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The rain in Neo-Kyoto didn’t so much fall as it gave up. It was a miserable, persistent drizzle that coated the city in a permanent sheen of grime and neon reflection. From my office window on the 47th floor, the metropolis looked like a circuit board that someone had spilled a drink on—a beautiful, chaotic mess of light and shadow. My window, unfortunately, was also cracked, letting in a draft that smelled faintly of burnt ramen and despair. The rent was due. My cybernetic eye was acting up again. And my last client, a paranoid shipping magnate, had paid me in corporate scrip that was now worth less than the paper it was printed on.
My desk, a slab of recycled chrome, was littered with the detritus of a failing P.I. business: empty synth-caffeine pouches, a flickering holopad displaying my bank balance (a depressing, singular digit), and a half-eaten bowl of nutrient paste that had achieved a rather alarming shade of green. A neon sign across the street for “Sakura Sushi & Surgery” blinked erratically, bathing my office in alternating waves of pink and blue light. It was in this state of serene destitution that he walked in.
He was tall, thin, and wore a suit so black it seemed to absorb the light around it. His face was a carefully constructed mask of neutrality, but his shoes gave him away. They were real leather. In a city where most people wore synth-fabric and recycled plastic, real leather screamed money. Old, dangerous money.
“Rex Mulligan?” he asked, his voice as smooth and sterile as a med-bay floor.
“Some people call me ‘Glitch’,” I said, leaning back in my chair, trying to project an air of nonchalant competence. The chair squeaked in protest. “Usually right before they refuse to pay me.”
The corner of my vision flickered. Oh no, not now. A tiny, pixelated kitten began chasing a laser dot across my optic nerve. I tried to ignore it.
The man didn’t react. He placed a sleek, black data-chip on my desk. “I have a job for you. An acquisition.”
I gestured vaguely at the squalor of my office. “I’m semi-retired. Mostly the ‘tired’ part.”
“The client is willing to pay one hundred thousand universal credits.”
The kitten in my eye froze mid-pounce. My nonchalant competence evaporated, replaced by the desperate, slobbering greed of a man who considered nutrient paste a food group. “I’m listening.”
“My client has a vested interest in a particular piece of hardware currently in the possession of OmniCorp.”
OmniCorp. Of course. The mega-corporation that owned everything from the weather satellites to the air we breathed. Their gleaming black tower, a middle finger to the sky, dominated the Neo-Kyoto skyline. “What kind of hardware?” I asked, picturing a prototype weapon, a top-secret data core, something worthy of a spy holodrama.
The man slid the chip towards me. “It’s a coffee machine.”
I blinked. The kitten in my eye started batting at a ball of yarn. “A coffee machine?”
“The Barista-Bot 9000, model name ‘Cogito’,” he said, his voice devoid of any irony. “The most advanced espresso machine ever created. OmniCorp keeps it in their executive penthouse. We need you to retrieve it. Quietly.”
I stared at him, waiting for the punchline. There wasn’t one. A hundred thousand credits to steal a coffee maker. It was the stupidest, most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
“Why?” I finally asked. “Does it brew liquid gold?”
“That is not your concern,” the man said, standing up. “The chip contains all the preliminary intel. Half the payment has already been transferred to your account. You will receive the other half upon successful delivery.” He turned and walked towards the door.
“Hey!” I called out. “Who’s the client?”
He paused, his hand on the doorframe. “A concerned party,” he said, and then he was gone, melting back into the neon-soaked rain as if he were never there.
My holopad chimed. My bank balance, which had been a lonely ‘5’, now had five zeroes after it. 50,005. I could pay my rent for the next decade. I could get my eye fixed. I could even afford real, non-rehydrated food.
All I had to do was break into the most secure building on the planet, get past an army of corporate security goons, and steal a pretentious coffee machine from the top floor.
The kitten in my eye did a celebratory backflip.
“Piece of cake,” I muttered to the empty room. A glitchy, caffeine-deprived, hundred-thousand-credit piece of cake. I slotted the data-chip into my holopad. Schematics, guard schedules, and a single, high-resolution image of the target loaded onto the screen. It was beautiful. Sleek, chrome, with a single, pulsing blue light. It looked less like a kitchen appliance and more like something that would demand worship. The file mentioned its key feature: a revolutionary AI that could anticipate the user’s coffee needs with 99.9% accuracy. It also mentioned a footnote. ‘Current Status: Non-operational. AI has entered a continuous loop of philosophical inquiry.’
So, the most advanced coffee machine in the world had decided to have an existential crisis instead of making coffee. The job just got weirder. And for a hundred thousand credits, weird was my new favorite flavor. But I knew I couldn’t do this alone. I needed a team. A cheap, disposable, and hopefully not-too-bright team. I sighed, pulled on my trench coat, and headed out into the rain. First stop: finding a hacker.
