Which didn’t matter. And which didn’t lead to outrage among the populace. The British weren’t inclined to public, vulgar displays of protest. Peter had read that in an article. Everything the children knew they’d learned online. They’d been born in the new millennium and didn’t know anything else. They didn’t consider ADHD a disease, old people were just unbearably slow. And they considered the city where they lived the dreariest city on earth. Ever since algorithms rated areas by their profitability, nothing happened here anymore. The last halfhearted investors had jumped ship when they’d been strongly warned by an investment app about the wayward inhabitants of Rochdale.

Generation Z lived on their devices, where there was always more happening than on the boring streets of their shithole towns. They talked to each other in chat groups, stared at selfie accounts, they spent eight hours a day glued to displays and had no idea what could possibly be wrong with that because the online world consisted of photos, movies, and games while the offline world was made up of bad weather and junkies, dilapidated buildings and boredom.

So online it was.

“Yes.” Said

MI5 PIET

“Very nice. The high level of compliance of the general public when it comes to questions of security. Occurs to me randomly. I’ll show you the experimental setup now. Would you like the short version, that is, the one everyone can understand?”

THE PROGRAMMER

“That would be great. Though when it comes to understandability, it’s not a problem for me. I’m autistic.”

MI5 PIET

“Didn’t mean to offend you. I’ll give it a try. So. For every man, every woman, every child, we have—”

THE PROGRAMMER

“That is, anyone with a device and internet access.”

MI5 PIET

“Yes, exactly,

“We’ve produced an avatar. Based on all the data collected from each person.”

THE PROGRAMMER

“Age, gender, sexual orientation, political activities, consumer behavior, clinical history, criminal record, credit and financial profile, political leanings, modes of transport, resource usage, consumer behavior, dietary failures, orthopedic insoles, porn consumption—”

MI5 PIET

“Yes, thanks, we understood, so we’ve built an electronic avatar for nearly every single person. Algorithms calculate a precise location profile for each person, a threat profile, they calculate voting and buying patterns, determine the anticipated likelihood of criminal activity, the—”

THE PROGRAMMER

“Which in the case of children from a troubled area is very high.”

MI5 PIET

“Correct. Additional surveillance …

Oh, look, it’s summer.”

Curious glances outside.

Nothing going on outside, thought

DON

Annoyed from the moment she awoke.

Don wanted. Everything. Immediately. To become an adult. An idea of what she should do with her life. To get out of Rochdale. To grow.