Believes in the system. A good system. A violent, absurd misconception has developed out there related to individuals’ own skill sets. Every pupil, every unemployed person, every complete idiot believes they are owed justice and the same life as a tech genius or a superstar. In the past people contented themselves with what they were able to earn given their abilities. A farmer was a farmer, the lord of the manor was the lord of the manor, and god watched over everyone. Amen, man. And listen, we need to give people rules and a god again. Nothing makes the majority of earth dwellers more nervous than a good, punitive hand.

Check.

The country, his country, is nearly back to an ideal condition. With a satisfying sense of order. Forget the unease, the imbalance, the absurd pressure to make his life into a shopping event and to go mad when through some mistake you can’t buy cheap plastic shit from Africa. Go mad because people of a particular religion or skin color resent others their shopping fun. In the short time of the experiment astonishing successes have already been logged. They keep themselves and the streets clean, respect the rules and schedules. The need to be more than one is, seems to have dissipated in no time. People are busy just bettering themselves. Most of them are excited about the challenge of earning positive points. It stimulates their reward system. They want to accumulate points and be better than their neighbors. The basis of capitalism. Narrowed to unthreatening parameters like parking in an orderly manner, cleaning one’s flat, the assistance one provides to fellow citizens, how loud one turns up the music at home, the environmentally friendly handling of resources. There are bonus points for lowering the heat in your flat. For showering responsibly. Owning an electric motorcar or doing without a car altogether, and meat; for doing without:

Cleaning powder, fabric softener, owning a pet, having children. Right, and so on, the catalog of rules is long and incomprehensible. Piet leans back. That’s what he would say if someone were to ask him, which doesn’t happen. Nobody asks him what he does for a living. That’s considered impolite. Impoliteness is reprimanded with a point reduction. After the Me Inc. brand was built up for years, egotism, antisocial momentum driven by the demands of the market, after mutual solidarity was trashed, ditto unions, this development has now entered the well-ordered escalation phase. The battle of man versus man—why men, actually?—has started. Piet turns toward the screen. The image quality produced by the tiny drones is astonishing. Same goes for the sound captured by systems that have been taken over.

Piet watches the little idiots with something bordering on touching interest.

RACHEL

IQ: 156

HOBBIES: Linux, Python, and all that hipster nerd nonsense

POLITICAL TENDENCIES: oppositional

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: none yet

FEARS: MI5