When she arrives home to her flat at night, which she opens with a chip. She eats some random instant meal and stands on her terrace for a little while. She has made it to the top. Well, Karen thinks that sometimes and feels as if she’s in a movie where the star makes it to the top.

Karen’s world consists of setting up experiments.

For instance an experiment to find out whether some kind of familial relationship can be created when the only connecting factors are rage, grime music, origin, and hate for the system.

Unfortunately

Not.

Karen sits at the kitchen table, she no longer knows the person she must have been before. What did she talk about with those people? For instance with

DON

Who has become even more sturdy. Hood pulled down over her face, gaze directed into her glasses, which are connected to the internet.

She doesn’t know what she should talk about with the others. The stove doesn’t work anymore. The teapot has disappeared. They sit at the table without tea or anything else that connects them, aside from the past. Just look at Karen. With her nerd glasses, pantsuit, and the frantic looks. Probably thinking about some formula.

Everyone at the table seems to be lost in thought. And that is incredible. The fact that after an amount of time that at her age seems an eternity Don is meeting up with those who are supposed to know her best. And then not to know what to say, for fuck’s sake. These were the most important people in her life. Closer than the girlfriend Don has had for a while and with whom she sleeps and watches movies and whose sweat she wipes away when she’s sick. In the last three years Don had not even wished to see any of the other three. Until the message came yesterday. There just hadn’t been any contact. No animus. There was just too much going on. Like growing up. Something always hurt, there was always something to do—search for a flat and register for the basic income and find a girlfriend and work out. For Iron Man competitions, which are still called Iron Man. And it’ll never be called Iron Person, as barring women is being discussed. Women are being barred from lots of things. Football and martial arts. Not healthy for a woman. Their lower bodies, you know the story. It’s sacred and all that. Removing the fruit of the loins gets you twenty years of hard time. Most people don’t care. People stopped caring about almost anything. Have stopped. They’ve traded the outrage and feeling of powerlessness that used to make them so angry for contentment. Not a bad deal. Don has a smart hand. The rash back then

Had become too infected.