His former roommate was now sleeping with the 6th Earl of Canterbury. Thome’s second bed remained empty. The rowing club had kicked him out, ditto the lunch club and secret society. There’d been talk of new bylaws. One didn’t ask for details, one accepted one’s destiny like a man. A man who no longer had any friends. Nobody wanted to shower with him. Or have him at sex parties. Or speak, smoke, drink, or—let’s put it simply—have anything to do with him. Thanks, Father. Thome’s life had reached what at the time was its low point. He saw himself as an unattractive, mediocre person for whom suddenly a comfortable upper-class life was no longer waiting. Hate, which had always constituted an indeterminate part of Thome’s character, promulgated itself digitally—the future development of the world was for the most part due to frustrated bros like him. Who ruled and shaped 99 percent of the world’s knowledge in Wikipedia and Wikimania and Wikileaks and blogs. They coded, they hacked the economy, they wrote algorithms that in their minds would rule the world with artificial intelligence that reflected their own. Cheers! Thome began to create his first platform. He called it: Dream Island.

At some point

DON

Gave

Up.

On the summer. On herself. On the collective pressure to enjoy her youth. Please, how’s that supposed to work anyway? How are you supposed to be happy about something you didn’t ask for? Should she sit around and drink beer, destroy bus stops, have sex with one or more of the sickly boys from the area just to get it over with? Don stayed in bed. She was young and had what felt like a hundred years to fritter away. From the bathroom the sounds her brother made on his smartphone. Probably honing his sexual competence.

Those endless summer weeks were a catastrophe.

Because Don’s mother discovered alcohol. The most vulgar of all drugs. At first Don didn’t know what had changed her mother so much. Made her so moody and aggressive. But at some point she realized the personality change had to do with the bottles always standing in front of her. Gradually she learned to recognize her mother’s condition based on her halting gait, her saucer eyes, and the slurred consonants. Don’s mother always found a good reason to beat the children. Of course, it’s important to know. That bodily pain is not the biggest problem when it comes to getting beaten. It’s the outbreak of violence and vulgarity that makes the incident so miserable. The air becomes toxic, objects lose their innocence because they are witness to the humiliation. All of this made the period during which Don’s mother drank the most unpleasant of her entire childhood. All of her later memories were exclusively from that year, condensed into bodily pain and mental revulsion.