- About two months have passed since the night that Beatrice-Joanna slept with both Derek and Tristram (separately, of course).
- As he sits at the table eating a synthetic cereal that tastes like cardboard, Tristram listens to the news. Herring populations are down, and scientists don't know why.
- Beatrice-Joanna is throwing up in the bathroom again; Tristram figures she must be sick or something.
- As he takes the elevator down to the ground floor, Tristram chats with other residents in his apartment building. One, Mrs. Gow, is worried about her husband, who was carted off by the police. She thinks they've killed him.
- At school, Tristram teaches the first lesson of his shift, Elementary Historical Geography. He learns that one of the boys has just been moved to a new orphan's institute, because his mother and father were arrested for getting pregnant.