Within the Seventh circle, many different people were waking up. In the top layer, the suburbs were coming alive, the ceiling covered by light screens slowly changing from a starry night to a gentle warm morning glow. The screens were made of sunlight that was captured outside the city and then televised into the growing communities. The light was collected each morning and then washed over the neighborhoods each morning. The stars were an ancient recording from the before times when stars were still visible at night. This recording was then edited to appear natural and real before being projected each night. Each nuclear family was getting ready for the day, bustling and busy as they did; young scientists setting off for school, mothers starting their housework, daughters helping their mothers, and fathers setting off for the lab. 

The middle layer, where Hans and many other Scientists like him lived, remained silent, the only sounds the hum of the fluorescent lights and the faint ticking of clocks. Each Scientist’s office was cast in shadow, waiting for their respective owners to come to shine light into them. 

On the bottom layer, inside the operating rooms, lab assistants were finishing up their night work; shoveling remaining body parts and brains into metal bins that would be shipped out of the city, wiping down lab tables, and mopping the floors. When they were done, the rooms would be spotless, aside from the faint yellow and brown stains that could not be removed no matter how much scraping and scrubbing was done. After work, they would retreat to their bleach-scented rooms to sleep until one of the scientists needed them.