B-Mor is a community of workers in the remains of the once-thriving city of Baltimore, Maryland. Although everyone is from somewhere else, those places are best forgotten or ignored, as they are relics of the past:

 So, what does it matter if the town was razed one day, after the people were trucked out? What difference does it make that there’s almost nothing there now? It was on the other side of the world, which might as well be a light-year away (1).

The narrator is lucky to be alive and living in a place like B-Mor, given the difficulties that lay beyond the walls in the open country. In B-Mor, they have a schedule that they can count on, with work, meals, leisure, and sleep all accounted for. Fan is said to have been very different from everyone else before she left the city.

Fan used to work in the fish tanks, caring for the fish of B-Mor. The diving techniques are explained: Fan uses only a snorkel, without any air tanks, so as not to startle the fish. Other divers would go home after their shifts, but Fan would often test herself, holding her breath as long as possible, preferring to be in the tank instead of outside, in society.