So the small balconies filled with poor people’s mattresses and cabinets, whatever sort of crap you needed as a loser. The entryways scrawled with graffiti, musty smelling from all the bad food cooked there, a high level of noise—people were always screaming at each other, some children were always crying, there was always something going on, the elevator was nearly always out of service, and when it wasn’t it sounded as if it should have long since given up the ghost. The apartment was happily empty late in the afternoon, out the windows a good view from the twelfth floor, the sun hung behind shreds of clouds, a few cars wandered through the streets below, downstairs in front of the buildings some bored boys. For a moment Karen was happy, because her life wouldn’t play out here. After her studies she would go to the US or Israel, but first she had to survive her adolescence. It was time to say goodbye to her old self and take a break from her intellectual development. The hormones created a constant hum in her ear, and she knew what that meant. Karen, still a model student and biology nerd, Karen, the future scholarship earner, knew that her body was now preparing itself for reproduction and her brain would soon be useless. She listened to Devlin while she packed up her biology textbooks and the microscope she’d borrowed from school, and then, together with her brain, stowed them under the bed, promising to return soon. She believed she detected her brain being replaced by a clump made of pure idiocy. After that was done Karen sampled her meager wardrobe, checked it for so-called sexiness, tried out makeup and new hairstyles. Welcome to the world of sexual imbecility were the last sensible words Karen heard herself utter. In the same year artificial intelligence took the first steps toward its own lumbering creativity, humanity lost another thinking member.

A little bit later