Karen and her mother were also sitting in the homeless shelter, and that is the coincidence that isn’t one, but rather the normal progression of the changes in the world on a small scale. The changes were the result of the increase in poverty, which often meant the loss of an apartment, and the reality that in Rochdale there was only one homeless shelter, where Karen and her mother now landed. A bunk bed. A tiny window. Who came up with the idea of painting the window frame green so that looking out at the crossroads felt like staring at a television from the previous century? The room was tight for two people, but Karen didn’t care as long as she had her peace and quiet. Withdrawal hadn’t been dramatic. A bit of nausea, trembling, shivering, an emptiness, an emptiness that was better than the memories which followed, that she now suppressed with viruses. Hurray for viruses. Karen busied herself with adeno-associated virus serotypes. These beasts were truly devil spawn. All the things you could do with them. Like making testosterone harmless, for instance. She read through a theory the basic idea of which was that eliminating testosterone would solve 90 percent of the world’s problems. She felt there was a great idea there that she couldn’t grasp, not yet. She would finish her schooling at the end of the school year and at that point would have skipped four years ahead. Not bad for a fucking gifted student, thought Karen, wondering which of the four microbiology scholarship offers, from Aberdeen, Nottingham, Reading, and London, she should accept. The university in London was only fourth place in the rankings, but hey—London. Karen pushed off the decision because at the moment it was impossible to leave her mother, who was in a really bad state. As if her night shifts and the usual way home had been the only thing keeping her alive and she now had found a chance to think about her life for the first time. Terrible idea. Karen’s mother trembled, because the sudden cutoff of thyroid hormones didn’t agree with her. Health insurance no longer paid for such luxury products. Aside from tranquilizers, insurance barely paid for anything anymore. Karen’s mother had tried to find work. There was no longer any demand for night nurses, same for day nurses, and what else was there—prostitution, pole dancing, bar girl—the things that hadn’t been displaced by machines weren’t exactly suitable for an overweight older woman, parentheses forty, with thyroid issues. It wouldn’t go well for a tired woman in a world where 40 million people looked for work every year. Where thousands arrived daily thanks to development. Automation. The robots. Hurray, we now have robots for every fucking aspect of life. They perform, do you get that, you idiots? Perform. We’ve tried for a decade now to mold you to our needs. Wiry, overtrained, overly conforming. All that shit. And what happens? You got burned out. So now, bye-bye.