Wants to go home. She wants a different life. Wherein she earns a doctoral degree and becomes the head of a research institute. She wants to stand on the balcony of an overpriced flat on Westbourne Grove, listen to a few artificial birds in the morning before she heads for the lab. She no longer has any desire for this adventure-playground existence. For hunting criminals and eating noodles. She’s a bit bored—no, very bored—of the others. She’s even more bored since they buried their devices. It is a temporary distraction to audit classes at the university, to lug home books from the library. Still, it won’t lead to anything. But that’s another story. The current story is that Karen is still feeling the effects of LSD, leaning against a shopwindow. A new VR space is going to be opened here. Of course, yet another VR space. The city is being flooded with them. It doesn’t matter.

To the

CITY

What people do on this blurred surface. You know, the people who get tattooed with the logos of their one-hour employers as a sign of their loyalty. Doesn’t matter who owns the city, who removes the rubbish, which drones film what, or that the trains drive themselves. The city is smart, hurray, we have a smart city. The rubbish is automatically removed, the refrigerators are filled with the help of delivery robots, the trees are watered automatically, pollution is quantified, motorcars are led to available parking spots, the blinds are closed, opened, dog shit is disposed of by robots, bicycles are charged while riding. Drones surveil drones, always ready to shoot each other if one of them strays into the flight paths of police helicopters; the police drones now have grapple arms and are weaponized. Code strings determine right and wrong, threat potential and payouts, loans and the valuation of homes, health risks and cancer diagnoses. Is chemotherapy more profitable or are the cost benefits better if a life is just allowed to fade away? Who gets what job, who will be fired, who gets custody of children, which train lines are profitable, which buildings must be razed, where should new buildings be built, whose election to head up the government shall we engineer? Transactions, corporate direction, acquisitions. Artificial intelligence, which learns ever more quickly, learns on its own, teaches itself things, networks itself, which in a giant space without oversight collects information, evaluates it, tries to impose order on the world, stockpiles emergency generators, repairs faulty nuclear power plants, protects aircraft from hacker attacks, watches over the world like a friendly parent.

A mother

Is something everyone should have, thinks

KAREN