Nearly all landed at National Security. Because that’s where the money is, the super servers, the research, the power. Fuck tinkering on homemade servers. Fuck pizza.

The National Security people have come up with the most brilliant inventions. Keyloggers, which transmit every keystroke from a keyboard. The Dumbo project, voting manipulations about which they’re still proud.

Yeah, great.

And, hey, who do we have here? Pressed against the wall in genuinely cheap clothing rather than expensive clothing made to look cheap?

The virtual reality nutters, who are building a world where you can engage people whose jobs have been outsourced. It’s something nobody can afford or wishes to, these millions who are busy keeping busy. Just so they can go home in the evening and slide into their slippers with the trite feeling of having accomplished something. Conservative estimates put the number at 20 million nationally who are kept from committing suicide with absolute nonsense. Even now they stream to firms where they sit at computers and move around numbers that mean nothing at all. Insurance risk assessments, just to offer one of the stupidest examples. Consultants, bank administrators, all these schemes to placate people, the first of the cutback measures were the one-pound jobs. Work on demand. The attempt was aborted. Waiting for a job was not something people wanted to do. They wanted to be important, to justify the frivolous accident of their existence with an even more idiotic job. Virtually nobody is equipped to just be. Aside from millionaires, nobody is made that way, among the dull masses they want to earn an honest living, among the stupid masses they want to be able to offer a proud answer to the question of what they do.

“The smell, the smell is still missing.”—“Yes, but if you atomize the scent.”—“No, that’s not the same.” Exactly. VR nutters among themselves. Nobody takes the Matrix shit seriously. Keyboards that hover in the air, for meetings and virtual operations, the ability to hang out in the same room as holograms, that’s the kind of stuff that made money. Giving people a sense of purpose without being able to skim a lot of money off them? Hard to see the point.

And there at the window stands a cloud architect. The cloud, or in other words, the Upload-your-data-here-you-idiot-so-we-can-access-all-of-it-at-once. Next to him, standing around with utter arrogance, are the half-wits who run the system of karma points, citizen points, or, if you will, idiot points. All paid by people like Thome’s father. Cheers, lads. Great job.