Stare at their computers. MI6 is out. MI5 gone from the net. The baby hackers sit at their computers; they’re not doing anything, they just watch the AI at work. Watching doesn’t make them euphoric. They’ve lost hope. It’s dark in the room, no fire in the stove, no pizza in the kitchen. It is uncomfortable for the no-longer-children to look at each other. The failure of their action is just the last of many attempts to save the world in that young-people-changing-the-world way. Earlier they had demonstrated. Before that was banned. Before they started firing live ammunition at demonstrators. They had warned people again and again, online. About burka bans, which were only devised to hinder masking that can impede the work of biometrical recognition services. About the shutdown of child porn websites, which just served as cover for all sorts of other shutdowns. About electronic ankle bracelets for people deemed potential threats, about electronic voting, about the espionage units of private industry, which could surveil customers under suspicion into the farthest corners of their flats—all the laws that had in recent years been passed, the buildup of the private army into a paramilitary force owned by capitalists, surveillance, basic income, everything led to one goal, which had now nearly been reached. A paralyzed, happy, brainless populace. Everything the youths had believed, that is, changing the world, forming it in their image, humanism, justice, privacy, and all of that, has yielded to the certainty that they—cannot change a thing.

The hackers sit at their computers. They goof around. They talk to each other. They take pills. They take fucking pills, because their bodies no longer produce endorphins, their bodies have become fatigued and flighty. They have nearly deciphered EX 2279’s language code.

“Splendid,”

Says

THOME’S FATHER

To his friends.

Having just climbed out of the helicopter, they start knocking back drinks again. Falkland Palace. A charming estate that found its way into the possession of Thome’s father and his comrades some time ago. Crisis loves a quick investment. What crisis? Doesn’t matter. Before or after. They sit here in the largely unheated ruins. Tradition calls for blue-frozen ankles. Thome’s father hasn’t heard anything from his alluring, pregnant wife for two days, it occurs to him apropos of nothing. For a while now he hasn’t been able to get an erection, even with the use of pills. Without the theoretical need to discharge himself inside the Russian, Thome’s father cannot think of what could possibly warrant a relationship with her.