Girls Against God

and their noisy sound systems to sketch unnecessary and impossible alternative cityscapes. The streets of these villages that they know and are trapped in become their escape routes. With black marks from skidding wheels on the asphalt, they translate and rewrite the white towns. They skip school and work to blare their horns outside the Filadelfia Pentecostal centre. At the Betania Free Evangelical centre they skid across the ice on the parking lot, until a Parking for Visitors Only sign tumbles to the ground. They blast Snap and Scorpions and Eminem relentlessly from the benches outside the metal venues, outside city council meetings at the town hall, and at the annual conference for the People’s Movement Against Immigration. In these moments they don’t discriminate, and they don’t fight, they just disrupt and refuse to participate. Total misanthropy. Vodka in a Coke bottle and a cheesy ground beef sub on the dashboard. This is the Witches’ Sabbath of the ’90s.
In the latest ritual, Venke, Terese and I sneak past the ruins of the old Munch museum. The camera lens is zoomed all the way out now, and the image is of an undefined future, well into the next generation. We walk through the botanical garden, which looks the same as ever, with its arboretum, its alpine garden and its magical herbs. Beyond the garden is a college, the one with the classroom and the all-girls class. It’s since been modernised, with screens and algorithmic surveillance systems that only we can get past.
Venke is anxious about returning to college, and stays in the rear, gnawing her cuticles.
The students are lined up in the canteen. Reconnaissance cameras identify their faces, gender, weight and height, and as they are given access to the cashier, their data, registered diets and suggestions for lunches are displayed on a screen. At the entrance, tacked above the head of a girl who whispers and laughs into a clam-shaped smart phone, a poster advertises a particularly fun salad with the caption Seriously Excited.
We’ve painted costumes on ourselves that resemble their school uniforms. Pale neon stripes blink on our dark blue jackets. Someone ahead of us in the queue turns around and looks at us in confusion – our ruffled hair, the wrinkles beneath our eyes, the big visible pores in our skin, but most of them just look into the little flowers, animals or shells that are their smart phones, or look at each other, whispering to each other and shoving. The camera looks deep into my eyes. I unfold in front of the lens, revealing all the darkness inside. The screen goes black and the Seriously Excited picture starts to flicker, but I’m allowed to pass. The digital noise formula that we’ve written seems to work. Terese winks.
At the far end of the room is a big machine with a hole in the middle where the food is delivered. The students name the dishes, and a moment later they appear on the conveyor belt, emerging from the witch’s cauldron.
Oatmeal, one student says to the machine, and immediately a plastic bowl of microwaved cereal pops out.
Burger, says another one, and a thin patty in a buttered bun comes dancing out of the hole, packed in a translucent plastic box. Salad and dressing ooze and drip onto the napkin at the bottom. The food is reflected on the machine, as the small dishes flow down the little conveyor belt and are picked up by the students.
Muffin, says Terese. A compressed muffin rolls out of the machine’s hole, wrapped in plastic. Everything here is portion wrapped. Nothing is served from a communal pot or bowl, only lonely meals with clear boundaries separating them from the outside world, meals made for a singular I.
Aspic, Venke says, giggling, and out comes a plate with a trembling cube of jelly on it, with peas, crab sticks and slices of hardboiled egg inside.
Don’t scare them, says Terese.
Strawberry yoghurt, I say.
She should be happy I didn’t say smashed burger with béarnaise sauce. The crown jewel of Southern junk food.
The students sit down with their food and begin to eat. We sit down with them. A girl has her head deep in a pink screen and writes a poem or a diary entry. A group of girls sit throwing salad at each other. Seriously excited. In the background, orders of hamburgers, cheese sandwiches and pizza slices continue to slide out from the machine. Summoned by the youths. Summoned by the words. The objects obey and emerge.
Eat slowly, says Terese to Venke, and don’t play with your food. We’re not supposed to stand out.
Venke picks at the aspic and starts to chew a piece, transforming fossils into new layers of fossils down in her stomach.
I open the yoghurt cup.
Normcore, Venke whispers.
The students are eating salad, hotdogs and pizza and staring at their phones. A group of girls have gotten up from their table, staring fiercely at each other. Suddenly they begin pushing each other, shouting and pulling hair.
The camera drone bobs calmly up by the ceiling, filming the scene and transmitting it directly to the teacher’s lounge and the school’s popular SchoolMe livestream.
Two girls separate from the group and begin fighting for real. They punch each other, kick, pull at each other’s clothes. We realise that they are trying to grab each other’s little key chains, with tiny little memory sticks hanging on them, to see what they’ve written about each other. Neither is willing to reveal the contents of her memory stick to the other. But sooner or later this will be unavoidable, because nothing can be deleted and the internet keeps everything in its cold cloud-storage clutch. The data already oscillates between new sponsored school-related applications. This fight won’t wipe out anything. This fight can’t even really be called real; it’s a fight over formulas or streaming numbers. That’s why there’s no blood when they hit each other square on the nose or the mouth, and the spittle doesn’t drip. Their clothes don’t tear. Their faces