She has been counting them.

Without meaning to — it happened the way certain things happen, gradually and then undeniably. She started noticing people in Sector 9 on her second or third visit, and now she cannot stop. The man at the water collection point who arrives at 08:30 every morning and fills three containers and thanks the machine as if it can hear him. The pair of women outside the warehouse on the south end who smoke and argue in a language she doesn’t understand but which sounds, from the cadence of it, affectionate. The children — not many, but some — who take the edge of the district toward the school bus route with a speed that suggests either enthusiasm or a tight schedule.

The notice board. She stopped to read it properly last week. Three notices. A lost cat, orange tabby, answers to a name she can’t pronounce. A community meal, Saturdays, the address is a building she has walked past without understanding it was anything. And a hand-written card: If you need something and don’t know who to ask, knock on 14.

Twelve hundred and twelve people, according to the last census. The Accord’s database lists them as a population unit in a below-threshold zone. Costs more to maintain than it contributes. Standard demographic composition: predominantly elderly, low-income, long-term residents.

She thinks about long-term.

She thinks about what it means to be somewhere for a long time — to learn which tram stops are the reliable ones and which door swings wrong and which neighbour’s dog means well. To know the community meal is on Saturdays. To knock on 14 when you don’t know who to ask.

She is sitting at the bench near the cold frame on Sunday morning, watching Elias work, and she thinks: the model does not count these things. There is no field in the ZVA form for years the man has been coming to the water point or what it cost to build the Saturday meal. There is no metric for what leaves when people leave.

“You’re quiet,” Elias says, without looking up.

“I’m thinking,” she says.

“About?”

“The people here.” She pauses. “All of them.”

He straightens up. Looks at her.

“Yes,” he says.

“The model doesn’t count them,” she says.

“No,” he says. “That’s not an oversight.”

She looks at the cold frame. At the seedlings, larger now, beginning to look like things that intend to be here.

“I know,” she says. “I think I’ve known for a while.”

He goes back to work. She watches him.

“I want to do something,” she says. “I don’t know what. I’m not sure I have anything to do it with.”

He pulls a weed. Drops it.

“You have what you found,” he says. “The Northern Expansion records. The date discrepancy. The redacted authorisation.”

“It’s not illegal,” she says.

“No,” he says. “It isn’t.”

“So what does it tell us?”

He is quiet for a moment.

“That the decision was made before the process started,” he says. “Which is worth knowing. Processes are allowed to have outcomes — but not predetermined ones.” He pauses. “I’m not certain who that matters to, in 2047. But I think it might matter.”

She looks at the seedlings.

“To someone,” she says.

“To someone,” he agrees.