The bodycam looks like a pair of glasses. Google Glass, the great flop of Intel Glass, and Amazon Glass. Body Glass allows uninterrupted access to the social behavior of the wearer. No fistfights, no crossing the street on red, friendly greetings, goodwill in the neighborhood.

Hang on

THE PROGRAMMER

Adds: “And first and foremost access into the areas not covered by conventional surveillance tools. Like alcohol consumption, an unusually high use of vulgar language, racist statements, the persistent scratching of body parts, lies, antisocial behavior in cellar spaces.”

And

BODYCAM MAN

Is excited about the new possibilities to turn his behavior into cash. His behavior, which was always impeccable and still is to this day. He had allowed himself one mistake, luckily before the introduction of the point system. A mistake that to this day he can’t recognize as one.

The bodycam man is a forensic architect. Was. With the help of 3-D models and VR animation he investigated the causes of construction failures and fire damage. In recent years there had been increasing numbers of fires in social housing. Brutalist blocks with 267 units, high-rises with 400 units, burned down just like that.

The bodycam man figured out that all the evidence pointed toward arson. Since in the wake of the fires the buildings were invariably razed and condo buildings were then built in their place, it was logical to examine the relationship of the owners more closely.

In the course of his research the bodycam man found for instance a real estate firm that had acquired 357 social housing facilities around the country. Of them, forty-three had been condemned because of fire and another twenty-one because of collapsed roofs or load-bearing walls. It must be, well, a coincidence, thought the bodycam man, but it emerged that the owners had realized a few cost savings in the run-up to the events. The bodycam man wrote to the housing authority, to the buildings department, to the House of Lords, the prime minister, the mayor—and subsequently lost his job.

Today, in his new life, he runs every morning, confronted with vacant luxury buildings standing around as if bored.

Speaking of which. A new business idea hit him upon beholding his new living situation. It’s important to know that he lives in a pipe. Tube housing was a concept to combat the housing crisis that he had also worked on during his studies. Nine-square-meter apartments inside concrete water pipes, fitted with everything a person needed to live: mini kitchen, shower, bed. Plexiglas on the sides. At first the tubes were installed only beneath motorway bridges and on the edges of industrial areas. Later they were stacked—up to twenty meters high—on other financially uninteresting expanses. The bodycam man’s tube lay next to a wastewater treatment plant. At night his home looked like a beehive. With one in each honeycomb.

One person, that is, of course.