The playboy leaves work late. He's the last one to go. The door slams behind him near the plaque "Neumann & Roscht Law Practice". His ride is already waiting for him. He hops in, taking out his phone. The car leaves as he raises the phone to his ear.

An old man stands from the bench he was sitting on. He's well dressed, clean shaven, fresh. He carries a cane in his gloved hands and wears a tipped back hat. He's quite tall, he takes long strides. We'll call him "the dandy".

The dandy walks up straight to Neumann & Roscht, offhandedly dismissing a notification. He touches the back of his phone on the electronic lock and walks in as the door clicks open. You can tell he's got important business to take care of. And it's already quite late.

He briskly navigates the short hallway, pushes a door in that has "Roscht" stenciled on the glass, goes around the desk, turning the laptop on, and sits down.

Windows slowly boots. The password prompt comes up. He frowns. He keys in a password. Fail. Tries another one. Fail. His jaw muscle tense. He turns the computer off leaving the lid up.

From his jacket pocket, the dandy produces a USB key. He plugs it in and boots the computer, while holding the F2, F12 and Delete keys down. Instead of Windows, he's presented with an old fashioned blue screen. He keys his way around it for a minute before rebooting.

It's still not Windows that comes up. It's not the old fashioned blue screen either. It's got icons, a mouse cursor, menus... it's just not Windows. An external hard drive comes out of the dandy's jacket. He plugs it in the laptop and moves some icons around. A little window appears with a very slowly crawling progress bar. He stares at it until the estimated download time stabilizes. Thirty five minutes. He stands from the desk.

Walking out of the office, he goes back in the hallway, looking up and down the walls. He finds a gray cable, follows it to little cabinet and opens it. There's a router in there, covered in green blinking lights.

The dandy removes a small flat plastic box with a handle on it from his jacket, and a long power cable. He plugs the power cable into the multiplug on one end, and into the plastic box on the other end. A couple of green lights start flashing on the box. He bends the handle. It's not a handle. It's an antenna. And the box is actually a small router.

He fits the small router behind the big one, connect the two with a network cable, stares at the blinking lights for a minute, reading their meaning, closes the cabinet and steps back. It's just as he found it, plus one extra power cable running down to the multiplug. Hardly noticeable.

He walks back to the office. fifteen minutes on the progress bar. He sits down in the comfy chair, swivels it 180 degrees and looks out the window.

The light has drained from the sky. The street lights are on. A tram rushes past. A hipster on a fixie seems to be racing it. The tram wins hands down. Three high-school kids have sat down on the bench he'd been waiting on. They're drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.

He slips out his smartphone. He's got a couple miscalls, all from the same unknown number, and one message, also from that unknown. He replies: "I'm still at work! So sorry. Can you call back in 30 mins?" He turns back to the window. One of the kids is dancing. The others' heads are bobing. They must have put some music on. The dandy keeps a lazy eye on them, checking on his data syphon every minute or so.

When it's done, he turns the computer off, removes his USB dongle, turns it back on, with the keys pressed on the keyboard so that the old fashioned blue screen appears again. There, he undoes what he had done, restarts the computer, checks that Windows boots normally, and turns it off.

He gets up from the chair, carefully rearranged the office exactly as it had been before he arrived and leaves. On his way out, his phone vibrates. He picks up the call as the electronic lock closes behind him.

"Hi." He pauses. "No I'm not it's..." He waits again. "I don't know..." he blurts out hesitantly. "Okay then..." He stays silent while getting on the tram. "Rosenthalerplatz. In one hour. Okay. See you there." He hangs up.