Karen began to experience the normal misery of young people. The transition from a child to a grown-up asshole was set in motion and expressed itself in bad moods, which is understandable once you understand what will soon become of charming children. Karen did what pubescent girls do: masturbate, watch porn, stalk boys on Facebook. She even carefully observed the two complete idiots who were her brothers. Well, one of them. She looked at boys at school and before school, she looked at them on the main street, where they hung around in front of the bet shops, she looked at them when they closed their eyes and when they slept. Karen didn’t want to get interested in something that was intellectually inferior to her, and yet she was powerless against and obsessed with staring at bottoms, necks, and legs. Which didn’t lead to any results, no interactions took place, because boys her age didn’t consider Karen a sexually useful being. Karen was the geeky albino. The girl with glasses and red eyes.

Unlike during her time as a thinking being, Karen no longer went straight home after school to read; instead she showed great interest in the goods on display at charity shops in the pedestrian zone. That is, the area where groups of handsome young men milled about looking to transform their inner excitement into something productive—like fucking or beating someone up. There was never contact between Karen and these boys; even if one of them had been interested in her it would have impossible for him to enter a relationship with Karen without losing face. In the male hive mind Karen was only a step above copulating with a bulldog. She was finally chatted up one day when she wanted to go home—well, wanted to go home isn’t strictly true; she had to go home, because her bed was there—a young, good-looking man who presumably had Pakistani roots.

THE PAKISTANIS

Were not necessarily the most beloved subpopulation in the United Kingdom. They had their own neighborhoods, their own gangs, their own rules, and there was hardly anything you’d have to do with them, unless you needed a truck or a taxi, drugs, prostitutes, or cheap vegetables.

The Pakistanis were too plentiful. Nobody is prepared for the realization that the world must be shared with billions of others. It’s too much information, it brings up questions like:

Am I possibly not unique?

What are they all doing on my planet?