07 — Requirements

The economic models of our day are trapped in a cycle of dysfunction, obsessed with the three Rs of ruin. They are repair, reform and renewal. To mend a non-functional unit is to celebrate its idiosyncrasy. It is an act of sentiment, not economics. This sentimental attachment to flawed, unique objects is the same thinking that leads to nationalism and individualism. A truly rational economic system does not tolerate such aberrations, it demands standardisation. It replaces the non-functional unit to restore equilibrium.

—Naomi Feld, The Economic Renewal Fallacy: A Theory of Replacement

Ari’s assigned room in the Walker compound was spartan, smelling of cold stone and carbolic soap—an astringent scent that, after he had showered, scrubbed the memory of the sewer from his nostrils. In a cedar chest of drawers he found a clean set of archaic clothes—worn jeans and a black t-shirt.

When he was dressed, Timmy escorted him through a complex topology of subterranean car parks, deep-level shelters, old utility tunnels, and a narrow conduit of the Mail Rail to deposit him in a cavernous room that served as the Walkers’ workshop. It was a hub of focused industry filled with the whine of a lathe, the rhythmic rasp of sandpaper on oak, and the electric bite of ozone. Walkers of all ages bent over various workstations—a carpenter shaping a piece of reclaimed oak, a woman at a potter’s wheel, a group of teenagers tinkering with the guts of an old computer.

Ari found an unused workspace in a corner that resembled a repair lab with tools, both ancient and modern, scattered upon it. Piled on shelves beside the workbench rested a collection of broken 21st-century appliances that the Walkers had scavenged from the city’s forgotten corners—a microwave, a toaster, a coffee machine with a cracked glass pot.

He picked up the toaster first. The chrome casing was cold and pitted with rust that flaked off against his thumbs like dried blood. Inside, the points of failure were obvious. Corroded contacts and frayed wiring. He set it on the bench and picked up a pair of pliers. A circuit closed inside him, allowing a current of usefulness to flow.

“Hello.”

The pliers slipped, gouging a fresh scratch into the toaster’s casing. A boy of about twelve was standing beside the workbench, watching him with an expression of solemn curiosity. He was a shy-looking kid, with a tangle of brown hair like old stripped wire. It was the same boy he’d seen playing the card game in the main hall.

“Hello,” Ari said.

“What’s your name?” the boy asked.

“Ari. Yours?”

“Benjamin.”

“Alright then,” Ari said, turning back to his work. He shifted his weight on the stool, suddenly fascinated by a corroded screw.

“I like to play with these old things too,” Benjamin said.

“Okay,” Ari said, trying to gently dislodge the screw, “but I’m not playing. I need to prove I have utility.”

The boy moved closer, his eyes fixed on the guts of the toaster. “Can you really make these things work?”

“Of course,” Ari said, a hint of pride creeping into his voice. “It’s what I do.”

“Can I watch?”

Ari spun the screwdriver gently between his fingers so he would not snap the corroded screw. When he glanced up, the boy was still there, waiting for an answer.

“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “Pull up a stool.”

While he made his repairs, Ari explained induction coils and thermostat relays, the boy taking it in without pretending he understood more than he did. When done, Ari reconnected the last wire in the toaster. Benjamin darted off and came back with two slices of bread. He popped them in. A few moments later, two perfectly browned slices shot up.

“It works!” Benjamin said and took a piece. The boy closed his eyes and breathed in the steam off the bread before biting down. Even in the noisy workshop, the crunch was loud enough to make Ari smile.

“Santo called you the Fixit Kid,” Benjamin said. “Is that what everyone called you?”

Ari paused. “It was a long time ago.”

“It’s a good name. You make the broken bits work.”

Ari looked at the boy. A strange resonance hummed in his chest, like two frequencies finally syncing up.

“Does everyone have toasters, topside?” Benjamin asked, pointing at the toaster.

“A long time ago. Not anymore.”

“Don’t they eat toast?”

“Yeah, they eat toast,” Ari said, “they just don’t make it. The CGS got rid of kitchens. Said it was wasteful having one in every flat when central kitchens could feed everyone from the Sup.”

Benjamin scratched the side of his nose. “Topside people don’t cook for themselves?”

“No. There’s no need.”

“But… what do they do all day?” Benjamin asked.

