The scum—that is, the people—can access the city center only after extensive security controls and mostly do jobs that even a robot won’t stoop to. Mop under beds, peel potatoes, clean up vomit, disburden S&M dungeons of feces, deliver drugs or prostitutes. The villas on Thome’s private road are owned exclusively by senile patricians, one is proud of one’s degeneration here, and home ownership is often the last thing that remains. The crisis, you know the story, some crisis or other, the unbelievably bad investments, you can imagine what happens when men who consider themselves the top of the food chain take action. Peter leans against a tree, as if he’s doing a photo shoot. Though he has no idea the effect he has. It’s not going to be easy for him with his appearance, which evokes something in everyone who encounters him. Desire, hatred, envy, denial, longing—all sorts of things, but inconspicuousness is one thing he will never be granted. The guards look Peter up and down with the utter disdain of those who think they are better off. Are they wondering what minority he belongs to? Blond, yeah, sure, but he’s not one of us.

They’re stately white men, the guards. But soon they’ll be replaced by weaponized drones and robocops. Then it’ll be: “Welcome to the gutter, you morons!”

Little golf carts scurry around the private road, driven by drunken patricians who are recognizable by their pale skin, worn cashmere sweaters, and bleary alcoholic gazes. They hate rich Arabs and Russians, they hate Black, brown, and yellow people, but above all they hate the poor. They had believed that if they offshored the jobs of the underclass, sourced their crap from the third world, sold off the rest of the country to foreigners, it would all take care of itself. Then the poor, together with the empty factories, the lousy rotting social housing, the outbreaks, football and foul odors, would simply disappear. This did not come to pass. They’re still alive. Like cockroaches. And they’re increasing in number. By the hour. Coming in boats, paddling across the sea, reproducing. Somebody has to.

The guards are still staring at Peter, but before anything can burst out of them, something best described as hate, Thome turns up in his golf cart. His ears seem to waft behind him like those of a basset hound.

Nervous, sweating heavily, he drives with Peter past white villas. Each worth at least 30 million. If through a kidnapping or airplane crash a family were wiped out and one of the villas were to go up for sale, the owners’ council, parentheses male, because women don’t own anything, would advise about suitable buyers, parentheses male. Acceptable are exclusively Britons who can trace their family lineage back at least fifteen generations.