The startup slaves have cool job titles that always include the word manager, and in the evening they play ball with their coworkers, always good to be seen doing that. Nine out of ten startups go bankrupt after a year. In which case the job is gone. The rest succeed. And are sold to China. Job gone. But as long as you have the job, you want to look good. They come in during lunch and leave the practice with cheap muscle or breast implants from India, Botox from Russia, and whatever other cheap shit Dr. Brown can procure from around the world. Dr. Brown has also started giving abortions since they’ve been made illegal, and since you now have to pay for the pill yourself and reproductive decisions are in the hands of the state. Women disappear out the back door afterwards. Some of them take their aborted fetuses with them. Others have a little something done after the abortion. “This is just for me, so I feel good.” They leave the practice with the hope of looking like everyone else. And thereby to be invisible. Please, please, if they just were part of the huge mass of identical-looking assholes, perhaps they’d be spared the downfall. They can pay in installments. They can pad their asses, have fat sucked out, have fake six-pack muscles put under the skin of their stomachs, they can be let straight back out onto the street afterwards where with their artificial stomach muscles they can duke it out with the little metal boxes that take away their jobs. Will. Dr. Brown knew the world pre-internet. It was unfair, it was dark and boring, but more comfortable. People sat in front of their buildings and—in the absence of other excitement or Netflix—watched cars go by. They spoke to each other. And when you killed someone, because back then the right existed to kill someone, it was a personal, almost loving act. Today that, too, is taken care of by machines. Killing.

“Pardon me, you’re Dr. Brown?”

Dr. Brown looks up; in front of him is a peculiar person. Giant, scrawny, with high cheekbones, slanted eyes that glow red in the dark, white hair, and a giant mouth.

“What can I do for you?” answers Dr. Brown angrily, because the injections in his penis are doing their job. Dr. Brown clears his throat.

“Nothing,” says the white ghost, not in a friendly way, and walks with long strides toward the darkness of the park.

Dr. Brown thinks he hears snickers. He watches the thing go and wonders what is off about the person. Some body part isn’t right. As if the head were attached between the legs. Brown looks at the time. He heads for his practice.

And

KAREN

Follows him into the courtyard of a circular social housing block situated on a street of affluent houses. It’ll soon be on fire.