Long strides, somewhat uncoordinated. These are people at the top. Who, thanks to cybernetics, have managed to offer the people a better life online than they would ever have offline. Who have contrived to replace the old globe-spanning 1.0 monster corporations with new globe-spanning empires. The ones who had rethought every field. Mobility, the finance sector, telecommunications, entertainment, trade, agriculture—come up with something. Come up with a sector that hasn’t been turned on its heads by these lads here.

Why?

Because they can.

Cheers.

A moment of silence.

On screens out in the street, adverts for a weekend in Ireland. Smiling people in front of herds of sheep, cliffs, blue skies.

It’s been ages since I’ve seen any animals, thinks Thome. Where are they, actually?

Smoothies are being tipped back. At the moment, Tasmanian pepper with spinach is the in thing. The blockchain bitches have withdrawn to a corner. From afar they seem as if they are already dead. They had at some point worked on a digital currency that was supposed to make the banking system superfluous. Cryptocurrencies had been the revolutionary tool a few years prior. Ethereum, Bitcoin, Ripple, Litecoin, kiss my ass—Thome had already forgotten all of their names, just as their democratizing concept had been forgotten. These days so-called alternative currency was just the currency and under the control of financial institutions. Lucky them.

As mentioned. Everything new, but somehow also

Well, you know.

Lolling about the café’s only seating area—

De Sede, naturally—

Are the AI aces. A couple of professors and their coder boys. The rest of the men stand at a distance from the gods of IT. AI is the thing of world domination. Whoever understands AI

EX 2279

>++++++++++

[>+++++++++>++++++++>+++++++><<<<-]

>—>++++>>

<<<<

>.>.>.

)

Has found the Holy Grail. Business analysts calculate that even in the most conservative scenario AI will account for 14 percent of global economic activity. Ignoring exponential growth, that means: $15.7 quintillion. Jesus, mate. Respect. Create brains that develop further on their own. It’s better than sex. When it’s not possible to further improve the human brain, why not a new start by non-fleshly means?

In the back there, by the toilets—the women’s bathroom was removed last year for lack of women; the lesbians can piss in the urinals—sits a man who as a sign of his defeat had SpongeBob tattooed on his face a few years back. Embarrassing story. His startup was one of the first to have worked with brain implants. They promised to push IQs to dizzying heights. But then there were deaths. The cortex is a delicate flower. No hard feelings.