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business district nestled into the Dublin mountains, and the car park, set into the hillside where a slice had been taken out for it, is bleak and windy. Ava O’Dwyer’s colleagues spilled into the lot before her, a procession of jabbering faces, flat in her eyes, which like two cups of coffee sit on a pair of slick white saucers. The man who’d come to her aid almost tripped over in his haste to return the cigarettes she dropped, but steadies now, fidgety hand pocketed on one side. Poised with the composure of a marionette on display, Ava comes to life with a smirk and just as suddenly brushes past him, leaving the man two steps behind and smelling her perfume thinly weaved with the trail of her smoke. She’s late. What little concern she has about it disappears as Joanne rushes toward her, the woman’s face aghast between a green blazer and dry straw hair bunched atop her head. She judges her editor’s moods by the clothes she wears and choosing a word her now, she settles on distraught. In a sea of confusion, Ava, her face balanced on either side by slight rectangular earrings, offers Joanne a life preserver.
    ‘You won’t believe this,’ Ava says in a stage whisper.
    ‘Good news or bad?’ Joanne takes a drag on her cigarette.
    ‘Bad news sells good news, doesn’t it?’
    Her editor brightens, hungry for a fix of scandal. ‘What have you got?’
    ‘I was in a riot.’
    ‘My god,’ the gauche man has sidled over, ‘are you alright?’
    Ava jumps at the sound of his voice, blatantly surprised, and looks through him as if he were invisible and had spoken to frighten her. Without replying, she turns to Joanne for explanation.
    ‘Ava, this is our new friend, Agent Mullen. He’ll be taking staff members for interview, and ultimately, selecting people to be scanned.’ Irritated, Joanne adds, ‘I’m sure you knew he was starting today.’
    ‘Oh, that’s right.’ The man becomes solid now that he’s earned a name. After registering the drippy suit, Ava lets her eyes settle on his. ‘Nice to meet you. A social agent, is it? Hefty title. I’m sure you have a nicer name we could use. You’ll be poking around our heads after all.’
    ‘Francis,’ he nods, caught in her gaze.
    ‘Don’t be too rough with us, we might seem thick skinned but it’s only bravado.’
    ‘Not many will get to the scanning stage, really, I can’t imagine most of your days will be interfered with at all.’
    ‘That’s a relief, I’d hate to have to suffer through the electric shock process,’ she nudges her editor and gives Francis a cheeky smile to entrap him in the joke.
    ‘Electric shock?!’
    The huddle of journalists about them feel a jolt at Joanne’s cry. All ears prick up to hear the social agent’s response.
    ‘It’s not that bad.’ Wriggling free of Ava, Francis attempts to reassure them, ‘I promise it’s not. Read one of the leaflets, it covers everything you need to know. I’ll go through it with you all later.’
    ‘It doesn’t sound like nothing,’ Joanne rubs her arms. ‘I had an aunt who went through three rounds of shock therapy. Her roots were never the same again.’
    The image the editor provides overwhelms the social agent’s reassurances in the eavesdroppers around them. Francis is about to insist that it isn’t anything remotely like electric shock therapy when Ava speaks over him.
    ‘Joanne, the riot.’
    ‘Yes-yes, the riot!’
    ‘I think I heard something about that last night,’ says Francis.
    ‘So it’s not an exclusive,’ Joanne’s excitement fades as quickly as it came. ‘Agent Mullen, do you mind if I have a few minutes alone with my assistant editor? There are plenty of other people standing around for you to inspect and I think Ava here might be traumatised. She seems a tad confused, thinking I should be excited by old news.’
    ‘I have full access to ChatterFive,’ Francis declares authoritatively. The change in character is so abrupt that they’re left standing