He was riding in on the southbound train, about five minutes from his stop, when his phone rang. Reuben. He let it go straight to voicemail. Mimmeo availed himself of the washroom, where he splashed some water on his face, gave himself a once over in the mirror, then jammed an empty mag into the handle of his Beretta.

Leaving the station, he fished his black bandana out of his pocket, and tied it around his neck. The street lamps were just beginning to flicker to life as he weaved down the wide streets of downtown San Jose, past sparsely populated bars and dreary-looking chain restaurants, scattered among rows of boarded-up retail shops that seemed unlikely to find new tenants any time soon. He went on, until he came to a sprawling apartment complex, nondescript, with the whole thing coated in thick grey stucco in need of a paint job, and it was there, at the base of a sad, concrete stairwell attached to one of the buildings that he pulled his mask up over his face, before climbing to the third floor.

Standing off to the side, out of the peephole's line of sight, with his chest pressed flat against the chipped plaster, Mimmeo rapped on the front door with the butt of his gun, prepared to pounce the moment it cracked open.

"It's open!" came a man's voice, shouting from somewhere inside the flat.

With his gun still in-hand, and without peeling himself away from the wall, Mimmeo cautiously turned the doorknob with his thumb and forefinger, using his toe to push in the door.

"Come on in," he heard him say, his voice full of cheer.

He poked his head around the corner of the door's frame, and saw a man standing behind a low counter, a small towel over his shoulder, a large wooden spoon in his hand.

"Oh, hey! It's you— you're here," the man said with a smile. "A little earlier than I expected, but..." he trailed off, and Mimmeo saw him set the spoon down next to the range.

Mim stood there stock-still, alone in the middle of the modest living room that lay between them, looking around the Berber-carpeted no-man's-land, which was dotted here-and-there with pieces of flatpack furniture. The man stepped past him, pushed the door closed, and then, facing him, spoke once more.

"I guess I figured you for more of a night owl," he said, before heading back into the kitchen. He turned, picking up the spoon once more, then looked right at him, and said, "Anyway, come on back, I'm just finishing up with our dinner."

Mimmeo followed after him, walking past a table set for two, complete with candles and a pair of tall wine glasses with delicate stems.

"You Anton?" he asked, pointing the pistol at the man's midsection.

"Mmhmm," he answered, nodding as he went about tasting the sauce.

"Anton Ferguson, the reporter?" Mimmeo clarified. "Just trying to make sure I'm in the right place."

"Usually go by Gus," the man answered, "But, yeah. That's me."

Mimmeo leaned back, looking around the flat, as if to make for certain they were alone.

"I have it on good authority you don't eat meat," Anton said. "So, I'm making linguine alle vongole."

"What?"

"Pasta with clams."

He said this cordially, but also as if he'd already answered the question ten times before.

"You're a pescetarian, are you not?"

"Uh, yeah," Mimmeo answered.

"Well, then. You're in for a treat, let me tell you. I make a fabulous white wine sauce — or, so I'm told," Anton said. Then, holding out a large chef's knife, asked, "Mind helping out with the salad?"

"You want me to..." he looked at the knife, its broad blade balanced atop the man's outstretched palm, held as if it were a sword being presented to a newly-minted knight.

"Make the salad," he said, nodding toward a wooden cutting board, before leaning back to check-in on the sauce. "As you can see, I've sort of got my hands full at the moment with the main course. I like to get the noodles just right, especially when I have company," he said. "You don't mind, do you?"

"I'm sorry, I'm a little confused," Mim heard himself say as he stared down at the knife.

"Oh, right. Thick slices. If you would. The tomatoes, I mean. And there's a bottle of olive oil... there," he said, pointing with his elbow, flapping it a few times against his apron as though it were a wing, and not an arm. "Oh, and the cheese... I picked up some lovely buffalo mozzarella at the market earlier today. It's in the fridge. Top drawer, should be. And tear the basil, if you would. Don't cut it. It's better torn. Trust me. You wouldn't think it would make much of a difference, but in my experience—"

"No, not the salad," Mimmeo said, visibly agitated. "I know how to make a fucking salad. I mean, what the fuck's going on? — the fuck are you doing right now?"

