They stand in the streets. The tourists. In front of buildings where every flat cost at least £30 million, with ten subterranean levels where the Chinese store their Ferraris or stash their whores. Time and again a street somewhere in the city center collapses, bringing down a building with it. Structural integrity, you know how it goes.

Speaking of which—

Don has never traveled. But she has Google Street View. Had. Google had explored every last corner of the earth, mapped it, that’s the kind of thing you do only if you want to own it. You have to have an overview of the inventory.

Don could always imagine exactly what it would be like elsewhere. And what she would do there. On those unspeakably ugly beaches in Spain, what are you supposed to do there, in the sun, with a view of high-rises, surrounded by burned pink-colored people with swollen feet? You’d sit on the beach and wonder: if this is the high point of my life, there’s no reason to be present for the rest. This principle of going on holiday as a reward for a shitty life. These so-called destinations around the world whose very names used to sound out of reach. And now—thanks, Google!—you can spare yourself any effort at all. With Street View you can walk down the street in the middle of any dream destination. There are no trees, just the same buildings everywhere; they look like they’re from another millennium. In the south they’re moldy. People in little boxes. People everywhere and far too many for them to possibly be able to be happy still. But. Nobody promised that, the whole happiness thing.

A new breaking report on the screen. A drunken couple have killed their two children, the shot lingers on the corpses. Baby children. Very small.

Then back to the father. Unpleasant face,

Right

BERTA AND HENRY’S

SOCIAL CONDUCT: don’t separate recycling. no exercise. eat poorly

FEAR: losing each other

HEALTH STATUS: not available

No karma points, you fuckers

fate is perfectly suited to a social drama, the kind that would certainly win a prize at a film festival. People would emerge from screenings full of concern. A couple women would have tears in their eyes.

Berta and Henry had a flat in Birmingham, where they led a bog-standard lower-middle-class life. The two children were talented, both could already read and write at four years old, when

Berta was diagnosed with cancer. That was at exactly the moment when some areas of health care that had previously been free were privatized. For some time now, the costs of unusually expensive care must be borne by the insured, unless they had bought supplemental insurance, which nobody did, because—not important. Right. So they tried to cover the costs with crowdfunding. Henry sat next to his wife on the sofa, the children in clean clothing beside them.