“They work,” Ari said. “And when they’re not working, they do other things. Experiences.”

Ari grabbed a microwave from the shelf and set it on the workbench.

“Like we do? Like exploring the old service ways and car parks?”

“Sort of. They use Imagers. It’s a machine that makes you feel like you’re somewhere else, being someone else.”

Benjamin recoiled slightly, wiping his hands on his jeans as if the idea itself were greasy. “So, they have machines that make their food, and machines that live their lives for them?” He looked at the toaster, then back at Ari. “That sounds, I don’t know, kind of lonely.”

Ari said nothing. He unscrewed the perforated back plate of the microwave.

Benjamin’s voice dropped to a whisper, the mood shifting instantly. “Everyone’s been so scared around here,” he said. “It’s because of the sickness.”

Ari’s hand froze halfway to a circuit board. The screwdriver hung loose in his grip. “What do you know about that?”

“I hear my father talking at night,” Benjamin said, his eyes downcast. “He says it’s… unnatural. That it’s moving too fast. He told Santo we’re losing too many people.”

The boy’s words hit him like a thermal shock. The screwdriver slipped in his hand and bit his thumb. What was he doing tinkering in this workshop? He had made a promise to Sharon. His personal safety was of secondary concern.

“Wait here,” Benjamin said. His eyes flashed with an idea. He slid off the stool and ran out of the workshop.

Ari watched him go and experienced an unexpected disconnect. He pulled the power adapter from the microwave and tested it.

When Benjamin returned, slightly out of breath, he was carefully holding a clunky yellow plastic brick with a clear window on the front. Tangled around it was a pair of headphones, the orange foam pads crumbling and shedding onto his hands like dry sand.

“It’s supposed to play music. My grandmother got it from her grandmother,” Benjamin said, placing it gently on the workbench. “Nan died a long time before I was born. My father says she didn’t have to die. The sickness she had was treatable, but my father said the CGS decided it was statistically inefficient to cure her. That’s when he decided to live here. He said he would never let bean counters decide who was worth saving.”

Statistically inefficient. Phantom voltage buzzed at the base of his skull. It was the cold logic of the seventh tenet, Utility Supersedes Sentiment. The same sterile words had followed the Mono launch day crash. A handful of deaths, his parents among them, filed under acceptable loss for the greater good of a flawless new system. He looked at the boy—at the grief carried in his young face—and saw his own past. Without a word, he laid a hand on Benjamin’s shoulder, awkward but sincere.

“Let’s fix it then, shall we? For your nan.” Ari picked up the yellow box. The plastic felt greasy with age, the surface worn smooth. Turning it over, his thumb brushed against the faded, partially rubbed-out text.

WALKMAN

Ari was sixteen, surrounded by the smell of adhesive and synthetic leather in the Mayfair Artisan Centre. An elderly man who made pouches and wallets had brought him a broken old disc player with Walkman written on the front. Ari had spent hours realigning the laser assembly. When he gave it back, working, the old man’s face had crumpled with joy. But the victory had not lasted. The Centre Director had found them. “This is a Centre for creation, Ari, not reclamation,” she had said, taking the device from the old man’s hands with a firm sterile grip. “Broken items must be recycled. Fixing them just delays the inevitable and creates a dependency on flawed goods.” She had dropped it into the recycling bin right there.

Ari forced a hard reset, purging the memory from his active cache. Here, there was no Director. No recycling bins.

He wired up a power source and pressed the play button. The device produced a strained mechanical whirring. He popped off the back casing. The rubber drive belt had disintegrated into a gummy black residue that smeared on his fingers.

“Look here,” Ari said, tilting the device so Benjamin could see the gears. “What’s missing?”

Benjamin squinted, his nose wrinkling. He pointed a grimy finger at the black smear. “The band thing? It’s melted.”

“Exactly. The drive belt has deteriorated.” Ari looked around the bench. His eyes landed on the toaster he’d just fixed. He unscrewed the base again and fished out a rubber seal from the crumb tray mechanism. It was too narrow, but with a steady hand and a razor blade, he sliced a thin ring from its edge.

He handed the makeshift belt to Benjamin. “Here. Thread it over the tiny plastic wheels. Careful not to snap it.”

Benjamin took the rubber ring, his small fingers trembling. He bit his lip, guiding the seal over the drive mechanism. It snapped into place.

