A woman next to Sergej taps him in the side; she winks at him. Sergej resists the urge to punch her in the face. The people are excited. There they are, on the screens! Like on TV. And all the things they know about them, it’s better than looking at a horoscope, better than getting Likes. This is not to be able to be brushed aside, to be present. In the limelight. To be reckoned with. Oh, finally to be reckoned with. In the group gathered here around the flat-screen are people who have murdered their mother, whose businesses went bust, who lick their pets. WTF, the fat guy over there deep-throats his hamster and has a very poor environmental rating. There are men present who exhibit their penises unsolicited, these days flaccid, men who beat their kids, whose hobby it is to rub themselves in excrement. Bed wetters, diaper wearers, thieves, strivers, and a few people there for whom there’s no name or data. The people look at themselves, they see what the intelligence agencies see when they look at their screens. And so it is revealed to the normal native-born citizens that old men sit around staring at screens at intelligence agencies, and listen in on telephone conversations. How sweet. People could now fully comprehend the miserableness of the total surveillance of their lives, they could think. Okay, it was just a suggestion.

Sergej glances beside him.

He sees

HANNAH

Who is looking at him. Hannah doesn’t exist. “Isn’t that a bit too private?” asks a woman. “That they know that I’m menopausal? And that I cheat?” “They know everything,” mumbles a young man. “They know that I’ve been impotent for a few weeks?” They. “Who are they?” flickers through millions of brains across the country at this memorable moment in time that will change everything. Hannah nearly forgets Sergej; she’s thinking of the Friends, she sees them before her eyes, sweating and nervous in front of their computers. Maybe it will kick off, thinks Hannah. A revolution, the people will storm the security agencies and besiege government buildings, they’ll rip the chips out of their arms with their teeth and burn their biometric passports, destroy the cameras and—“Can you watch this at home, too, this channel?” asks a woman. “I’d know everything about my neighbors.” In that instant Hannah realizes the Friends have lost.

And

SERGEJ

Stares at the woman who continues to spout off about the advantages of surveillance technology—