I stepped into Chiri’s place, glad to get out of the hot, sticky night. At the table nearest the door were two women, middle-aged tourists, with shopping bags filled with souvenirs and presents for the folks back home. One had a camera and was taking hologram snapshots of the people in the nightclub. The regulars usually don’t take kindly to that, but they were ignoring these tourists. A man couldn’t have taken those pictures without paying for it. Everyone was ignoring the two women except a tall, very thin man wearing a dark European suit and tie. It was as outrageous a costume as I’d seen that night. I wondered what his routine was, so I waited at the bar a moment, eavesdropping.

“My name is Bond,” said the guy. “James Bond.” As if there could be any doubt.

The two women looked frightened. “Oh, my God,” one of them whispered.

My turn. I walked up behind the moddy and grabbed one of his wrists. I slipped my thumb over his thumbnail and forced it down and into his palm. He cried out in pain. “Come along, Double-oh-seven, old man.” I murmured in his ear, “let’s peddle it somewhere else.” I escorted him to the door and gave him a hefty shove out into the muggy, rain-scented darkness.

The two women looked at me as if I were the Messiah returning with their personal salvations sealed in separate envelopes. “Thank you,” said the one with the camera. She was speaking French. “I don’t know what else to say except thanks.”

“Its nothing,” I said. “I don’t like to see these people with their plug-in personality modules bothering anybody but another moddy.”

The second woman looked bewildered. “A moddy, young man?” Like they didn’t have them wherever she came from.

“Yeah.