Tomorrow this hall will be given over to its natural course of deterioration. Mud will encroach on the ground floor, the roof will collapse, the plaster will rot, and in a hundred years this area will probably be part of the ocean. Then outside it will be as silent as it is inside so many citizens since the internet started to be censored. Most web pages have disappeared. The search engines deliver selective results. Better that way. Only nerds still see all the disturbing news of the world. The wars, unrest, Mars landings, corruption, polluted oceans, melting icebergs, all the news that used to arrive by the second and shut down their brains, make them so angry and overwhelmed that many hit upon the simplest solutions. The misery of the world is the fault of chemtrails. Or the Jews. Or the flat earth. Now it’s better. It’s beneficial that people are provided exclusively with information from their own surroundings, street closures, increases in debt costs, increases in insurance premiums, but also so many niceties.

“I’m in,” yells one of the two boys Don always mixes up because they look like every boy sitting at a computer. Something about T-shirts and a particular face. Don doesn’t care at all what silly system the children here have just hacked into in order to show that they can. She looks at the crates, the youths, and

“Damn it,

What’s going on now?”

Asks

PETER’S MOTHER

In the now darkened kitchen area, parentheses 120 square meters. The blinds, parentheses metal, parentheses burglar proof, close. “Are you using the remote again, you idiot?” Calls Peter’s mother to the Russian, forgetting that he cannot answer.

THE RUSSIAN

Hears nothing. No ears and all. The worst part is the phantom pain. The brain constantly sends signals to the body: speech, optic, taste centers, limbs, digestive system, bowel movement. Thousands per second, without a body being there to implement the impulses and commands. It makes you crazy. The brain sees nothing, hears nothing, it just is. Like in a dream, dependent on memories. On thoughts. Unfortunately not even on dreams, because the brain doesn’t sleep. It is. It thinks about things like food, springtime, outings, Netflix, but it can’t do anything about it, can’t put anything in motion, nothing more than be and think. Which perhaps might be of concern if the brain were to belong to an astrophysicist and could develop a formula but would then burst because it couldn’t write down the formula. But. It’s just the Russian. Every day he thinks of some random shit from his life, though unfortunately he doesn’t know it is day. Or night. He remembers movies, weather, birds, caresses, mother, father, trains, airplanes, clothing, animals. He imagines these things. He’d love to be away.

The villa swathed in absurd darkness and silence.

It is, however, warm.

And the

EIGHT-YEAR-OLD PROSTITUTE