Through Pamella, Mitchell had met a network of creatures who still had hope. They went beyond identifying the negative; they talked of alternatives. He’d met the cats Lipstick and Tuxedo. These new secret friends gave him things to read: F-SERF dispatches, midnight notes, poems. They said, as if it were simple, that housing was a basic right, that lands should be common, that the sea was family. When Mitchell asked what he could do, they hatched the plan for Mitchell to squirrel away bits of evidence of the mayor’s transgressions.

Alfonzo asked, “Have you joined a revolutionary organization?”

“It’s not like there’s a membership card or anything.”

“Why did you keep all this from me?”

“I was waiting for the right time.”

Mitchell didn’t think anyone in the mayor’s office knew what he knew, though Old Spots was always fishing.

“What will you do with the documents?”

“Give them to the press,” Mitchell declared.

Alfonzo felt like a frayed knot, a weak link. He didn’t want to let Mitchell down, yet he couldn’t help but imagine from an outside perspective. He imagined his father reading the paper. What if they—Mitchell and Pamella, or Lipstick and Tuxedo, or SERF, or whoever—proved the mayor was a criminal dung stain robbing the city blind? So what? The best-case scenario was Shergar resigning and another billionaire or billionaire’s lackey getting put in his place. More probable was that the story of a housing crisis and a rich mayor’s offshore money would become just another opportunity for equivocation and the murk of conspiracy.

“Consider the news, Mitchell. Just think about how you’ll get portrayed. A midlevel bureaucrat meets some dirtbags and an immigrant radical. They recruit him into a secret ocean-animal liberation movement—which, by the by, many animals, including our very powerful mayor, calls a terrorist organization. Inspired by these ne’er-do-wells, he begins investigating the mayor while on company time and, justified by anti-capitalist theory, starts stealing official documents. In the process, he unilaterally decides to implicate his childhood friend in this scheme, thereby setting not only his own life on the path to ruin but also that of his dumb friend. Just imagine that splashed across the Post. Think of the headlines!”

“Many land animals do secretly trust the sea,” Mitchell insisted. “The sea is our mother.”

“So your plan is to send my dissertation to reporters?” Alfonzo asked.

“Oh, don’t worry, they won’t read it. It’s just the back of the real important stuff.”

“I’ll be both exposed and reminded that my life’s work is irrelevant. Cool, cool, cool.”

Mitchell huffed, “I used your work as a means, it’s true. But it was for something important. SERF wants to topple the mayor so that we can communicate again, sea and land. If animals knew, maybe they would rise.”

“Like the tides?”