"The list," Anton said, raising his eyebrows. "I'm up. Right?" he said, throwing his head back, waving the spoon in the air in a zany sort of way. "What am I saying? Of course you know I'm on the list, it's that you didn't know that I know that I'm on the list. Right. Okay. Got it."

"You know about the list?"

"I do," Anton said, his voice full of mirth, returning to the sauce.

"But, who—"

"Ah ah," he grunted, wagging a finger, "First, the salad. And then, we're gonna sit down, have a nice meal, a glass of wine, maybe two," he said gaily. "I have to say, I'm quite interested to learn more about your work. So, we'll talk— you know, like civilized people. And who knows? Might turn into an interview of sorts, if you let it."

Anton could see that he still wasn't quite getting through to his guest, so he set his spoon down on a porcelain saucer, turned down the gas on the burner beneath the sauce, and looked him straight in the eye.

"Come, come. You win. You've found me," he said, waving his arms around again like a beetle that'd been rolled onto its back. "You're armed. I'm not. Me, I've never even held a gun."

"Your point?"

"My point, I suppose, dear guest," he said, giving the steaming pot of pasta a gentle stir, "is that there'll be plenty of time for you to rob me after we've had dessert, which is affogato, by the way — which I make with homemade vanilla ice cream, I might add. Now, then," he implored, "tell me, what have you got to lose?"

He could see that Mim was still working on figuring things out.

"Just... just, make the caprese," Anton said, followed by a rather beseeching, "Please?"

They both stood there a moment without moving, each staring at the other, the pot boiling away on the hob.

Finally, Mimmeo rang out with a resigned, fuck it, and pulling his mask down around his neck, slid his Beretta back into the waistband of his jeans. He took the chef's knife from Anton, and began slicing into an irregularly shaped heirloom tomato, glancing side-eyed as he started drawing the blade across the fruit's waxy, orange surface.

Up to that moment, Mimmeo's experience with cooking (not that fixing a salad was cooking, per se) had been wholly limited to the reheating of leftover cartons of takeaway, and (when he felt like it) the occasional frying of an egg on the hotplate that the landlord had mounted atop one of his kitchen cabinets. That is, he thought to himself, with one notable exception.

As he sliced into the tomato, the smell of basil swirling around inside his nostrils, he couldn't help but recall the time (and it now must have been more than three years ago) when he'd made up a shopping list — something he'd never done before, nor had he repeated since, and he thought about how on that particular morning he'd woken himself to an alarm, something which he'd vowed to himself never to do, just so he could make his way down to the piers in time to get his pick of the Dungeness crabs that were coming in off the Chinese fishing boats, and how, after packing them in a styrofoam ice chest he'd purchased special for the occasion, how he'd trekked all the way to the farmers' market over on Divisadero, the one behind Alamo Square Park, where the vendors liked to set up tables beneath collapsible tents and broad striped umbrellas, some of them overflowing with unusual fruits and vegetables, others with loaves upon loaves of handmade bread, or else small wheels of different kinds of cheeses with French-sounding names, all piled up on top of one another into edible little cairns; and standing there in Anton's kitchen, he also remembered the way he'd haggled (in an uncharacteristically good-natured sort of way) with a jolly woman who was pleasantly overweight and who had just the slightest hint of a mustache, over the price of her pine nuts, and how he'd relented before also purchasing from her a living basil plant still potted in real soil, and also he recalled — after he'd gotten everything he thought he'd need for the night, when he'd already made it halfway up the stairs to his flat, having shlepped the cooler full of live crabs, and a full armload of expensive produce the whole way up — how he'd realized only then that he'd completely forgotten to buy any garlic. He remembered that he'd then made yet another trip out to get some, and not to the grocer, which was closer, but that for whatever reason he had gone all the way back again to the farmers' market, and he remembered the way he'd returned, finally, and then how he'd watched at last a dozen videos of different celebrity chefs — a list he'd carefully curated over the course of more than a month, which he'd begun compiling after first hearing about the dish he'd be attempting to execute that evening, adding to the playlist whenever he found a spare moment, figuring these were people who'd gotten famous for their cooking, and so must have known what they were talking about, and how he'd planned to steal the best parts of each recipe and so make the dish his own special creation, and how that's what he did — or at least what he'd tried to do — and he remembered that (because he didn't own a food processor) that his pesto hadn't come out anywhere near as silky as any of the ones he was aiming to copy, and what's more his crab cakes had come out lumpier than he'd expected (much lumpier, in fact) and so hadn't fried up as evenly as he would have hoped, and then there was the way they'd made the bed of mixed baby salad greens wilt because he'd forgotten to drain the crab cakes on the cooling rack he did not own, before shifting them over to the plates (which he'd ordered a week prior, since he also didn't have any plates), but it was all just as well, because Sophia's supervisor had ended up making her stay late again, even though he'd promised not to make her stay late again, and so by the time she was through with work, was only in the mood to fall asleep next to him on his futon to an episode of In the Workhouse — one which she'd already seen a million times before — and so tired, in fact, that she didn't even feel like trying even a single glass of the champagne he'd so prematurely opened for them.

"Sauce is looking good. We 'bout ready with the salad?" Anton's voice snapped him out of his meandering thoughts.

"Yeah... yeah, I think so," he replied, standing over a wide mound of tomato slices.

Without saying anything, Anton scooted in front of the cutting board, and finished the salad, adding the basil and the cheese and the oil, then led his guest to what the apartment's marketing materials probably deigned to call a dining room. They sat down, and Anton poured the wine, stopping to make a toast in which he said something about having a pleasant evening, despite the circumstances of how it had all come to be. Anyway, Mimmeo wasn't really listening.

"Just to recap," Mimmeo said, "you are aware I'm here to rob you?"

"Yes," he answered, sprinkling salt and pepper onto the salad before dishing up two plates. "I am."

"And, what? You figured a hot meal would dissuade me from going to work?"

"Not exactly," he said, stuffing a mouthful of caprese salad into his mouth, "Mmm. That's nice — fresh tomatoes, really good cheese. Mmm. No, look. I enjoy cooking, and when I learned you'd be coming over, I figured I'd make something special. I'm really not messing with you when I say I only want to make the best of this whole thing. Buuut," he drew out the word, "to be completely candid, I guess you could say dinner is a kind of peace offering."

"How so?"

"I mean, take a look around. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly loaded. I'm a junior reporter for a mid-tier paper. I'm just barely hanging on here, and the paper itself — well, it's part of a dying industry, or haven't you heard? Anyway, the most expensive things I own are a few cast iron pans and a set of pretty decent Japanese knives. As for my laptop, it's spending the night at a friend's house. Guess I was rather hoping the meal would soften the blow of your leaving here more-or-less empty-handed."

"The list—" Mimmeo said, taking a sip from his glass before setting it back on the table, "where'd you get it?"

"I'm afraid this is one of those clichéd situations where a reporter respectfully declines to divulge his sources," then tilting his head a little, "Apologies."

Mimmeo grimaced, shifted in his seat, and in spite of having been supplied a white linen napkin, he pulled the hem of his shirt to his mouth, dabbing it at the corners with mock civility, making a real show of reminding Anton about his pistol.

"You know, I only recently learned about your show's existence. I normally don't watch a lot of television, but I must confess that when I heard I was on your list — whether it was out of vanity, or a morbid curiosity — I simply couldn't resist watching an episode or two," he drank a little wine before going on, "And you know what I noticed about you?"

Mimmeo, his hand drifting toward the exposed handle of the Beretta, cocked an eyebrow.

"While I watched you at your work, I noticed something about you that I found interesting — namely, that despite your various and well-delivered threats, and the occasional act of comic mischief — you're not really the violent sort. At least, you don't look that way to me. And so," he went on, twirling his fork full of pasta, "I doubt very much that you're interested in harming me," he said.

He took a bite, then, speaking with more elegance than someone with his mouth full can normally manage, continued, saying, "In short, you can keep your shirt on, as it were."

"And you're willing to take that chance over some pots and pans?"

"Fair point," Anton said, swallowing. "As far as I'll go is to say that I've a friend in the advertising department. Someone I've known a long time. I'd rather not say who, exactly..." he washed it down with more wine, then added, "I'm sure you'll understand, as someone whose line of work must also make frequent calls for discretion."

"Advertising department?" Mimmeo asked. "Whose advertising department?"

"Why, Cyberpix, of course."

***

He made it back to his apartment with nothing to show for his efforts, save for a doggie bag, which Anton had insisted he take with him. He threw it, bag and all, into his miniature refrigerator, and though he knew it would probably be received as a total dud, he went ahead and sent the evening's footage across to the execs over at Cyberpix.

He popped in a piece of off-brand Nicorette, and poured himself a drink.

There, leaning against the counter, slowly sipping gin, he checked his bracelet for messages. He'd missed a text from Sophia, that read: Good luck tonight ... hope you're sleeping indoors later ;) To it, she'd appended a holographic loop of Wile E. Coyote, standing alone in some barren Utah desert, a predictably large anvil falling over and over again upon his cartoon head, and then a second message, as if an afterthought, which said: Oh! and call me when you get back...

Apart from that, there were also a few adverts — one from James the Less, informing him of a new shipment of tech that had just come into his possession, and then there was one with a coupon for a new brand of energy drinks, and one for something else, all of which he deleted straightaway.

There was also a new voice memo, which he played.

Mim — hey. Reuben here. Um, trying to get ahold of you all afternoon, so, uh, guess I'll just leave you a message. Um... Really need to chat with you about, uh, the other night at Salazar's. Um, been talking to some of the people here at the office, and (sniff) Sybil really thinks that, um, that we should probably get some of, some of those paintings back for him, um, that you took the other night, so if you could, uh, bring those back down to us here at the, uh, here at the office, yeah — that'd be great. Maybe tomorrow. Cuz I do need you to come down to the office anyway. A few of us really need to talk to you about (tut) about, uh, what we're gonna do for the, uh, for the replacement episode, since the ones with Rose and Thom kinda got shoved together. Gonna need to come up with someone else. And (sniff) Sybil, uh, and the others have, have all been saying they just want you to go with Veronica Smythe, and, and I— well, I told them you probably wouldn't go for that, but, um, uh, we've got a few ideas. So, anyway, give me a call back when you get this, and, um, I guess we'll, uh, talk to you then. Alright. Later, buddy. Talk soon. Buh-bye. Bye.

"Fuckin' Reuben, man," he said to himself, and he just had to laugh at the idea that he would have kept any of those dusty things, as — apart from being the chief evidence connecting him to the burglary — they had all been, in his estimation, terribly ugly paintings. It'd been dark when he lifted them, he had to admit, but he remembered thinking at the time that they were the sort of things you'd find in a cheap, brass-festooned seafood restaurant — the sort with plastic menus with pictures printed on them, the sort where its dining tables were coated in thick layers of marine varnish, yellowed from years of greasy abuse.

Mim knocked back the rest of his drink. He texted Sophia back, letting her know he was home, and ready for the data-sync. With some time to kill while he waited for her reply, he grabbed the half-empty bottle and settled into his pile of dusty cushions, and with his terminal in his lap, he waged an internal battle, struggling to decide whether or not to do some mindless scrolling through his Cogent newsfeed.

In the midst of his deciding, it occurred to him that he still hadn't gotten around to checking out anything beyond the first episode of Crime Chronicles, but curious (or vain) as he might have been, he ultimately couldn't get past his fear of whatever machinations the editors at Cyberpix would have worked upon his raw footage, and so, despite knowing he would emerge from another news-binge as he always did — in a sort of demented, colourless haze — he reluctantly chose to pass the time browsing his feed.

He had to hand it to the folks at Cogent. Their designers, aided by a host of algorithms, and what he suspected must have been heaps upon heaps of psychometric user data, had somehow found a way of presenting a seemingly endless stream of increasingly low-quality information in a way that was attractive enough to keep him browsing far longer than he ever wanted to, passing off a jumbled wreck of apocalyptic stories of dubious veracity, each accompanied by a doctored photo, each with its own celebrity quotation for a headline, as what they referred to, quite unironically, as curated content.

In this way, he lost the next hour and a half, having been sucked into the labyrinthine wormhole that was his newsfeed, the algorithm sending him twisting this way and that through a dense information stew — a mélange of news articles, pointed editorials, and cleverly disguised advertisements masquerading as truth.

