Thermal Refugees
The displacement is temporary. After the seventh time, "temporary" stops meaning anything.
Overview
When a compute drought gets bad enough — when the atmospheric processing fails, when the temperature spikes past habitable, when the electromagnetic fog makes neural interfaces seize — people leave.
Thermal refugees are the Sprawl's most invisible displaced population. They don't appear in refugee statistics because they don't cross corporate borders. They move within the interstitial zones — from one part of the Dregs to another, from the Shadow to the Undervolt, following the temperature gradient toward something survivable.
The displacement is temporary — most refugees return within days or weeks. But "temporary" loses meaning after the third displacement in a year. Some Shadow residents have been displaced seven or eight times since 2180. Each displacement costs: lost wages, damaged equipment, medical expenses, and the psychological cost of knowing your home's habitability is determined by a server farm's quarterly processing schedule.
No borders crossed. No legal category triggered. The displacement is real. The framework to address it doesn't exist.
The Jurisdictional Gap
There is no ideology here. There is a survival need and a legal void where the response should be.
The Bandwidth Equity Act Rejection
Councillor Nwosu attempted to include thermal displacement protections in the Bandwidth Equity Act. The Zephyria Council rejected the provision on jurisdictional grounds — thermal displacement occurs within corporate territories, and Zephyria has no regulatory authority over corporate environmental conditions. The people displaced by corporate infrastructure decisions cannot be protected by the government that nominally serves them.
"The Scarcity Doctrine Expressed as Procedural Law"
Nwosu's assessment of the rejection. The Scarcity Doctrine says resources flow to where they generate the most value. Procedural law says the Council lacks jurisdiction. The result is the same: people who can't afford thermal shielding are displaced by the heat generated by those who can. The procedure doesn't create the outcome. It ensures nobody is responsible for it.
The Cost of Each Displacement
Lost wages from abandoned work. Damaged equipment left behind or carried through heat zones. Medical expenses — the Heat Ward treats burns, heat exhaustion, neural interface failures triggered by electromagnetic fog. And the cost that doesn't appear on any ledger: the psychological erosion of knowing it will happen again. The eighth time is not easier than the first. It is worse, because you know exactly what's coming.
Viktor Kaine coordinates what response exists — informal protocols that route refugees to shelter space, activate Lamplighter junction rooms, and distribute supplies from G Nook reserves. It works. It is not enough. It was never designed to be permanent. Nothing temporary lasts this long without becoming permanent.
Field Conditions
Displacement has its own sensory language. The people who've done it seven or eight times know it by feel before the warnings arrive.
The Departure
Gathering what you can carry. Leaving a 35-degree apartment with failing air. The heat on your back as you walk through the Shadow toward the Undervolt or another sector where the temperature hasn't spiked. The heat shimmer distorting the buildings you're leaving — they waver in the air like they're already gone.
The relative coolness ahead. It isn't cool. It's just less hot. The difference between 35 degrees and 28 degrees feels like rescue when you've been carrying everything you own for an hour. The weight of not knowing when you can come back. Whether your apartment will still be habitable. Whether your equipment survived.
The Routine of Crisis
The seventh or eighth time, you have a bag ready. You know which belongings to prioritize. You know the routes. You know which Lamplighter junctions have space and which will be full by the time you arrive. You have a mental map of shelter capacity that updates with each displacement.
This is not resilience. This is the normalization of a condition that should not be normal. The efficiency with which experienced refugees evacuate is not a sign that the system works. It is a sign that the failure has been occurring long enough for people to adapt to it.
Points of Inquiry
What Happens to People Who Are Displaced But Never Leave?
Thermal refugees don't cross borders. They move within interstitial zones that no government claims jurisdiction over. They don't appear in any displacement database because the category "thermal refugee" doesn't exist in any legal framework. The displacement is real — the lost wages, the medical costs, the damaged equipment, the psychological toll. The legal recognition is not.
Councillor Nwosu's rejected amendment would have created the category. Without it, every displacement is a personal crisis, not a policy failure. Seven or eight personal crises per person, aggregated across the Shadow's population, still don't add up to a statistic anyone is required to track.
Who Decides What Temperature Is Habitable?
Corporate territories set their own environmental parameters. The heat generated by server farm processing loads is managed to protect the servers, not the people living nearby. When the atmospheric processing fails, the corporate response is to protect infrastructure. The human response is to walk.
The displacement is class-selective by design. People who can afford thermal shielding stay. People who can't, leave. The compute climate doesn't displace everyone. It displaces the people whose displacement costs the least — the people without the resources to insulate themselves from the decisions that generate the heat.
Diplomatic Posture
Viktor Kaine
PatronKaine coordinates thermal refugee protocols through informal governance. The response network — shelter routing, supply distribution, junction room activation — runs through his infrastructure. Not official. Not funded. Functional.
Councillor Nwosu
AdvocateAttempted to include thermal displacement protections in the Bandwidth Equity Act. Failed on jurisdictional grounds. Continues to argue that the displacement is a policy failure, not a natural condition. The Council continues to disagree.
The Thermal Shadow
Source of DisplacementExtreme Shadow conditions produce the displacement events. When atmospheric processing fails and temperatures spike past habitable thresholds, the Shadow becomes the place people leave.
The Heat Ward
Medical SupportProvides treatment during displacement events — heat exhaustion, burns, neural interface failures. The only dedicated thermal injury facility in the lower strata.
The Blackout Economy
Shared InfrastructureDisplacement activates the same survival infrastructure as blackouts — supply caches, communication relays, mutual aid networks. The crisis is different. The response uses the same channels.
The Seven
Structural CauseCorporate processing loads generate the heat. Corporate environmental parameters protect the servers. Corporate jurisdictional claims prevent government intervention. The displacement is a side effect of profit. The legal framework ensures it remains one.
Atmosphere
Setting
The route between the Shadow and wherever you're going. Heat behind you, distorting the buildings into wavering shapes. The weight of what you're carrying. Other people on the same route, the same bags, the same direction. Nobody talks much. Everyone knows why they're walking. The relative coolness of the destination — a Lamplighter junction room, a G Nook shelter, a neighbor's apartment in a sector that hasn't spiked yet. The relief of arriving. The knowledge that you'll be back here again.
Key Symbol
A family walking away from a thermal plume, carrying what they can. The heat shimmer distorts the buildings behind them — the homes they're leaving are already dissolving in the air. Ahead, the blue-gray of somewhere cooler. The gradient between orange and gray is the distance between crisis and survival.