The morning fog over Harbor Gate did not smell of burning coal or sulfur.
It smelled of salt, wet stone, and the clean, ozone sharpness of heavy copper coils humming under low voltage. From the high arched windows of the Central Exchange, the harbor looked less like a battleground and more like a vast, living engine. Forty heavy freighter hulls moved in measured procession through the outer locks, their coal smoke scrubbed by the water-jacketed exhaust towers lining the granite piers.
Inside the Great Hall, the old trading pit—where thousands of paper brokers had once screamed over artificial wheat futures—was transformed.
