TV off. The silence of the hall interrupted by the grunts of the sleeping children, by the rain outside, so quiet and nebulous that it could just as well be fog that is fraying. Inside it’s damp and cold. It smells of dirty laundry and noodles.

Karen rarely thinks about the weather. It’s just there. Like her. She doesn’t waste any mental energy on this circumstance. What good does it do anyone to act self-important? To spend quality time with yourself, to analyze yourself, to meditate, to be mindful and to pretend to be the center of the universe, except for being constantly aggressive because the world doesn’t show you any respect.

Karen gets up and goes outside. In the dampness she mutters the names of the Big Sixteen.

“Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Charles Koch, David Koch, Michael Bloomberg, Bernard Arnault, Larry Page, Sheldon Adelson, Li Ka-shing, Wang Jianlin, Sergey Brin, Carlos Slim Helú, Amancio Ortega.”

Women are the new China, Karen had read. Not in her mind. She’s the new Hiroshima.

Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison.

Karen can’t sleep. She needs to move, like a sleepwalker, a somnambulist, and she thinks about the richest people in the world. No women. No Blacks. No albinos. Not even a fucking albino. No point. Karen has declared men the root of all evil in the world. Not a particularly original thought. Karen has gone mad.

She stumbles across the wasteland and ends up standing in an old brewery she recently discovered. The viruses she cultured in the lab are swimming in the old vats. “Multiply,” she’d whispered. And behold—

100 trillion per milliliter of drinking water. All will be well. Karen stands in front of the vats, she looks at the sky. There are even stars tonight after the rain.

It’s cold.

In the freezer

Where

DON’S BROTHER

Is lying, thinking about his life. He thinks of his mother. He thinks about what it was like to be able to sit around.

It wasn’t bad. This sitting.

In the shelter there’d been a window you could open and close and look out; that is

No longer possible.