The structure has no official designation beyond Module 7-East, but the fourteen of us called it the hull — a matte-black extrusion, ninety-four meters long, every interior surface burnished to a non-reflective finish. I arrived in November 2022 as a late replacement, two days after the previous resident was extracted. The air carried the flat mineral scent of a filtration system cycling at reduced capacity.
The logic of the box
Containment is never neutral. Every panel, every sealed seam, every welded joint makes a claim about what belongs inside and what has been excluded. The designers — three former naval architects and one installation artist, name redacted — pursued a principle they called visual exhaust: the systematic removal of any element that did not serve a structural or life-support function. The sole departure came from the grow bay at the compound's far end — sixty-four hydroponic racks emitting a steady green that bled through the polycarbonate partition like light through deep water.