Stands in front of the doctor’s body. Well mashed. He thinks and breaks out in a fit of laughter that despite the term’s misogynist connotations is best described as “hysterical.” Now, it’s not every day you strike somebody on the head so hard that part of his brain is laid bare. Arthur’s wife is anesthetized. He looks with bewilderment into her open vagina. He’s in shock. He’s going to be a father. His wife won’t abort the child. He’s going to be a father, and everything will be sorted again. He starts to sing. His wife will not leave him. She wanted to leave him. That is, a few days before she had said she could no longer stand him. But you should know.

That Arthur can’t stand himself, either. Ever since Scriptbox technology started to choose screenplays, that is for two years now, he hasn’t been able to sell a single play or screenplay. At first he had still thought: Well, guess I missed the mark. You should know that Arthur is in his mid-forties and for twenty years had been able to more or less live off his screenplays and theater pieces. The plays ran successfully in off–West End venues. The screenplays were a bit more fraught. Up to thirty-two rewrites for independent films. But he was satisfied. He was an artist. Now he receives a basic income. The Scriptbox algorithm has saved every theater piece and film screenplay that’s ever been produced, all of which are analyzed for profitability and risk, and the algorithm then gauges the prospects for success of new works. That is, based on what sentences and other elements appear in successful works. If little or none of that appears in a new work, the piece doesn’t have mass appeal. Bye-bye.