Ben has a theory that all the agitation—the terror attacks, the mutual antagonism among the citizenry, the Nazis, the hatred of foreigners, the unrest—was just a diversion from, well, something. Whenever he’s almost able to grasp the answer to the big question of Why, he’s distracted. By some bridge he needs to solder, or some new information from some hacker about the fact that you can now infiltrate a computer via electric circuits or an aquarium thermometer. It seems they are hammering against concrete here. So to speak. With a bit of encryption against almost all governments of the world, all intelligence services.

“Cute.” Says Hannah when she sees all the flashing devices and the little rough-and-ready soldered robots. She had followed the light, entered the factory, a visit to the neighbors, so to speak. The Friends’ distrust of Hannah lasts only a few seconds. Until they notice that Hannah doesn’t exhibit the intellectual capacity for an espionage job. That she’s a user. And with that the group’s interest is extinguished, the attention span stretched excessively. It’s back to staring at computers.

The Friends had once believed they’d win. That their numbers would continue to increase. The cool new youth movement. Though they hadn’t considered the fact that nerds don’t wear erotic clothing or that the masses had no clue about technology or politics. You can’t dance to technology or politics. The Friends grew less numerous rather than more. Their people disappeared more and more often. Into prisons or mental health facilities. Too much information isn’t good for the human brain. They know that the so-called internet isn’t just a place where people watch cat porn and search for travel deals. They know that everything is online. Electrical infrastructure, traffic controls, stock markets, world trade, trains, life. And that all life ends when systems are attacked. Or when raw materials for the manufacture of computers are no longer available. They know that there are wars over these raw materials. That they are called wars against terror. They know that people are manipulated online, that people are monitored. At all times. That their voices and bodies and mails are faked, that lawsuits are brought and that malcontents are eliminated. It is serious. It always had been, but in the past it hadn’t been life-threatening. When they fought against intelligence services. They’d done incredible things and celebrated online. Leaked secret service data banks, hacked the fingerprint scanner of a smartphone manufacturer, proved that every five minutes access was granted or an arrest was made based on glitches in algorithms. Right, and so forth. They had believed they were the next revolution. And now.

They sit here. In this shitty factory. And don’t know what to do next.