Two individuals sit at a table in front of a coffee shop: one a woman with a glowing light blue smartphone, the other a well-built African gentleman in modest clothing, with a stack of three books he refers to carefully as he talks. He writes notes of information with lettering that looks like an alien tech language, which he carefully places within one of the three books. His lunchbox seems to vibrate from time to time, giving off the impression that it might contain a huge nest of bees. The shop overlooks a street where a bright blue low-rider draws the attention of passersby as they go about their daily lives.

The woman says, "I see that you won your last competition with your organic signature flair." A slight grin crosses his face as he takes a sip of his steaming green tea, fogging his glasses; she notices for a brief second code running down the area of glasses that fogged.

He chimes back, "It keeps the sponsors happy as well as secure new ones such as this new one with Blendjet." He reaches for a gold-looking flask filled with a purple swirling ominous liquid. "It allows me to hit my caloric levels and surplus needs with ease."

"Are you not afraid of becoming another [[Dan]]?"

"Wait! How do you.." He stops note-taking for a second, shocked at the information presented by this well-dressed suited lady.

"He wanted to push the code till it broke; I understand there are keys into backrooms where the code is secondary."

They look at each other with a sense of admiration and intrigue.

"You have a store of wealth you pull from, I have a strong source code I pull from too, so how does it work?" Referring back to the half-stated question that was presented to her before.

"You load it with all your protein-rich product, make sure it's packed and press the button. With its portable battery, it's good for 15 shakes."

She rolls her eyes. "Your sponsors are not around now. I meant the box. I usually only see them from across a room."

He slides his hand across the box, now sitting on the corner of the table, with the flask firmly placed back in place again. More code runs down the side, as if intrinsically linked to his very touch. She wanted to take a picture of the emblem it seemed old as it had been through a multitude of iterations.

"Same way as yours, it just reads the code differently."

He looks over at the light blue glowing phone as if it were his own phone he had not seen in years. His gaze makes her uncomfortable, and just before she reaches out to pick it up, it blazes a dancing blue vibration at the same time that his box re-enacts the same scene. He opens his box and reaches out to pull a note with the same alien-type code. She picks up her phone; it scans her face, and the screen sends a cascade of the same frantic downpour of source code.

The two look slightly out of place in front of the coffee shop in mathematically aligned streets. They both give off the energy of timeless ness through the march of time. She looks over at him placing the note with code into the bottom-most book as it closes; the note melds the code into the pages as it closes with a snap. He picks up and places all three books back into his lunchbox, which he replaces at the foot of the table. She needs to leave; the message was semi-urgent.

"I was relocated to help with the handover of boxes, and systems are in place to limit incursions." She states.

"You are not the only one that has been sent. Two other programs have been requested."

"Is there usually this much commotion?"

She looks confused and asks, "How many iterations have you been through?"

"My first." He replies.

She makes a move to glance at his box again, remembering the markings on the box but stops herself as she sees his grin extend across his face.

"And you?"

"This will be my first light blue but 2 interantion black phone."

The foot traffic dies down to a slow trickle as the sun descends into the sky, casting a magenta cast over the blue sky.

"We should do this again. I need to leave."
She pulls out her phone and hovers it over the table and a blue light streaked acrross the table and layer by layer sketches out the outline of a cat collar with a bell. After it had fully materialises and solidifies she pickes it up and geta up quickly and turns to him, who is still seated. She can now see that his emblem has stayed a steady dancing blue, but he stares at her with a half-bored look and an unbothered smile face adorned on his face. She has an urge to see him impressed.

"We should all meet and lay out plans to cover the angles."

She first walks up to a black cat silently sitting by the pavement close to a lamppost, places the collar around the cats neck and tinkled it which instantly made the cats eyes shine a dancing blue light as it arched it back and shook and resat down, watching her walk up to the car, she vaults into the shiny hydrauliced lowrider, running her hands slowly over the steering wheel snapping the engine on which came to a menacing rumble.

"Don't you think it's all a bit too flashy?" As she steps on the pedal, a flurry of blue code showers the side of the lowrider, which roars with blue flames out the back of the exhaust while Bad Bunny is playing.

She looks over to him, and in between revs, she explains, "Some have keys into back rooms where the code is secondary."

She looks him dead in the eye, turns 180 in the lowrider, turning the radio on full blast, playing some Spanish rap with intricate violins, turning head onlookers stopping their robotic movements as they went about their simulated lives. Still held onto the clutch, she spun the wheel as the side of her car played out the love story sung by the Spanish rapper, which ended with the cat crossing a road. Their eyes continued to be locked when she released the clutch, turning her head as she pulled down the road, clutch hand brake, turns right. And all the lampposts in the vicinity flash, letting out an electrical fizz that locks everyone onto their phone and continuing their passage into their mundane lives at the meow of a cat crossing a road on their screens.

His glasses pour code as he sees the scene reset, and all turns normal with the cat licking her paw at the foot of the newly laminated scene. The bookkeeper pulls out a page of a newly blue glowing note in one of his books and places it into his lunchbox, then pulls a small plate of tuna. He steps up from his seat in front of the coffee shop and walks over and places the plate in front of the cat as it cleans its paws.

"You think we can get a 2-for-1 here?"

The cat meows and takes a couple of bites of tuna, as if happy with the way the code had been manipulated so creatively. He follows the gentleman into the coffee shop. A few customers glance over to him and his new feline acquaintance. He pays for the teas and strides over to the bookshelf, looks at the books, and places his own between them from his blue lunchbox. As he places the book into the bookshelf case space, a rectangular shiny blue door instantly electrifies into place on the wall. As he fully pulls the book out of the space, he steps behind the newly formed door and steps into a white backroom, and the bookshelf closes behind him. The cat meows instantly, locking the individuals of the coffee shop into their screens. The scene locks into place for an instant as the cat slinks underneath tables and between chairs to the door. The scene unfreezes as customers looks up, and they all start to chuckle from the article they read, continuing drinking and talking.

He looks at the code used with the title being "An Exchange of Code." He carefully places it into his lunchbox and strolls between an endless array of doors in a hallway.

Nobody notices the cat pad out of the coffee shop, finishes the tuna on the plate, and the plate instantly disappears into a cloud of cascading computer code. The cat slinks between the slow stream of pedestrians, turns, and darts out of sight down a dark alleyway.