There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty.

..As always, she was carrying the washing. Rudy was carrying two buckets of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice.

I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away.- spoken by death

I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months. There was no anger or reproach. It was Papa who spoke. How did it look?" Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes.

The happening that happened was that I met this girl.

That's typically what writers do; we just sit around complaining most of the time. And the better things are going, the more they complain.

In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring to beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them - until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet.