“This is the programmer,” says Thome, “I forgot that we still—doesn’t matter.” Thome thinks he’ll fire the programmer. Or push him out the window, but first he’ll make canapés. “I’ll make a few canapés,” says Thome, leaving the redhead behind with Peter. The programmer stands awkwardly in the room, looks around, looks at a porcelain dog. What an incredibly daft porcelain dog; why do people put that sort of shit in their flats, what would make them do that? Why do they put side tables with tablecloths in their flats and books that they will never read on coffee tables, in order to show that they’re capable of placing a fucking book on a table? “I’ve built myself a machine that irons my trousers and brings them to me.” Says the programmer to the wall. “Amazing,” says Peter.

“Indeed.” Says the programmer. “I have a brain extension.” Peter says nothing.

“Here, look, a chip, in my head.” This ageless person, utterly devoid of gender traits, who could as well have been a giant infant or mummified, displays a shaved spot in his thinning hair. Peter says nothing. The programmer doesn’t notice; he has an unpleasant lack of timidity. He’s one of those people who became powerful too quickly but who mistrusts power and must constantly try to increase his own sense of worth with stuff that in earlier times might have been compared to engineering expertise. A technician with mathematical abilities, lucky enough to live at a time when the middle class was being replaced. The old middle class will be rolled into the category of societal parasite, the parasites will die off, and the programmer will live as comfortably as a middle manager at an insurance company would have in the past. He’ll mortgage a flat where previously a middle manager at an insurance company or perhaps a doctor’s assistant or architect had lived but who now lives in social housing and is old. He’ll buy a second electric vehicle for his spouse. In place of unattractive men before him, this unattractive person will create the world in his image, which means: it will become even more unaesthetic and middling. “So, right, here, I’ll show you the last thing I masterminded the programming of.” Says the programmer.

“Masterminded?” asks Peter.

Brief pause. “Yes,” says the programmer.

The programmer pulls his laptop from his rucksack; a paranoid programmer would never take so much as a step without his laptop, the NSA, you know, the Trojan whatever. He squats in front of Peter and shows him the website of a political party.