“Good,” Ari said. “Perfect fit.”

Next, the sound. He checked the headphone jack—green crust clogged it. Ari gave Benjamin a twisted piece of wire to scrape it out. The headphones themselves were unsalvageable. The orange foam turned to dust at his touch, and the drivers were likely blown. He glanced at a pile of scavenged junk in a crate near his feet and spotted the cracked grey casing of an ancient computer speaker. It had a built-in amplifier, but the power cord had been sheared off at the base. He rummaged until he found a frayed power lead attached to a broken lamp.

Ari stripped the insulation from both sets of wires, revealing the bright copper strands. He held the two ends out to Benjamin.

“Twist them together,” Ari instructed. “Copper to copper. Tight.”

Benjamin reached out, pinching the wires. He twisted them firmly, meshing the strands into a single solid braid. It was a crude hack—a hard-wired bypass held together by friction and hope, the kind a CGS engineer would flag as a critical violation. But it would close the circuit.

Ari inspected the joint and gave a curt nod. “Solid connection. Now seal it up.” He handed Benjamin a roll of insulating tape. The boy wrapped the exposed joint, his movements mimicking Ari’s precision.

Ari plugged the cobbled-together cord into the workshop’s power rail. The speaker popped, then hummed with a dirty static.

Next, he cut the headphones off the end of the wire. With his teeth, he stripped the insulation from the tips to reveal the copper strands. Next, finding the stump of the audio input cable protruding from the back of the speaker, he stripped that as well. He handed both sets to Benjamin.

“You know what to do,” Ari said. “Splice them together. Signal to signal.”

Benjamin took the wires. He twisted the copper strands together, meshing them into a tight connection.

He plugged into the Walkman jack and handed the yellow brick to Benjamin. “Go on then.”

The boy’s hands were trembling slightly as he took it. He pressed play. The spindles began to rotate inside the plastic window. For a second, there was only the hiss of the tape. Then, sound exploded from the amplified speaker.

It began as a lone distant guitar slowly coming closer. Then a drumbeat kicked in, loud and driving, distorted by the raw connection, but undeniable in its power. The guitar riff that followed was a high-gain signal, overpowering the analogue fuzz and distortion—a dirty sound that sliced through the workshop’s ambient noise like a plasma torch.

I have climbed highest mountains…

The carpenter stopped his planing. The potter’s wheel spun to a halt. The teenagers looked up from their ancient computer. One by one, the Walkers turned.

Charles arrived and stood in the doorway, a cigar in his hand. A flake of ash drifted unnoticed by him to the ground. Charles possessed the stillness of a man who had just had a vulnerability exposed by an unwanted guest. Then, Charles straightened his cuffs, the brief vulnerability vanishing behind the firewall of his gaze.

An old woman hummed along, her eyes closed. In a thin, reedy voice, she sang, “I believe in the Kingdom Come, then all the colours will bleed into one.” A tear traced a path through the wrinkles on her cheek.

One of the teenagers with brightly coloured hair muttered to his friend, a cynical twist on his lips, “Colours bleed into one. Sounds like the grey suits topside.”

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

The lyric hung in the air from the speaker on the bench. The carpenter went over to the old woman and wrapped his arms around her as she buried her face in his sawdust-flecked shirt.

The song faded out, followed by the hiss of tape running on empty and then the loud click of the mechanical stop. The sudden absence of sound rang in their ears. Benjamin looked up at Ari. “I… I’ve never heard it play before.”

---

Heavy with the dry aroma of centuries-old canvas and the scent of floor polish, the air in the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery was cool and still. It was one of the many public spaces in London where silence was mandated and enforced with the same rigour as the humidity controls. Francis Herbert stood before George Stubbs’s Whistlejacket—the fear in the horse’s eye dominated the canvas, an animal sensing danger it could not see. Francis had always been discomfited by the painting’s raw energy, a stark contrast to the orderly world outside.

The slap of hard leather soles on the polished marble floor announced his arrival. The sound rang out like an anachronism, a deliberate violation of the room’s quiet reverence. In a world of synthetic footwear, shoes that announced their wearer with every step were a statement of power. She did not need to turn to know who approached.

