“Come on,” says

DON

She pulls Karen along behind her, whose face is paler than usual, and usually she is very, very pale. Karen looks as if she’s asleep. And dreaming. Dreams are a neglected arena for the children. Other than imagining themselves as grime stars (Jet, Rolly, Brilli, Bling), hardly any pleasurable experiences occur to them that they might lose themselves thinking about. What are they supposed to dream about? World peace, ecologically sustainable housing, functional sewers, or saving the earth’s climate? Nobody knows what the matter is with the climate, which had earlier been constantly used as a threat in various scenarios. Nobody had been interested. Warmer is better. Now it’s even warmer, and it rains more often, and the water can’t soak into the ground because it’s too parched, soon millions of people in distant parts of the world will disappear. Or want to. To go to nicer areas. So far, so good.

In the park, the first few homeless people are setting up to sleep for the night, or at least until anxious citizens chase them off. Don and Karen walk through the masses of people who are moving along the streets in order to enjoy their lives. Yay, hurrah, enjoying life. Going out to eat in the city, a little celebration of daily life. Come on, let’s indulge ourselves. Come on, we’ll run into other people like us, people in our social strata, who are in a position to partake in a tasty pad thai with organic bean sprouts for £6.70, who can afford to have people, in this case a cook and waiter, work for them. The slight excitement at being able to decide between rewarding and penalizing. About rating the waiter, which follows after payment occurs. “Would you be so kind as to rate me?” How good that sounds, that submissive tone and the fear in his voice, something they the guests recognize in themselves, as they, too, are all rated at their jobs.

Don and Karen haven’t talked to each other. Don hasn’t said that it is more and more unpleasant to stay in the city with nonpink skin. Karen hasn’t said that she plans to sterilize all men. They don’t talk, they walk. Slowly. Because running or other hectic motions lead to alarm and the dispatching of drones. Or strike forces. Deep breaths, movements. Hoods pulled down over their faces, they stumble over one of those moronic delivery robots,

Which, instead of the

COURIER

HEALTH CONDITIONS: varicella zoster virus, spleen problems, HIV

SEXUALITY: heterosexual

QUIRKS: crying fits when looking at wet dogs

FAMILY STATUS: very much alone

HOBBIES: lying about

Distribute Alibaba’s wonderful wares these days. The tons of shoddy rubbish made in Bangladesh and the Eastern Bloc, you know how it is, the stuff people would virtually go insane without.

XIANG MAI