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No, the concierge was not an option, Isaac had to come up with something else. He went

back to the Sass Café and had a word with the manager there. Monaco wasn’t New York, thank God, and all the locals more or less knew each other. The manager promised to text Isaac if he saw her. Isaac visited a few more restaurants and snazzy bars and left his request at five of them.

In the evening he ran through the rich list one more time and picked another pair of

candidates just in case. Since they might not live at the address given, it would be best to find out where they were really located. Whoever turned up first would be the first, then he copied out the details of another four people with various skills from among the ones who weren’t rich. Among them an artist and a photographer. Artists were often extremely independent and free-minded, regardless of how much money they had. Good allies. “If I were an artist, I’d ask Michelle to pose for me,” Isaac fantasized. Yes, artists were often outsiders, only Isaac couldn’t imagine what use their knowledge could be for his plans. “But it won’t hurt,” he decided writing out a couple of addresses.

On the third day he got lucky. A huge firework display was taking place in Monaco, and

Michelle posted two beautiful photos. Isaac didn’t spot them immediately, but figured out roughly where they had been taken – the girl had been photographed on the roof of the Hotel Fairmont. It was only a ten minute walk from here to there he ought to arrive in time. And he did.

Michelle and a girlfriend of hers were sitting there, surrounded by a group of respectably dressed men. “My God, how sexy she is,” Isaac thought. Pascal would have come on to someone like that no problem, never mind about the competition. Isaac couldn’t do that. In his mind he replayed his friend’s way of acting and tried to tune in to it.

There wasn’t a single free table anywhere nearby – of course not, with a firework display like this, everything had been booked in advance. Isaac hesitated for a moment and stopped not far away from the restroom. It was a hot evening and there were several bottles of water and champagne standing on her table. Sooner or later she’d decide to visit the facility and the way out of the restaurant was right here too, so she couldn’t just disappear.

She wore an elegant beige cocktail dress, not too revealing, but short enough. Isaac’s

fantasy immediately shortened it even further and he imagined what was hiding a little bit higher.

No watch or bracelets adorned those lovely arms that were already beautiful and the legs…

better not to describe them at all. Skyscraper legs, with little, sexy knees. This girl was the real deal, for sure. How lucky she was to be born like this, and not to a poor family too. Isaac noticed that she drank water, while the men kept competing with each other to top up her half-empty glass of champagne.

Eventually, after slightly adjusting her dress, Michelle set off arm-in-arm with her

girlfriend, in the required direction. Sipping on his cocktail, Isaac tried to stand more naturally but felt too nervous and fidgety. His embarrassment made everything horribly difficult, he awkwardly tried find a better pose and in the end disaster struck. In his last and most desperate effort to make himself look as interesting as possible, he leaned against a door on his elbow, but the door turned out to be slightly open and swung away from him. Isaac managed to trip over his own foot, his glass treacherously slipped out of his hands and shattered with a loud crash. The contents of the glass flew out onto the feet of Michelle and her girlfriend covering their light-colored shoes with numerous drops of dark, wet liquid. Isaac felt like finding a hole and crawling into it and must have looked really frightened, because Michelle gave an enchanting smile, put her hand on Isaac’s shoulder and said in a gentle voice: “Don’t worry about it, we’re fine. Just get yourself another cocktail and they’ll clear this up.”

Thunderstruck, Isaac broke out in a cold sweat, but Michelle walked away imperturbably

to where she was going. The admirers who had immediately darted across to the scene of the incident cast glances of contempt at Isaac.

“I’ve offended their queen!” Isaac thought spitefully. He responded to the final member of her royal retinue with an expression so bellicose that the group’s contempt evaporated instantly and he quickly made himself scarce. There you go, you’re not lounging about on your yachts now. Unlike them, Isaac had experience of being in real fights, and the final admirer had realized that if he was pushed just a tiny bit further, he was ready to attack, and to hell with the consequences.