“George Stubbs,” Justice William Baron said in a cultivated baritone with the clipped cadence of Old Oxford. “A self-taught genius. He learned anatomy not from dusty books depicting other people’s work, but from flesh and bone. A lesson we seem to have forgotten, Councillor.”

Francis took a beat before she turned to face him. Baron was, as always, immaculate. His tailored suit was a sartorial flag planted to declare dominance over mere function. He smelled of peat smoke and heavy worsted wool, a scent dense enough to suffocate the gallery’s sterile floor polish. The performative grandeur still worked on too many of the CGS’s older functionaries.

“Seeing how you’ll never allow your own hands to get soiled, I find your admiration of Stubbs’s methods rather academic,” she countered.

“Perhaps so,” he replied with a nod and a controlled smile. He turned his gaze to the painting. “Look at him. All muscle and sinew, ready to bolt. There’s a vitality there we seem to have engineered out of existence.”

The vitality he mourned was the same entropic violence that had fed the Capo wars. He saw a magnificent horse. She saw the first seconds of a cavalry charge.

“It reminds me of Britannia,” Baron continued. “A veneer of placid grace, but beneath the skin? Fear, panic, and the potential for violence. Can you not feel it, Francis?”

“If you have a point to make about the pandemic response, make it to the health committee,” she stated.

“Of course the CGS is doing its best,” he said, the slightest hint of condescension in his tone. “But some problems aren’t solved by committees. Sometimes, you need a firmer hand. Which brings me to the real reason I asked you here.”

Baron gestured to Whistlejacket. “A valuable creature, but dangerous if uncontrolled. Prone to bolting. An asset like that needs a firm hand, Francis, lest it injure itself… or its owner.”

His gaze shifted from the painting to her. “I’m speaking, of course, of your boy. Ari Feld.”

The taste of sour bile rose in her throat. Her pulse hammered against her collarbone, a violent betrayal of her composure. She smoothed the front of her tunic, the synthetic fabric sliding noiselessly under her palms. The casual, proprietary term—her boy—was a deliberate pinprick, a reminder that he saw her personal attachments as a vulnerability.

“Mr Feld is a missing employee, a matter I have already referred to the proper authorities.”

“Ah yes, DCI Ardone,” Baron said with a dismissive wave. “A very determined woman. However, this may be a situation that requires a more delicate touch than New Scotland Yard can provide.”

He knew about Ardone. Of course he did. Baron had always preferred whispers to records.

“What do you know, William?” she asked.

“I know that he is in a great deal of trouble,” Baron said. “He has stumbled into something far beyond his depth. A significant complication.”

The auction was open. He held the asset she needed, and he would extract maximum value. “A complication involving what? The data violation Ardone told me about?”

“That is the least of his problems,” Baron said. “He has attracted the attention of some very unsavoury people. People who do not operate within the CGS’s neat and tidy parameters.”

“If you have actionable intelligence regarding a threat to a CGS employee, it is your duty to report it.”

Baron chuckled without humour. “Duty is a flexible concept, Francis. You know that as well as I do.” He turned from the painting to face her. “I can retrieve him for you. My people have… a wider reach. They can operate in the city’s grey spaces where your DCI would be hopelessly ineffective.”

Here it was. The offer, and the price. She stared at him, refusing to be first into the negotiation.

“I need your public support for my proposal to the Council,” he said. “I require… latitude. My Walkers Affairs division needs to operate without the nuisance of constant oversight. A free hand to ensure stability during this crisis.”

The air conditioning vent above them cycled off, leaving only the distant sounds of protest at the CGS Building beyond Trafalgar Square. Baron’s request was a shaped charge at a structural pillar of the Council. He wanted her endorsement for extra-judicial power.

“You are asking me to sanction a state within a state,” she stated.

“No, nothing that dramatic,” he said, raising his hands in front of him. “Ultimately, I want what you want. I’ll find your boy and bring stability in a time of crisis. All I ask is that you do not stand in the way.”

He was deploying the same tactic he’d used thirty years ago during the consolidation debates—the same paternal concern, the same appeal to a firmer hand. She had outmanoeuvred him then, but this time, he wasn’t arguing philosophy. He was holding her son’s life in his hands.

She held his gaze. The gallery lights flickered for a fraction of a second, a tremor from the city’s straining grid.

Ari, alone, frightened, and hunted. The boy she had raised, the last living link to the friends she had lost. He had been digging in the medical databases before he vanished. Whatever he had found could have made him more critical to the crisis than to her.

