On the Corridor, the Enhanced and the Baseline Wait in the Same Line

MAKRAN CORRIDOR — At the Passage Trust intake near the coast, the line does not sort by biology. A man whose augmented liver will likely carry him past a hundred and ten stood Sunday behind a woman whose unenhanced body is already failing at sixty, and both waited the same four hours for the same stamped token. Augmetics can buy a great deal in 2124 — clean years, sharp mornings, a heart that does not tire — but it cannot buy a place further up a registration queue that a corridor runs strictly by arrival. "People assume the enhanced don't end up here," said Passage Trust coordinator Dr. Reza Halim. "Enhancement is expensive; so is losing your water. Plenty of families spent everything on one and then lost the other." For the length of a line, at least, the century's sharpest social fault runs flat. Outside the intake tent, it reasserts itself immediately — in who has somewhere to go next, and who does not.