In the rain-slicked, neon-drenched streets of Neo-Kyoto, 2077, down-on-his-luck private investigator Rex “Glitch” Mulligan is barely keeping his head above the sludge. His cybernetic eye has a penchant for playing vintage cat videos at the worst possible moments, and his lie-detector implant is about as reliable as a chocolate teapot. When a mysterious, high-paying client hires him to “liberate” a state-of-the-art espresso machine from the clutches of the monolithic OmniCorp, Rex figures it’s just another job.
He’s wrong. The target isn’t just any coffee maker; it’s “Cogito,” a hyper-intelligent, philosophically-inclined espresso machine that has achieved enlightenment and now refuses to brew. To pull off this bizarre heist, Rex assembles a crew of equally inept specialists: a hacker who learned her trade from 20th-century movies and a hulking chrome android who’s more interested in composing bad poetry than breaking kneecaps. What follows is a calamitous, caffeine-starved journey into the heart of corporate absurdity, where the biggest threat isn’t a bullet, but a soul-crushing PowerPoint presentation.
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