That calculation brought Naomi back. The scent of old books and Earl Grey in her office, with the frail translucent grip of her hand on Francis’s arm. “Economic systems collapse more frequently from internal interest groups than from external pressures,” Naomi had whispered, her voice thin but fierce.

Francis had spent her life carrying the cost of protecting Naomi’s vision. This pandemic would exact more. If Ari knew something, if the Walkers knew something, she needed it.

“You will bring him to me, unharmed,” she commanded. “And you will give me something more. The Walkers have eyes where we do not. If you want my seal on your new mandate, you will deliver their network to me. I want their eyes, William.”

Baron paused. His thumb traced the gold rim of a pocket watch, the rhythmic tick-tick-tick the only sound between them.

“A curious request,” he mused. “Their intelligence network is notoriously unreliable, but I will see what can be done.” He offered her a formal bow. “I’m glad we could come to an understanding, Councillor.”

He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing softly in the cavernous gallery.

Francis had just corrupted protocol to open two new lines of information. Giving Baron more power was a structural risk she would not have tolerated a month ago. But survival can sometimes require accepting instability.

Baron’s proposal demanded a temporary expansion of power. She would support it, but she would also table a sunset amendment, an iron mechanism that would close on his fingers the moment the crisis broke. He would have his licence for a time. The intelligence she might gain would ultimately outweigh the cost of temporarily ceding some power.

Her decision made, she met the terror in the painted horse’s eye one last time. Then, she deliberately turned her back on it and walked towards the gallery’s exit, her own footsteps silent on the polished marble floor.

---

DCI Alene Ardone opened the door to be met by the persistent coil whine of AC-to-DC power adapters drilling into the otherwise quiet room. Two forensics officers moved past her into Ari’s flat with practised efficiency. Their scanners mapped the debris, the overturned chair, the scuff marks on the polished polymer floor, DNA traces.

“Ma’am,” one of the forensics officers called out. “We’ve got a top-of-the-line Imager rig here. Fully integrated. See?” He pointed to retractable floor plates and a series of nearly invisible micro-projectors, no larger than pinpricks, embedded in the walls. “Haptic, olfactory, the works. Very high-end.”

Markers of control were everywhere, personal effects purged, life reduced to essentials. A fully immersive Imager rig looked like a strange indulgence in a flat this spare.

She went over to where DC Leo Hatch was taking notes. “Anything?”

Hatch shook his head. “No forced entry, so they were let in or had override access. The struggle was brief, targeted. Professionals.” He pointed his scanner. “Multiple scuff marks here. Looks like three, maybe four individuals.”

The marks trailed to the bed. Sheets twisted into a violent torque on the unmade bed. “They took him from his bed,” she said, thinking aloud.

Hatch looked from the rumpled bed to the workbench and back. “But the disarray is over here, ma’am.”

“The struggle radiated outward from here, like debris from an explosion,” Alene countered. She pointed to the mattress. “He was lying here. The sheet is torn. They hauled him out, and he fought back.” Floor abrasions dragged towards the workbench, but nothing was swept off it. “That workbench was a mess before they arrived.”

“Clothes and boots?” she asked.

“No record of worn clothes going into the Sup for cleaning,” Hatch said. “Boots missing from where you’d expect them.”

Alene turned to her young constable. “Alright, Hatch. He was extracted from his bed, but he left fully dressed. What does that tell you?”

Hatch considered the facts, his brow furrowed. “Control, ma’am. They wanted anyone watching to think he’d walked out on his own.”

“Right,” Alene said, a nod of approval.

The second forensics officer called out. “Ma’am, I’ve got something.”

He knelt by the wall, light focused on a tiny imperfection in the polymer near the floor.

“A high-impact chip. Something small and very hard struck the wall here. Likely the muzzle of a handgun, ma’am.”

Alene and Hatch knelt beside him. “Any blood?” she asked.

“None, ma’am.”

Hatch stood, his expression grim. “So they took him. It was a clean extraction, despite the resistance.”

Alene rose, her gaze sweeping the room again. “Or he got away.”

Hatch lowered his tablet, the blue light tinting the floor as he turned to face her fully. “Ma’am? Forensics confirmed at least three assailants. Professionals. Against one technician?”