Michelle’s party left to go somewhere else, but ten minutes later Isaac got a text from the Sass: “Michelle’s here!” Fortunately, it wasn’t the entire posse at the Sass, only Michelle and her girlfriend with a young guy. Isaac perched where the girl would see him and she looked in his direction several times, but seemed to look straight through Isaac, without noticing him at all. He obviously didn’t fall within the range of her interest. If she did recognize him as the young man who dropped his cocktail and broke the glass, she didn’t give any sign of it. No matter how hard Isaac glared at her, nothing happened.

“Wrong choice,” Isaac thought sadly. “But okay, there are still the other candidates.”

Even though he had failed to attract any interest at all, Isaac decided to try to get acquainted anyway. “After all, this is business,” he thought, psyching himself up. Concentrating as hard as he could, he convinced himself that not to approach her would be cowardice and he had nothing to lose. “I’ll finish my cocktail and walk up to her,” he thought coming up with a way to put things off for five minutes. Eventually, after gathering all his courage, he put his glass on the table and set off towards the spot where Michelle was sitting.

“Excuse me, Michelle, but could I have a couple of words with you?” Isaac said with his absolutely cutest smile. “I hope you’re not upset, are you, that it was only my cocktail that fell at your feet, and not me?” The girl failed to appreciate his humor and looked at him without any particular curiosity. It was obvious that she had absolutely no interest in getting to know strangers in public places.

“What do you want? Do you two know each other?” the girl’s male friend asked, coming

to her aid.

“No, we don’t know each other. My name’s Isaac, and there’s something very important

that I need to say.”

Michelle shook her head very slightly and her young man continued.

“Isaac, please have the courtesy to leave us alone. We want to relax; we don’t want to

make any new acquaintances. No one’s angry with you because of the broken glass.”

“But it’s very important,” said Isaac, trying to insist.

“If it’s so important, tell us. I have no secrets from my friends,” Michelle intervened.

“Well you see, Michelle, you have a very high creativity, and so do I. And there are other people like us. People who don’t like Collective Mind,” Isaac rattled off. “And we can’t just sit back and do nothing. We can do a lot. And you can help to do it.”

Unfortunately, Michelle and her companions saw Isaac as nothing more than an

overexcited weirdo who should be given as wide a berth as possible. Michelle’s reflex response was to lean back on her chair with her arms crossed.

“Please,” Isaac entreated her, “let me finish. You’re intelligent, rich and very beautiful. I can’t manage it on my own, I need your help. I’m not a psycho, I’m an absolutely normal young guy…an inventor, and I have a high creativity quotient.”

“And you broke that cocktail glass very inventively, didn’t you?” Michelle’s male friend persisted. This was his great chance to protect the beautiful model from an obnoxious gadfly, and he wanted to milk the opportunity dry.

He got up off his chair and stood between Isaac and Michelle.

“Please leave the easy way.”

“And what if I don’t?” asked Isaac, starting to get angry and immediately regretted it. His aggression only made Michelle more frightened. A good half of the restaurant was already watching their table, including the irate manager, the acquaintance who had sent Isaac the text.

“All right, I’m sorry. I’m leaving.” Isaac looked at Michelle one last time, she was so beautiful and so indifferent. She realized she would never make any kind of ally and was reveling in her own life of admirers and luxury. People like that would never risk disrupting their own comfortable stability. Michelle didn’t even seem so very beautiful now. Her alarm had turned her face pale and slightly drawn. Her charm had evaporated instantly and her eyes peered out spitefully from under brows. Isaac suddenly smiled. He realized that he was stronger than many brilliant or rich people. Even in his present condition he was capable of far more than many of the people around him.

“See you later, Michelle,” Isaac said with a wave of his hand and walked away with a

confident stride. Maybe his mission had failed, but he felt an incredible rush of energy at having moved from theory to action.

Isaac’s legs carried him home without any thought. He wanted to run, not walk and get

back to his computer as soon as possible. He didn’t really know what had happened, but his head was absolutely clear and working at maximum capacity.

It was time to search among the ones who had nothing to lose, those who attacked the

Agency openly. He had to look at all their social networks again with a maximal focus on the marginal types. To hell with any society celebrities. To hell with the rich ones. First he had to create the backbone.

