Can think about. How long is this all supposed to last? Strange thought for a fifteen-year-old, a member of the merciful age group that assumes everything is eternal, right?

Karen cowers within sight of the factory and is too much for herself. Her thin arms wrapped around her thin legs, white hair shooting up to the sky. Karen looks as if she has just landed. From somewhere else, fallen from Musk’s car, which is careening around as space junk. Her face glows, it’s a child’s face on a stretched-out alien body. Karen rocks back and forth and looks over at the fire. There the others sit, they’re hopelessly far away, on an island of normality. She hears their laughs, their low voices, they’re trying to rap. It won’t amount to anything. Karen tries to breathe but it’s difficult. At least once a day she falls into a certain state. She’s developed such intense fear of this state that she tries to take shallow breaths and move slowly because she doesn’t know what sets it off. It always starts with shooting pain in her abdomen. Like she’s survived an operation where they removed all her innards and her body is remembering it. After that comes despair and rage. Karen is furious. Rage is her second name. She stares into the half-darkness that reigns over the city. Shite area. Even by British standards the immediate environs here are breathtakingly ugly. Old barrels, old corrugated metal and chain-link fencing, rubble, scrap metal, factory runoff ponds, the empty streets—what the fuck is wrong with the world? Is there nowhere beautiful? Or warm? Is there nowhere with people in normal relationships? Where people pass pastries and run their hands over each other’s heads? Karen knows about the power of endorphins. She has experienced it. So much hate now surges through Karen that she has to stand up, because she’s afraid she’ll explode otherwise. Karen knows that the cause of her fucked-up life is to be found within her. She doesn’t want to grant anyone else the power to have caused her pain. She is to blame. She was weak the day she let her brothers beat and humiliate her. The day she fell in love. She doesn’t remember individual people, individual situations, she remembers her rage at being female.

A hand is placed on Karen’s shoulder.

She screams. Screams and cannot stop screaming.

You maggots.

Yells

HANNAH

As she stares at the noodles. Noodles. Every day noodles. Young people, practically still children, love noodles. But not every day. Noodles every day until that horrid green stuff outside is ready to be picked. Until they come into some money again, which is increasingly difficult because cash is accepted in barely any shops anymore and cards are disappearing as well. Replaced by the ever-so-practical chips implanted in hands. More and more shops function exclusively with facial recognition. But—