It was the light, the sodium glare of the overheads which penetrated every object to the last molecule - every tangerine, apple, every orange; it was the fact of each obscene aubergine gleaming with it, bouncing it off purple, pesticide-perfect hide; and it was, most of all, the fact of this hyperreal, brain-numbing light bothering precisely no-one except him that was driving Jo into a mounting frenzy, the kind of which Tesco 24-7 had rarely had the pleasure of playing host to.

Of course, CCTV processor 82-b, regarding Jo coolly from its vantage point at the entrance to the store, saw none of this. The processes of his mind remained a non-event to it. All it registered was his hideously emaciated figure lurching about by the first bin of apples, yanking at the lid furiously.

'Apples,' it could hear him saying. 'I want them. Give them to me now.' The apple bin, however, was refusing steadfastly to open its tray. Its scratchy little voice synth was stuck on repeat, going:

'I'm-sorry-customer-you-already-have-a-full-store-of-fruit-at-home.

Why-not-try-our-Summer-Vegetable-Selection...Thank you,' over and over again. Jo's motorised trolley had started, quite aggressively, to make its way towards the vegetable aisle, but he hung onto it doggedly, ignoring the squealing of its various servo-motors. He pressed on: 'But I don't want that fruit at home. It's shit. I want those Granny Smiths in there; give them to me.'

Unit 82-b heard all of this as well, but it understood only three of the words involved, which were 'fruit', 'Grannny Smiths', and 'shit'. 82-b was, because of its programming, particularly interested in that word 'shit' and, after a moment's deliberation, it sent a sample of Jo's last 30 seconds of behaviour to the customer security unit, which (having very little to do right then) assiduously transcribed his words onto a little file with Jo's mugshot, debit card status, address and network number. The file had a 'notes' section which now read: 'Swearing; aggressiveness in food hall;' and then, rather more cryptically: 'why the sunglasses?'

All this happened in approximately 1.3 seconds, during which time Lo-Fi Jo had kicked the apple bin and started to go in disgusted circles around one of the vegetable stands. 'Fuck it,' 82-b could hear him saying, and was busy making another report on that at the exact moment when Jo felt the tap on his shoulder. This tapping, to Jo's perturbation, was produced by the hand of the man they called Fats Fuller who now began to follow him in circles around the apples bin, leering and blinking suggestively.

The thing about Fuller was that he was undeniably Fat. No-one, however, could work out quite how he had managed to get that way, since the discrete mechanisms of the flesh were now thoroughly and comprehensively dictated to by the immense pressure of global markets which shifted produce, organic and synthesised, with a terrible precision which both anticipated and precluded any attempt at cultivating an extra store of blubber. Some people, it's true, would manage to build up a meagre pot, but as soon as it was noticed the fatty food bins would just lock up and that would be that. Fuller, despite all of this, had managed to culture a robust Michelin tyre for himself which he was at this moment patting with unsuppressed pride and glee, his head nodding vigorously. 'Jo,' he was saying very, very slowly - a trick which, he maintained, utterly perplexed the CCTV units- 'I've made a food-tray baffler.' And as if in confirmation of this, he whipped out a pencil-sized, stubby black wand made out of some kind of carbon fibre.

'That's amazing,' said Jo without the slightest hint of interest, and scooted off in the other direction. Fats Fuller was a twist scammer, always on the look out for a score on tick because, for one reason or another, he was forever committed to solving the equation of being a hopeless drug addict and yet having no credit whatsoever. Jo turned away from him and made for the ready-packed salad aisle, where the spinach could be seen glowing with a preternatural verdance. Fuller stuck close behind him.

'Fuller,' Jo suggested, 'why don't you fuck off somewhere? I'm dry anyway,' he lied, 'so there's absolutely no point.'

'Watch this,' the fat man replied, again very slowly. And as he passed the wand over the locked spinach bins they popped open in concert.

'Your spinach credit is good, Mr. Fuller,' they chimed pleasantly.

'That's amazing,' Jo said again, this time palpably impressed. He squinted at Fats Fuller through his shades: 'So - what do you want for it?'

That question - also recorded and archived - was not one understood by the sub-mental CCTV units clustered around them. It would, however, be parsed into significance, days later, by more powerful networks of computers which, noting the presence of an exchange of capital without a discernible product in sight, would investigate the proper significance of Fuller's little wand. Having registered even the darkest glimmer of a nascent new market, these systems would pass along their assessments to surrogate nodes, concerned with assessing data on broader, darker bases. Thus was human life, become data, pushed deep into the network.

Fuller's little wand, unbeknownst to him or anyone else for that matter, would, in precisely 36 hours and 20 seconds, become classified as military technology and be given the highest priority for retrieval. Jo, sitting almost happily at home, munching smugly through his bowl of Granny Smiths, would be summarily restrained whilst the food-tray baffler was recovered and taken away for 'research purposes'. In the process his goldfish bowl would be knocked over, killing the fish outright; he would be handcuffed temporarily causing visible welts to appear on his wrists, and a phalanx of over-zealous civil servants would come within inches of discovering his entire stash of twist.

But all that, of course, was to happen another day. At this moment it was just the merest gleam in the system's inscrutable, darkling eye.

'What,' Jo was repeating, 'do you want for it?' And Fats Fuller, apprehending immediately the immense advantage to his narcotic uptake represented by the trade, was carefully calculating his reply.

J.J. King [jamie@jamie.com]