Isaac carried on working and analyzing until morning. It appeared that the most suitable candidate was the marginal Laurent-Marie, so called Bikie, after all with his obvious contempt for Einsteiner. Some posts reeked of disillusionment and rage, everything that Isaac himself felt yesterday. A conversation with him would go differently for sure. One of Bikie’s strong points was his profession as a systems administrator and programmer. And the candidate worked as a barman, had no money, all the makings of an anarchist, and on top of that was as strong as an ox.

If things worked out with him, physical security would come as part the deal. It wouldn’t take much to find Bikie, he definitely didn’t have a concierge for correspondence and so tracking him down would be easy.

Thinking about physical protection, Isaac spotted another candidate, a husky young

athletically built, black guy... With such high creativity rating, what could have attracted him to sport, Isaac wondered. If you had enough natural talent both for sport and for using your brain, then why not? Abdul Djebali, age twenty-three, a member of the national track and field team. A French father and Algerian mother. A Muslim. Training, training, more training. “Aha, I know that gym,” Isaac exclaimed, examining his Instagram. “That’s where I’ll find him.”

Feeling a bit relaxed, Isaac poked his nose into another rating that he hadn’t seen before.

“Creativity statistics on children born to Happies”. Notional zero, notional zero, zero again, zero for almost all of them…not even Collective Mind could bring itself to call these figures a rating.

Isaac went to bed, but tossed and turned restlessly even though it was already past

sunrise. He fell asleep around eight, maybe later, and then woke up at least twice, the clock showing 8.40 and 9.30. He had to force himself to sleep a bit longer: He had two candidates for today, and the second one worked until three in the morning. Isaac closed the curtains tightly, plunging the room in total darkness and fell sound sleep.

The administrator at the gym said that the afternoon training would finish at four o’clock.

Isaac went to grab a pizza and came back a little earlier than that. When he spotted Abdul, he introduced himself and asked what he was doing after the gym. They agreed to sit and talk in a café in the port at six. The sportsman turned out to be a very amiable guy. That was the pattern –

the less money people had, the more accessible they were.

With nothing else to do, Isaac went straight to the café. He took a table on the terrace and examined the yachts. Some were empty; some had jolly groups sitting on them, with music playing. Sailing into Monaco was always an event and the people were in an excellent mood.

“I live here,” thought Isaac, “but I don’t see the beauty of this place. My eyes stopped registering it ages ago; I can’t even remember the last time I looked at the sea. I don’t value what I have. But people are willing to cross the ocean to be here for just one day.”

Abdul found Isaac engrossed in these thoughts.

Isaac called over a waiter and ordered a large bottle of water. There was an awkward

pause.

“Abdul, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions and make you a proposal. A week ago I almost became a Happy, but I was lucky, God spared me or maybe I was just fortunate I decided it wasn’t just a coincidence. I didn’t like the present system and the downloading craze. My gut feeling told me it was wrong. And if you dig under the surface, some points that are very unpleasant for the Agency will come creeping out.”

Isaac made sure that Abdul was listening to him and continued.

“I know you have a very high creativity level. You had it measured two years ago in the local branch. Why didn’t you download?”

“Well, apart from my creativity, I have couple of other things I can use to pull through. I can always download if I wish. Meanwhile I am in training and getting excellent results. In just a little while, I’ll make the national team.”

“I also want to ask you to join a team, a team of people who will sort all of this out

independently. And maybe put an end to all of it.”

“All of what?”

“Einsteiner, downloading creativity. It all looks just too smooth.”

“And what do you want from me?”

“To take part. I want you to help.”

“But how?”

“Abdul, can I trust you?”

“Sure. No matter what, this conversation is just between you and me.”

“Great. I’m looking for partners, those with high intellect and tons of creativity to work together to stop this idiotic trend of turning people into stupid amoebae. You see, happies say that they’re happy. But a drugged-up junkie is happy too, as long as the drug is still in his blood. A junkie is just a sick person. What if the Happies are sick too? Like being on a high. No Happy has ever returned to a normal state.”