Since he’s had this job, since he’s had real power, he’s no longer interested in the platforms with which he had previously spent every waking hour. He knew nearly every member, tracked their lives, intervened, pushed a little, if that isn’t an impious word in this context, and so forth. At some stage he’ll show somebody this first successful work. Maybe Peter. Who will perhaps also become his boyfriend. “Peter, how nice that you’re interested in my place of work.” Fuck, I said that, thinks Thome. Peter says nothing. In Thome’s office—a Friso Kramer table, a beanbag in the corner, and a quote from Jared Cohen, the counterterrorism advisor to the American government: “The internet is the largest experiment involving anarchy in history.” Peter slides into the beanbag. Thome looks down at himself, his spongy stomach, his legs, with knocker knees. Normally he never thinks about his outward appearance. It doesn’t matter to Thome that his hoodie (by Gucci, you fuckers) is a bit out of place optically here. Most men in IT-heavy areas don’t wear grubby motto T-shirts anymore; they’re the elites, and have to make allowances for designer hoodies and backpacks. Somebody had started with fashion statements, and gradually a contest broke out between nearly everyone—coders, scientists, salespeople—to wear the most expensive knitwear. As if the 1980s had never happened, the former nerds now traipsed around the emphatically urban interiors of their billion-dollar firms in exquisite scarves and welt-sewn trainers, carrying embossed business cards with ironic lettering. Don’t mess with the underground, fucker. What had started out a few years ago as the new punk scene has transformed today into offices tricked out with bidets.

Thome can tamp down his nervousness only by talking nonstop. While he strides around his cavernous office. His knees, rubbing against each other, make a grinding noise. He’s come to a catharsis that suits him better than the absolute idiocy of infatuation, which is making him stutter and search for words. The technical revolution.

“The technical revolution, you complete idiots who don’t get what is happening and where. Yeah, well, where then? It is happening here. In my head.” Thome looks at himself reflected in the window. What a head on his shoulders. The head of a man of action. Super brain.