Skimming along, he took note of articles detailing the various riots that, it seemed everywhere, were gaining popular momentum. There was another one about the forest fires that had now been raging for more than three months, and were steadily encroaching more and more on residential neighbourhoods along the coast. There was an ad for Artisano pods, made to appear as though it were a serious piece of journalism about the ecological impact of traditional coffee products, followed by an editorial, produced by Wardenclyffe Industries, extolling the virtues of entrepreneurialism in the technology sector, which was really just a ham-fisted attempt at staving off a recent bout of criticism aimed at its CEO for having recently provided the government with a shipment of robots capable of detecting, tracking, and (in some cases) killing people it merely suspected of having committed a crime.

Further down the feed, there was an article on a rushed vaccine coming out of Oath Pharmaceuticals, for which a new round of trials was currently underway. In it, the scientists interviewed all said more-or-less the same thing (the notable exception being the chemist from Oath) — namely, that they were less than optimistic when it came to this most recent vaccine's potential efficacy.

In between more adverts, each one quite obviously purpose-built in order to keep him sucked in and scrolling for as long as possible, Mim learned of yet another series of corporate tax cuts, as well as three or four new scandals that had only just come to light, each one regarding some politician or other, who in any case would never be held accountable for their betrayal of the public trust, much less see the inside of a jail cell.

He might have stayed trapped in his feed for hours, were it not for the sudden interruption, produced by Sophia's incoming request for a vid-call.

"Hey," he said, standing up from the cushions, bottle still in-hand.

"Hey, yourself," she said, watching him as he tipped the bottle up to take down a few hard swallows of lukewarm gin. "Having a night, are we?"

"What? This?" he said, facing the tiny screen on his bracelet, making a show of finishing off what was left of the bottle for the camera.

"You ready?"

"Yeah," he grinned, dabbing the corners of his mouth on the back of his arm. "Just a sec."

He moved across the room to his kitchen countertop, where he pushed aside a handful of dirty mugs and some old takeaway containers, then set his terminal down on the spot he'd cleared. After slipping his Malum from his wrist, he closed its band, and propped it up next to his terminal, aiming the beam of light coming from its tiny projector at the wall in front of him, until Sophia's image was about three feet wide.

"Ready."

"Alright," she started. "This your first time?"

"Maybe," he said, coy as he could manage.

"It's okay. I'll be gentle."

Mim placed his hand on the pad of his terminal.

"Okay," she said, "I just sent you a link. Tell me when you get it."

"I've got it."

"Click on it."

"Okay."

"That'll start the connection protocol."

"It's doing something. Looks like it's thinking about it."

"When it brings up the dialog box, drag the files in that you want to send."

"Oh... kay..." he said, moving the folders across. "Okay. Done."

"Okay. Click send."

"Boom. Sent."

"Annnnd," she said, drawing out the word as she waited. "Got 'em. Done."

"That's it?"

"Yeah, pretty straightforward. Why? What were you expecting?"

"I don't know. Maybe some spy shit."

And there it was, her laugh, girlish and true. It was nothing really. Still...

"We just needed to both be logged in at the same time so that the data transfers without being interrupted, and without anything being sent through a third-party server is all."

"Ah."

"Not very sexy, I'm afraid."

"You'd be surprised."

"You know, Mim, sometimes I get the impression you're into some pretty weird stuff."

"Define weird."

"Anyway," she smiled, steering the conversation back on track, "I'll take a look at everything tonight, but no promises. We'll probably need to bring my old boss in on it, to be honest."

"Do your best, I'd really rather not—"

"You know I will. And, I get it," she said, pausing. "But, if it turns out we really do need help, they're the one for it. Apart from being brilliant, when it comes to corporate espionage, I think you're both on the same page."

"Oh?"

"Had it out for half the companies in The City for awhile now. Pretty big bone to pick with Cyberpix, in particular. Guarantee you they'd love nothing more than to fuck up Sybil Devereaux's day."

"Fair enough."

"Alright, then. I'm gonna go for now. I've got a lot of homework to do."

"Talk to you tomorrow?"

"Deal," she said, blowing a kiss to the camera. "Goodnight, sweet prince."

"Night, Soph," and the screen went dead.

***