Don sits with her legs spread far apart, her arms resting on them, looking at her muscles. Her hair is standing up, Don looks like a warrior. In a children’s movie. A glorious baby warrior. Inside the café, which is owned by a chain, because these days everything belongs to a chain which belongs in turn to a multinational firm, and which as a result looks like all its brother and sister cafés, the white-skinned slaves are gathered together and discussing what to do about the Black youngster sitting on a chair outside. Not consuming anything. Who poses a threat, just as most Blacks pose a threat. A thousand years from now, the chance of people not connecting their hate for each other to differences seems low. The city is waking up, the pregnant are waking up, they can’t sleep any longer, their bladders, you know how it is. Don has never seen so many pregnant people. As if every woman has been forcibly inseminated, they shimmy off with their round bellies to some remaining service industry job. They shimmy off to cut the hair of IT nerds, to massage them or prepare their food. Abortion carries a risk of up to ten years in prison. Contraceptives are no longer available. That’s good; it is greeted with approval by

HONEST MAN

FAMILY STATUS: single

HEALTH SITUATION: problems with impotence

POLITICAL TENDENCIES: conservative, well: vulgarly anxious to achieve a status he never had

“If I impregnate a woman, so that a life starts, so that something is growing there, put in her by me, in the woman’s belly, then I expect her to fulfill her duty. Feed the child, let it ripen, my mini me, that’s what I expect. And if, not facing an emergency, she decides to murder my child, and do it legally at that, then there’s something wrong with the system.” The honest man looks at his legs: they’re cracked and red. He scratches them constantly. He dreams of an amputation. Then he could fuck the tarts out of their minds with his stump.

“Right, thanks, we’ve heard enough.”

Says

MI5 PIET

“And it reminds me—