inventions, burnt cakes and first poems. In the far corner sits a machine that can perfectly recreate any sound. It is currently playing the creak of a familiar staircase.

FICTION THE ARRIVAL · A SCENE FROM AN IMAGINED 2099

At stall 44, an electrician has turned three obsolete voice assistants into a harmonium. Next door, a tailor sews jackets with tiny pockets for tiny robots. A bicycle mechanic is trying to teach a delivery drone to balance on two wheels, although nobody can explain why. The market smells of solder, wet cardboard, coriander and unreasonable ambition.

You stop beside a retired household robot, now working as a storyteller. The robot has a scratched cheek and an entirely unnecessary moustache painted across its face. It explains that its previous owner wanted it to become faster and more efficient. The repairer thought it should become more interesting instead. Every evening it invents a new story about its old life, and the listeners know the stories are made up. That is part of the charm.

FICTION THE ARRIVAL · A SCENE FROM AN IMAGINED 2099

You climb seven flights of stairs. Someone has painted a different constellation on each landing. Up top, a retired astronomer in slippers is arguing cheerfully with an amateur astronomer in slippers about whether the newest visitors from another star system will like Bollywood music. Neither expects an answer. Both are enjoying the disagreement.

The telescope is aimed at a patch of sky you cannot name. Beside it, a little projection machine shows photographs of the same rooftop from decades ago: changes in buildings, hairstyles, telephone shapes and the number of plastic chairs. In every picture somebody has brought snacks. A child asks whether the stars are lonely. The astronomer says no one knows what loneliness means to a star, but people usually come upstairs because looking together feels nicer than looking alone.