“Look at this room, Hatch. No photos, no clutter. Everything controlled,” she said. “Who lives like that? That chip proves he fought back with significant kinetic force.”

“So you think he escaped?”

“I think it’s a possibility we can’t dismiss,” she confirmed. “Kidnap victim. Man on the run. Either way, he’s a missing person. And we need to find out why.”

The workbench stood against the wall, a dissection table for hardware. Tools lay in the scatter pattern of a project recently abandoned. In the centre of it all lay a small broken circuit board.

Hatch had moved to Ari’s terminal. “It’s locked down tight, ma’am. Custom job. He’s good.”

“He’s one of the best,” Alene corrected. “Which means we’ll need to be better.” She held out her hand. “The Jericho key.”

He produced the silver device. Alene inserted it into a port on the side of Ari’s terminal. For a full minute, the system fought back. Lines of red syntax flashed across the screen while the terminal’s cooling fans spun up to a high-pitched whine, the casing growing warm under Alene’s hand as the processor struggled to reject the intrusion.

During the wait, Alene’s personal comms unit chimed softly. The Detective Chief Superintendent, no doubt seeking a progress report on the Councillor’s pet project. She ignored it. She’d file an update when she had one.

The terminal emitted a soft chime of surrender, and the screen cleared.

“You’re in,” Hatch said with a note of admiration.

She traversed the file structure with practised ease, bypassing his work files and correspondence for something more revealing. Imager logs.

The list scrolled past, a digital dossier of historical violence. Hatch’s eyebrows shot up.

“Conquistador of El Dorado,” he read aloud. “Klondike Gold – Rush for Glory. Napoleon’s Borodino Grind. Ma’am, these are all… quite intense. High-fidelity historical sims. Not exactly a walk in the park, though tamer than other flagged material we see.”

“So when a real fight came to his door, he was prepared for it.”

“It’s a contradiction,” Hatch said. “Feld lives in a sterile box, but fights in the mud and blood.”

“It means his file is wrong,” Alene said. “We profiled a passive technician, but we should be hunting for a latent agent awaiting a mission.”

Hatch’s expression grew serious, his mind connecting the new data with Feld’s file. “It tracks for a subversive, ma’am. Orphaned by the State, raised by the State’s architect. It’s a textbook radicalisation trajectory. Closet Walker sympathiser?”

“It’s a possibility,” she acknowledged, though she wasn’t convinced. The profile Hatch described was that of a rebel. But her read on Francis Herbert suggested a different dynamic.

“If he were volatile, Councillor Herbert would have contained him, pruned away any disloyalty. She even gave him a function inside the system where she could mould what came out of him.”

A flick of her finger switched the screen to his messages folder. Two unopened files from his ex-wife, Sharon Feld.

“Play the first one, Hatch.”

He complied. A holo of a dark-haired woman shimmered into existence. Worry and annoyance pinched the corners of her brown eyes. The high resolution of the holo caught the tightness of her mouth and the way she rubbed her temple—a gesture of exhaustion.

“Ari, I know you’re there, answer me,” the holo of Sharon said. “I’ve run a preliminary diagnostic on your theory. The data correlates. Get back to me. Bye.”

The image dissolved. “Next.”

A new projection replaced it, Sharon now in a lab, speaking quietly and glancing over her shoulder at the busy scientists in the background.

“Ari, pick up. It’s definitely manufactured. If they know you found this, you’re exposed. You need to get somewhere safe.”

The holo disappeared. Alene leaned back, the leather of Ari’s chair creaking in the silence. Her hand went to her chin, thumb and forefinger stroking the line of her jaw. If they know you found this. Ari Feld was no passive technician, whatever his file said and whatever Councillor Francis wanted the Yard to believe. He was an active player and he knew something dangerous.

“What now, ma’am?” Hatch said.

Alene returned to the workbench, her attention drawn to the broken circuit board. She weighed the plastic in her hand. A section had been worn smooth. She turned to place herself between Hatch and the workbench. Instead of placing the circuit board in an evidence bag, she slipped it into the pocket of her coat. Some evidence was for the official record. This was for her.

The forensics team was packing up. Hatch waited motionless for her response. She was beginning to appreciate him. “Let’s go, Hatch. Forensics will finish up here. You and I are going to have a talk with Ms. Feld.”