From the other rooms in the squatted building came noises. Children arguing and laughing, they clattered pots and pans. They lived. They were young and had never known the collective structures that used to give people a strangely uplifting feeling. They were amazed at how nice it could be to live in a pack.

There were no mail carriers. Mail was delivered by a private company that used harried slaves. There were no junctures to connect people with a sense of shared existence anymore. No bureaucrats, no shop assistants living next door. It was all migrant workers, temporary workers, wage slaves, or fucking machines. When people no longer know anyone around them, the lonely become increasingly venomous. Anonymity allows all civility to disappear. They just didn’t exist anymore, moral authority, feigned cordiality, it was kill or be killed. Everyone was the enemy, anyone who walked too slowly on the street or blocked the checkout at the supermarket, or the empty seat, any fucker who was just fucking there diminished others’ chances of survival. It was obvious the immigrants were at fault, the Muslims who wanted to fuck over and subjugate Europe. They were the least trusted. New immigrants came to the city daily. Hurray, new people. They moved into flats in social housing units, received social benefits, and if it had taken four hours to see a doctor at the hospital before, now you had to reckon on an eight-hour wait. Food handouts from churches and generous private do-gooders were inundated by foreigners. From countries where the language sounded abrasive; who could hold it against them that they pushed their way through the exhausted zombies of their new homeland who’d already been dead for two generations? The government, which at the moment consisted of loutish populist Nazis, fanned the flames of these unpleasant tendencies. A populace where everyone hated everyone else was a preoccupied populace. It was old hat.

It was the time before the perceived downfall.

Or at least—it seemed that way to the old people. To old people, every change seems to be the end of the world. That they knew. The years of people unbound. Of people before—Before something.

Who gives a shit.

Thought

DON

After a few weeks in Manchester-Salford. Far away, beyond the invisible border that divided this area from the world, another crisis was taking place once again. Self-learning algorithms had allowed themselves a bit of fun and had added extra zeros to the endless zeros of a few people’s accounts.

EX 2279

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DON