“Old man,” Thome answered, “old man, if you knew what others think of you, you’d have been dead for ten years already. They see you with liver spots on your hands and your reptilian neck, they see a feeble, old man who can’t even scare people with his money, who even with all his contacts can’t get respect from younger, stronger, more potent—well, okay, maybe not potent—men. You’re not a wise thinker or a figure who commands respect. You’re a cynical upper-class idiot of middling intelligence, the type there are dozens of. You’ve wasted all your chances. You’ve shot animals, played around with your cock, fornicated with minors, and always been consumed by thoughts of those who have more than you. More power, more money, more potency. And you’ll leave this earth consumed. Unhappy. You fucking loser.”

Thome had given this speech in his head. Then shot.

The recoil, brains on the wall. His father gurgles out of the hole in his head. That is, producing bubbles.

Thome watches the remains dying. There lies the illusion of his family. His last relative. There lies his life, all the moments that he never had with this father and that now he never will have. No tenderness, no chumminess, no football matches, no coming out. Now he is definitively on his own. Thome’s father gurgles, judders, whistles, and then it is quiet, and in a flash everything that had bothered him has disappeared. There’s just carbon.

The room gets colder.

Only—

Thome is now alone in the world. He takes his father to the cellar, puts him into the vat in fluid that used to be his last love.

Then he makes his way to his brilliant open-space office building, where the future will be created. By people with vision, like the

Fucking

PROGRAMMER

Who stands at the window, waiting for Thome. The rent boy Thome consorts with had delivered some great material. Phenomenal fun. The programmer despises Thome. He’s not one of them. Not a hacker, not someone who as a child unscrewed and opened up his devices, no curiosity, no vision, just money. Money is utterly uninteresting in the world where the programmer feels at home. He could divert a few million to his accounts tomorrow if he wanted to. But what for? What would he do with the money? Money isn’t real. Code is real. The programmer is very pleased with developments in the country of late. It appears the island is transforming back to a closed system, a tribal homeland. One of his colleagues just developed a perfect version of the denunciation app with which every citizen can report violations of the karma code. Denounce. The neighbor for parking illegally, a colleague for playing music too loud. Or illuminating his house too obsessively. But back to now. Below, Thome appears on the street corner.

Now the fun starts.

This is going to be hilarious.