Time to get going. Out. The world awaits. Before the sun rises Thome is engrossed in VR, always in the same scenario, thanks to his imaginary Asperger’s, which craves repetition. He is sitting on the beach. Then—sunrise over the bay of Khao Lak. He always gets goose bumps as a light breeze blows in with the sun. And always when the goose bumps set in, an unbelievably handsome boy turns up, whose genitals are barely hidden by a sarong. Just the bell end peaks cautiously out. Thome starts to nuzzle the boy. What an absurd word—earlier it was exactly at this point, at this word, that a wonderful stiffening took place. No longer. Perhaps he needs to take his fantasies further, Thome thinks, but the alteration of habits causes just the sort of panic that he’d read about concerning his clinical picture. Following the failed erection Thome leaves the virtual world in order to take his hot-and-cold contrast shower.

Soon he’ll look for a new flat. Far from his parental villa and so forth. But—

At the moment there are things to do.

Silicon Roundabout buzzes with viral lust for life. Thome strides happily from the subterranean garage on New Oxford Street, runs into a colleague who looks like Thome. Somehow.

“The world consists of mathematics,”

Says Thome.

“And violence,” answers the young, lithe man, who works at one of the metadata analysis firms, which officially go bankrupt nearly every month only to reopen under a different name. The two men give each other friendly punches to their sides. Too hard. They knock the wind out of each other, then they trot off, full of strength and grace like untamed wild horses. Snorting, they enter the café, which everyone just calls “the café.” Every morning, the under-forty, white, male future of the nation meets up here. Many with initial signs of hair loss, many with rucksacks and sneakers. Unathletic young men.

Like

THOME

Who sucks in his gut in the morning. He gets a smoothie at the bar and in so doing deftly slips past two women. Blockchain bitches. Unimportant. Bam, you’ll just have to wait, you little butch dykes. The women don’t protest; the constant company of men has left them listless and tired, as if the testosterone has crept into them and benumbed something in their brains. All the men in the room move in a similar way: arms held away from their bodies as if huge muscles are preventing them getting closer. Chins held high. All have attention deficit syndrome. Another way of saying: we stare at various screens until four in the morning, program, chat on the side, and watch the stock price indexes. It makes us agitated.