The flophouse room had seven hundred and eighty-six screen channels, holoporn and current affairs both advertised in lurid colours on the standby display, a hinged, self-cleansing double bed that stank of disinfectant and a self-contained shower stall that was beginning to list away from the wall it had once been epoxied to. I peered out of the single grimy window. It was the middle of the night in Bay City, and there was a fine, misty rain falling. My deadline with Ortega was running out.