Over the course of the first few weeks, the nearly still–children of parents of undefined ethnicity slept on the street in front of a Bentley dealership, in a youth hostel, in a squatted building, and in office buildings they managed to get themselves locked into. Office buildings were the best overnight locations, as they were heated. During those nights in office towers the children had longed for a regimented life. They came up with plans during those nights in the towers. “Before we put down roots we should get to know the city first.” Said Don during this time. The others agreed.

So the children got

To know the city.

The central districts seemed inhabited exclusively by Chinese, Russians, and Arabs. Whom one glimpsed only through the windows of golden cars with five gold-plated exhaust pipes. These inhabitants of the central districts insisted on their petrol motorcars, and law enforcement forces turned a blind eye. They knew who owned most of the city. The rich sat in traffic in their golden vessels, same as the electric cars and the little self-driving vehicles. Nobody wanted their right to individual transportation taken away. A car was freedom where there was otherwise little freedom left. With a car one could drive around, at least in theory.

The children began their confidence-building explorations in the City of London. Barely three square kilometers, just eight thousand residents. With its own laws since 886 AD. Only reptiloids hung about Temple Church.

There wasn’t much else going on. White men in suits who looked so similar that you might think it more practical to condense them into one man. What he would then be good for was, however, unclear.

Aside from the rich idiots in golden motorcars, the central areas of the city seemed made exclusively for tourists. Chinese tourists who wanted to buy marmalade worth its weight in gold in authentic shops. Aging models who’d married Russian men and now shopped with wicker baskets for superfoods in organic groceries, still a bit unstable on their feet because of surgical belly button revisions and vagina rejuvenations. Standard operating procedure. You know how it is.

In the entire city center, from Nottingham and Chelsea to Mayfair and Kensington, there were no children. They’d probably been sent off to boarding schools, or were dead. The looks that followed Hannah, Peter, Don, and Karen could be interpreted without difficulty as greedy. “Maybe they eat children around here,” said Hannah. “We should get out of here.”

Like everywhere in Europe, the streets started to look squalid as soon as you left the city center. No trees, no limousines, no gold. No good honest red brick, organic cafés, fitness studios. For a hedonistic world metropolis, these, shall we say, “locales” looked depressing. Garages and sheds had been turned into flats, signs had been put up in warped window frames. Solicitations for flatmates or offers of sofas to crash on were posted everywhere. And the rates,

You can guess.