Monica was watching a holomovie on the Mystery Channel and scaring herself silly. It was as if the bad guys were actually prowling around her apartment while she sat, terrified, anchored to her chair - the only solid object in a roomful of malevolent mobsters kicking over chairs, overturning tables and spilling the contents of a dresser all over the floor.

She had settled on some fictional entertainment after several hours of immersing herself in the intricacies of a neuro-photonics problem. Two of her research team had been trying to crack the conundrum known as the Princeton Problem, a variation of the Turing Test, and she had been sifting through hundreds of hours of data collected by a team of scientists at Princeton University, looking for flaws and inconsistencies.

Four hours into intense number shuffling, she began to wish she was either a million kilometers away or dead. She had no doubt the data amassed by the Princeton team could be replicated, but with two hours of inspecting synaptic equations concerning the existence of mental enzymes ahead of her, she felt ready to abandon physics and earn her living busking on the streets. Too bad she couldn't play the guitar and her singing voice sounded like a dying frog.

So she took time out to watch a trashy murder mystery and now realized that while fans of this stuff took the shock and terror in their stride, she was just plain frightened. She wished she had chosen a travel program instead.

"Travel channel," she said and waited while the miasma of murdering gangsters and vengeance-seeking lawmen dissolved into the light particles from whence they came. A confection of pixelated pastoral scenes were gathering around her, as if she were God sitting in her Godseat deliberating which part of her created world she wanted to visit.

She chose the South of France, more or less on a whim, and now she was gazing from her cafe-terrasse view at a sun-dappled Cote d'Azur street spreading around her. The warm, biscuit-colored buildings, the flagstone pavements, the dark alleys that led from grand old houses to hidden courtyards all reeked of Southern France, as did the smells which were either real or imagined: the pungent odor of strong coffee, the whiff of fresh baguettes and croissants, the faint but unmistakable taint of garlic in the sea air mingled with the dusty tang of herbs hanging up to dry in someone's kitchen window.

She knew it was after eleven at night in a suburb of North East London, not eleven in the morning in Antibes, so the thought of food quickly led her to imagine, and then drool over, a pizza: one with a thin, crispy base, lots of elastic, stringy cheese, thick with tomato paste and humming with onion and anchovies, all washed down with a cold cola.

Unable to stop herself, her mouth watering, she tuned in to her ajna and said "pizza delivery." The square black pad on her left wrist began to glow as a menu presented itself, and the cultured female voice said "favorite or choose?"

"Favorite," Monica said. The voice paused for about three minutes and then told her the delivery would arrive in twenty. She knew how much it would cost, including a two hundred Ebuck tip, so she simply said "debit" to the credit pad on her right wrist.

No longer interested in the Provencal street and the burbling travel monolog coming from hidden speakers, she dismissed it and went into the kitchen to look for a plate, a drinking glass and some silverware. She didn't like to eat pizza straight from the box, since it encouraged her to overstuff herself, and the ritual of tableware, napkin and a lit candle was pleasing in itself.

Time I gave Robo The Hard-Working Robochef a night off.  She bustled about, laying out a check tablecloth and dressing it with condiments and a candleholder.

Her thoughts turned to Jay and, annoyingly, to Yuke Corrigan, while she waited for the delivery car to dock in outside her balcony. It was embarrassing to her that someone so obviously phony had strung her along for so long and she realized she would have to put a stop to his shenanigans. She resolved to buzz or text Professor Fossett first thing and spill the beans about his mooching and stalking.

She stood at the balcony window and watched her quiet little street, almost devoid of traffic at this late hour. Eventually, she glimpsed the silver outline of a vehicle threading its way through the dark Streamfeed. The delivery boy at last. Her stomach growled and rumbled and she mentally saw herself  hauling the plastic bag with its greasy, fizzy contents over the balcony railing.

When the vehicle drew near her flat it slowed but didn't stop. Monica was about to cry out "Hey, back here!" when the driver looked at her, startled. Then he gave her a big smirk, and she recognized Yuke Corrigan. The car shot off like a fish with a shark on its tail, leaving her in shock. A few moments later, the delivery car pulled up and a scraping adolescent voice issued from the side window.

"Medium pizza and Coke."

"Yes, thank you." There was a quaver in her voice. She took the warm bag and hurried to the kitchen. Her shock was giving way to anger. Now he was really pushing the envelope. He would have to be stopped. Unpacking the bag on the kitchen table, she felt a chill tingling her back and she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She had a slightly wild look and her face was flushed. 

So this is how I look when I've seen something evil.