Thome had learned that it was unimportant to orient himself to any other subset of the population than white men. Most of them in his milieu were unattractive but well dressed. A standard Thome considered attainable. Most of them despised women and feared them at the same time—something he could again see in himself. Thome was at a sexual age, but it had never been taken to extremes. He had masturbated. In every corner of the family villa. Most effectively in his parents’ bedroom. Formerly, that is. When his mother, god rest her soul, was out and about. Thome stood at the bedside and wanked. That was always the most intense discharge. Sometimes in the cellar. Watching the gardener. Not bad either. Before. Now he was bored, stared at the ceiling, stared out the window into the endless manicured park. He lay on his bed, listened to electronic music. And wondered whether he should engage a prostitute. So he’d finally know how youth was supposed to be, which he hadn’t lived out up to now. But. When he pictured going into a brothel where it smelled bad and then finding the women lined up at the bar, all of whom looked like service people—in fact maybe one of their own servants would be there earning a little extra income, and he’d go to a room with the cook he’d known since he was four, where she would laugh at him because of his penis, which was unusually crooked and pointed at the end like a dog’s. A Corgi. Thome knew all about that. But not about sex. The time was not yet right. The time—reminded him. He needed to map out his future. At some point he’d be the CEO of an internet company whose earnings dwarfed most countries’ GDP. Thome thought of himself as a cross between Peter Thiel and Mercer. An IT god whose looks didn’t matter. Because Thome wasn’t good-looking. Pale, sweaty, with thinning reddish hair and a runny nose. He was about six feet tall with hips twice as wide as his shoulders and even in his youth the beginnings of a paunch. But Thome knew that as a result of his social status, his physical appearance played a decidedly insignificant role. With his name it didn’t even take the family fortune to be able to choose from the most attractive women in society. Attractive in quotation marks. The best of what comes from generations of incest. Small blue eyes and fat asses. Thome used to worry about his appearance. Let’s just say boarding school was hell. But on the plus side he could now program and knew that he was sexually confused. Was he into S&M? Children? Animals? Diapers. He’d tried that once. He’d found adult diapers in a secret drawer in his parents’ room. Along with bestiality porn and a few snuff films where Polish housewives were fucked to death. There’s always something. So it wasn’t diapers, but what was it? Sexuality, lived out openly, wasn’t something that happened in Thome’s circles. He would arrange his sexual life the same way as everyone he knew—marry into a prestigious family and keep everything else private. In dungeons, at sex parties and in clubs, with prostitute or slaves. He could hardly wait. He could hardly wait to go to university. Computer science at Cambridge. He’d started programming when he was six. Later on he’d achieved some sensational hacks—faking fingerprints and iris scans, for instance. There was a lot of recognition to be had online for something like that. Thome would never found something like Uber or Netflix. His future lay in the intersection of power and technology. And out there. Markets are celebrated. Hurray for markets. One of them was having a birthday. These wonderful free markets. Cheers. Old men rejoiced. They had erections. Men like Thome’s father. He knew what was being planned. In the background, invisible to most, the markets—hurray for markets—powered by algorithms, had developed lives of their own. Some of the most important investment firms with dull names like: Gartmore Group and Blackwood, RIT Capital Partners PLC—