Waiting outside is

DON

In that light, which occurs only in areas near the ocean, creamy, pale blue—pink.

After the outbreak of violence which, unfortunately, she’d been at the center of, Don is in shock, as if she’d survived an accident and is now standing on the street, in front of her the wreckage of her convertible. Nice cue, thinks god. A few Russians glide past in an electric sports car with the top down. Nobody at the wheel. Probably for the best because they’re drunk. Bad Eurotrash music coming out of the giant speakers. The Russians laugh, pass a bottle around, and hold their arms up in the air, a move they probably picked up in the primitive music videos that people like them enjoy. They’re all wearing designer combat clothes. Camo with golden trim. It’s the thing of the moment. Uniforms. Fatigues, gas masks. But ironic. With gold. People love it. They want to survive. Want to look as if they’ve been to battle. But nobody knows what they should fight against. Everything’s calm, after all. The Great Replacement—whereby whites were to have been displaced by Arabs—hadn’t happened. If anything Europe had witnessed an increase in Chinese people buying up properties in so-called prime locations. The Russians, too, are barely noticeable on the street anymore. Karen’s eyes follow the people living out their own promo film clips. The others are still not happy.

The city is full of tense people for whom the basic income hasn’t provided genuine peace. It just isn’t enough. The money just isn’t sufficient, even though the official numbers are so brilliant. Thanks to the basic income there’s no more unemployment, for instance. Thanks to minijobbers and job-hoppers and minicontracts and temp work and

JOB NOMADS

HOBBIES: gaming, making videos of themselves, being free

HEALTH CONDITIONS: bad teeth, sleep deprivation, trouble concentrating

POLITICAL TENDENCIES: none.

Who live a truly free life. Well, kind of. And who are constantly being visited by BBC camera teams. Used to be. Before. When there were. Bye-bye.

In the Philippines, for instance. There sat young, urbane digital natives in front of rental houses, always in flip-flops, always with tattoos and beards, well, like, building websites for consultants and motivational coaches. That is, for the unemployed. And they would say: “I work hard, I’m available for my clients 24–7, but just look at this setting.” The camera pans to simple, good-hearted natives, who’ve just robbed a bank. Are there even banks in the Philippines? Perhaps they were just members of a terrorist organization. But these days the digital nomads aren’t even sitting around with terrorists in Guatemala or Malaysia but in warehouses in Leeds, gathered around a campfire, and the only things in working order are the charging stations and the server and internet. Anyone who can use a computer is doing some shit or other online. Mostly content managing or building bots that are supposed to get people to do something, when in doubt getting them to shove a poker up their own asses. It works.