“Look, we’ve built an online party. Thome’s idea. Well. Really most of it was mine.” The programmer continues talking endless rubbish; he’d talk to a dog if it were in the room instead of Peter. It doesn’t matter to him whom he brags in front of, the point is just to be able to enhance his own esteem by describing some accomplishment. “So this party is utter democratic shite. Everyone can take part in decisions online, vote online. What do you think of the candidate for prime minister we’ve put in the race?” Peter looks at a young man. He shrugs his shoulders. “A fake,” says the programmer. “Came out well, eh? People are flocking to our page.”

“Yeah, great, a fake,” says Peter. He never knows what other people expect. Also, he doesn’t care.

“Can you access a smart flat,”

He asks

The programmer.

The perfect cue. The programmer immediately continues to talk. “You can program white noise into music clips that contains inaudible commands. The commands can then take over control of a flat, make bank transactions, lock doors, order pizzas, or summon a strike force.”

“Great,” says Peter. “It’s a place on Regent’s Park.”

The building

Where

PETER’S MOTHER

Is sitting in the window. She was just about to moisturize her hands with a lotion containing caviar extracts. That is, dead baby fish. Such is her life. Sitting in bad weather with a man she can’t stand, greasing her skin with baby corpses. Then the light flickers. And the door locks itself. There are always weird glitches here in this unbelievably modern, networked flat. Just last week the refrigerator had an entire pig delivered. A dead pig in the kitchen can throw your entire way of life into question by its appearance alone.

The Russian is meeting with yet another nerd. A Russian nerd, naturally. You know how it is, these Russian hackers, who are responsible for everything, sitting in their hoodies in Ukraine, and so forth. Right, in any event, since the diagnosis of his multibacterial antibiotic resistance, he’s hit upon the idea of trying out a beta version of a brain transfer.