Chapter 2

At home, she told her husband indignantly about the insolent guard. Naturally, she did not mention that he had seen her naked. But Stephen did not take his wife’s side. More than that, he was displeased that she went to the gym after hours instead of spending time with her family. Kate did not argue with her husband; he was the ultimate authority in their home. Still, she privately resolved to fire Gordon.

The next day, radiant, Kate rode the elevator up to her office at Silver Lining Center. Naturally, she took a selfie, capturing her exceptional, uncommon beauty.

As always, Kate had come to work in jeans. The office had a strict dress code: no skirts or dresses! Kate did not permit any woman who worked for her to appear with her legs uncovered. And everyone obeyed her. In everything, always. Everyone except Gordon.

The beauty walked past him without saying hello. The man was going to be fired anyway, so why waste her goodwill on him? She placed a call to Washington. She, Kate, had stood at the birth of this young City of A — a city whose purpose was to generate culture, to generate art. How difficult it had been to explain the importance of such a place to the people at the top! To make them understand that it was possible to produce and sell not only technology, but ... art! Kate had worn out more than one pair of shoes going from the offices of powerful officials to those of investors and politicians. Yet she had prevailed! From nothing, in the American South, they began building a city for people of art. They combed through creative hubs across the country, seeking representatives of contemporary and traditional art forms and subcultures. They gathered the most promising and gifted. Even the people doing paperwork in Kate’s office were highly unusual. One woman had prophetic dreams. Another could somehow soothe pain with a touch. A third experienced lucid dreams and knew how to travel the world inside them. All these extraordinary people at Silver Lining obeyed Kate and knew that she had been there at the city’s beginning. To them, she was a living historical figure who had changed the world.