There were a few losers. They’d either been unlucky or hadn’t tried hard enough to succeed. Everyone could make something of their life. As long as they wanted to. Brilliant.

They extracted fossil fuels. Natural gas and oil were extracted from the seabed with hydraulic fracking. Stuxnet—the computer virus—slowed down the Iranian nuclear program. Blockchain, which would render banks redundant, was invented. As was the e-bomb. The world was reorganized, the West fought to retain its importance. In the East, China, Russia, Japan, and Korea united to redefine markets.

Voice recognition was introduced for computers. AI wasn’t yet a mainstream topic. People had mobile phones. They took pictures of themselves. They had things to do. Nonstop.

This is the story of

DON

THREAT POTENTIAL: high

ETHNICITY: indistinct shades of nonwhite

INTERESTS: grime music, karate, sweets

SEXUALITY: probable homosexual

SOCIAL CONDUCT: unsocial

FAMILIAL CONNECTIONS: 1 brother, 1 mother, father—occasionally, but mostly not

It begins in Rochdale.

Fucking Rochdale. A place that needed to be preserved and put on display in a museum as a warning about thoughtless development. A brass plaque: “This is how people live in the new millennium if they are not suitable to market conditions.”

A catchment basin for the superfluous. A pool of non–genetically modified rejects.

So, right, Rochdale. A shithole near Manchester. Known for the consistency of its weather. Bad, that is. Rochdale, according to evaluations, had already been the most depressing city in the United Kingdom for five years running. A municipal embodiment of brain damage is definitely not conducive to consumption, so the city had found itself in a fight for its very existence. For decades. Like thousands of cities in the Western world that all resembled each other: brick buildings, crumbling streets and a derelict cinema, shuttered post offices, shuttered supermarkets. Nobody needs those things anymore, because it’s the internet era. You can stream any film. And buy all essential foodstuffs, meaning margarine and white bread. Delivered in cardboard boxes. Though the residents might as well have sprinkled wallpaper with salt and devoured that.