11:27 p.m.

I wake just before the alarm; my skin knows the time. Even underground, even behind concrete and insulation, the heat presses in. Usually these bunkers are air conditioned, though more conditioning units have gone out of service, and the city never gets them repaired.

12:00 a.m.

Midnight is the city’s coolest hour, a moment to breathe, at least for us down here. Private cooling domes loom above like giant streetlights, illuminating the rest of the city below. The towers never sleep; they don’t need to. I clip on my cooling vest and check the battery twice. No charge, no shift. No shift, no ration credits. The city pretends this is a choice.

12:47 a.m.

I’m on the rail line with six others. The metal hums softly, still warm. It seems to warp faster every year. We measure millimeters that decide whether a train derails or survives until dawn. We work fast. Always fast. Every year more rail line workers are laid off, but the workload stays the same. Some say that the rails will be too far gone soon enough, and we’ll all be out of work. It’s just a matter of time until then, still the city clock ticks louder than the one in my head.

4:29 a.m.

I see him. He’s crouched near the platform edge, bare arms slick with sweat, breathing short, shallow, panicked. He has no vest, and no ID band. Unauthorized personnel means an unauthorized risk. My coworkers tell me to keep moving, protocol says do not engage; I drag him anyway.

5:00 a.m.

His breathing is still panicked, though it’s quieter now. My cooling vest’s alarm screams as I pull him down the rail line, my own body heat spiking the sensors. “Breathe slow,” I tell him, though my own lungs are already burning. The other workers kept moving, probably a smart idea. Violating protocol never ends well. His breath keeps getting quieter, then it stops.

5:10 a.m.

When I get to the station the supervisor’s message is brief: Protocol violation. Resource misuse. They dock my credits as punishment. A warning, for now. Before I go back down, I look out at the upper districts shimmering. The city calls this adaptation, I call it sorting. The city’s alarms sound, sunrise will be soon. I wonder if they can hear the sirens up there.

To write this story, I prompted ChatGPT to generate four stories set at a time in which the global climate temperature has risen 4° C. This gave me some interesting ideas to work with as I wrote Nightshift. All stories focused on potential jobs and the living conditions of the working class. I borrowed the ideas I found most interesting from all of the generated stories.