Picture a world where large corporations are as powerful as sovereign states. Imagine that some of these large corporations engineer organisms from scratch and that the novel critters can fetch a bundle of dough. No wonder blueprints for these creatures are pilfered and sold in a market of shady enterprises. Now envisage one of these corporations clandestinely hiring you to catch the thieves stealing their prized innovations. Only you find you first have to get past an iconoclastic organization that has taken umbrage to corporate dominance and is shooting back. And they are kittens compared to the crafty varmints who fight to own the establishment and have you caught in the crossfire. How would you feel? Like novice detective Kurt Sprigg. Face to face-life or death-with the "Mechanisms of Desire."