Hannah, Don, and Karen are, they’re maintaining a neighborly relationship and at the moment are crafting latex masks that biometric cameras can’t. Well, you know. They look pretty stupid. The Friends hunch over their devices, looking for a way to get around the power of the chips, because soon it will be impossible to get by without them if you want to participate in society in any way other than sitting in a field grilling rat meat. The Tor browser has been blocked, various activists’ pages have been blocked, next some AI will break the encryption of their email. Before it gets to that point, a definitive blow to the system must take place. The cards are stacked against that, you want to say, as more people had taken part in demonstrations around the world in the space of ten years than had in the previous fifty. Millions had demonstrated against their elected governments, against the dismantling of everything, against rent prices which practically doubled every week, against the privatization of the last public resources. They demonstrated against everything, they’d yearned for new leadership, voted for Nazis who had promised. Well, actually nothing and that’s what happened. Now it’s quiet.

The cooling fans buzz quietly. The keyboards click, lazy conversations about the revolution. “I’m for armed resistance,” says Hannah, imagining something under that term having to do with uniforms and weapons.

“And who do you want to shoot?” asks Pavel, who comes from some country where the inhabitants wiped each other out in a civil war. The children think about following up the attack on Westminster by wiping out the City of London, the Silicon Roundabout, banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges, commodity traders, all the typical things that occur to a young anarchist. Armed resistance is set aside as unrealistic. There isn’t enough manpower for a cyber war. Founding a political party takes too long. “There’s nothing we can do.” Hannah looks around the room. The lights flicker, and perhaps these are the last people she will ever see, she thinks. If outside there’s a tidal wave coming, the polar ice caps and all that, then she’ll die here with these children. Which wouldn’t be the worst fate.

“Maybe a revolution,” says Ben.

“Exactly, a biological reboot.”

It is on this afternoon, which could also be morning, that Karen’s idea will be born.

The others are listening to music,

And

HANNAH