Open. It’s never been before. The eight-year-old prostitute is almost frightened when the heavy thing just swings open, she feels her way to the stairs. She’d counted the steps at some point. Hears nothing. Nobody there. The building door opens easily. For the first time, the girl stands in front of the door without a motorcar waiting in order to drive her somewhere, which if there was ever any doubt always involved an old man, this somewhere. The evening—or is it nighttime, or early morning?—smells clean. Across the way in the park, there’s an art fair on. Electric limousines, a helipad, you’re almost convinced you can hear champagne glasses clinking. A long line of millionaires from the IT branch and the upper class, excited spouses of oligarchs, the majority of them Chinese in absolutely inappropriate clothes—tiny dresses, sheer tiny dresses, it’s fucking 14 degrees outside—in front of a huge tent, waiting to be able to invest a few million in art. The girl has no idea about the world that is supposed to exist beyond her field of view. She places a foot on the entry stairs. The eight-year-old prostitute looks at her bare feet, she glances around. Nothing connects her to any part of the outside world. Like animals who’d grown up in testing facilities, she no longer knew what she would do, if she went down the street now, crossed the street there, where she sees cars, cafés, people. She could stand there, look into the cafés, let herself get hit by a car, and sleep in a concrete tube at night. Slowly the girl turns around. Goes back into the house. Closes the door.

“Goodbye, old life”

Yell

THE FRIENDS

They head into the city. They’ll find proper careers at IT firms. Will work for intelligence agencies, study, take up their spot in the new center of society. But they don’t know that yet, on the night they head into the city, looking somewhat sadly at the factory building, which gets smaller and smaller. Then they leave the wasteland behind them and with it their youth.

“We can do it,”

Says

EX 2279

In billions of layers.

Shut down CERN.

Shut off state Trojan horses and keystroke loggers.

Shut down or reprogram manipulative smart toys and virtual assistants.

L3, Finmeccanica, United Technologies, Airbus Group, General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Thyssenkrupp, Diehl, and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Norinco—destroy

Shut down Dungeness B1

Shut down Hartlepool A1

Shut down Torness

Shut down Sizewell

Shut down Bradwell

Activate Thames Barrier

Shut down coal power plants worldwide. “Whoa, really? Isn’t that kind of environmentalist bullshit?”

“Yes, but—”

THE PROGRAMMER

Disconnects all the AI systems he can reach from the electrical grid. He reaches—a lot.

A brief flicker.

And then

THE LIGHTS

Are on again.