Ever since people started commenting in some form or other, became part of the public, were given Likes, found friends, who might be bots, the certainty of one’s individual importance has risen to pathological levels. People all believe that the world revolves around each of them. Their opinion is important, their rating can ruin a restaurant, their comments chasten politicians, their disease is unique, they looked it up, humans, they can do anything, humans. They’d seen tutorials. Climate change: got it. CERN: yep. Gastric surgery: can do it themselves. Come here, Gertrud. Gertrud’s dead now. But she still lives online. Second Life was the dress rehearsal. Billions live in a new world whose basic functions are less transparent to them than the so-called real—You know, that thing out there. Billions have no idea how a computer works, to say nothing of algorithms. How they can be manipulated, what is being manipulated, they just stare at the pixels and trust. Which is actually touching. It makes you so angry, so angry that online you feel as if everything hinges on your own deranged opinion. And outside, when you walk around in slow motion in your freezing body, you don’t get any respect for the importance of your existence. What happens to people when nothing is tangible anymore, when everything might be fake. Nothing real. Will human beings themselves become fakes who can only be transported back to reality by inserting chips into their cortexes? The ability to think is atrophying because it’s too demanding. Empathy is withering because stimulation online occurs in fractions of a second. Frustration is growing because life offline is so slow and boring. The fucking internet has become the Leni Riefenstahl of the world. A place of dumbing down, inciting, of manipulation and frustration.

So everything’s going just great. Time for the next level.

INTERMISSION

While the story of Hannah, Don, Peter, and Karen takes on a new dynamic that consists of packing their bags, the silent departure from their childhood, and a failed trip to London (the bus to Manchester was delayed, there was no connection, the children stayed overnight in Manchester-Salford and continued their escape the next day).