The van door slid open, and LR-091 was dumped into the street. Because he was still feeling groggy after receiving a transport med, he didn’t move until a pair of hooded technicians picked him up under the arms and carried him to the sidewalk. A security guard followed after and took the opportunity to take one last shot at him with his baton. LR-091 fell backwards into a pile of refuse. Then, without so much as a second glance, the guard and the technicians climbed back into their white vehicle and returned to the megacorp's marina.

By the time LR-091 was aware of his surroundings again, afternoon had turned to night, and a light rain had begun to fall. So, climbing to his feet, he crossed his arms over his chest as the evening air was cool and he was still wearing the white scrub-like uniform he’d been issued inside the detention center.

Moving down the sidewalk, he dabbed at the wound on his forehead while the few people moving in his direction eyed him suspiciously as he limped past. There was a young man with a purple mohawk before two waxen-faced women wearing combat boots. After glancing over his shoulder at the latter two, LR-091 realized he’d been dumped somewhere in the city he’d been able to see from the pharmacon.

He entered a crowd a few moments later. Many on the street appeared to take their fashion cues from the first individuals he’d encountered. However, LR-091 also noticed that people from myriad cultural backgrounds were among those in the throng: Chinese, Indian, African, and more. Some of the men and women were working as open-air vendors, selling fresh seafood and various other meat products. There was a pork-like scent in the air, mingling with the odor of nearby dumpsters. LR-091 made eye contact with a woman who was smiling at another’s joke, exposing the fact that she was missing one of her front teeth. Both men and women were prostituting themselves outside of seedy clubs, but it was difficult to determine which was which. They danced in the windows as cheap perfumes wafted out of the brothels. Neon lights glowed over the doors.

A misty rain fell as LR-091 pushed through the mass, packed shoulder to shoulder—at least, until he reached a type of square. Here, he noticed several digital billboards, but one caught his eye for displaying images of far more bourgeois scenes. LR-091 observed a woman performing several domestic duties, including laundry and dishwashing. As she approached the camera, growing larger on the screen, he realized why he recognized her. The woman’s hair was different, but there was no doubt this was CM-060, whom he now recognized as a commercially available android.

Looking away at a nearby fountain, he noticed it had been drained and covered with graffiti. The tags didn’t stop there; they adorned all of the abandoned buildings in the square as high as the artist could reach—sometimes higher. Homeless men and women gathered around fires, and drug addicts passed out or expired. LR-091 maneuvered around a young man face down in the street, then looked toward a skinny man with dreads who was berating a shorter woman.

When the man struck the woman, LR-091 paused, but the skinny man pointed at him, saying, “Hey, man! You stay out of this!”

He then began to shake the woman.

A few minutes later, LR-091 found himself leaning against a concrete pylon supporting an overhead highway. He was eyeing a short man in a dirty undershirt, paper hat, and yellow rain slicker who was hawking sticks of synthetic meat. After sinking to the damp ground, LR-091 turned his head and saw a white plastic bottle with the gray letters PI printed on the outside. He reached for it, wondering if it might contain something that might make all of this go away.