In the pilot episode, Roger Smith is introduced as Paradigm City's top negotiator. As the episode begins, he is delivering the ransom for a girl named Dorothy, who had been kidnapped from her father, a rich industrialist named Saldano. After the exchange, Saldano arrives and reveals that the Dorothy Roger they had obtained was actually an android fake. When Roger realizes Beck isn't playing fair, he activates the briefcase carrying the ransom and it flies out of Beck's car.

A woman named Patricia Lovejoy (the same woman called Angel in Electric City) approaches Roger Smith about a job with Paradigm. He is supposed to convince a reporter named Michael Seebach to hand over his manuscript, but as it turns out, Seebach had disappeared months earlier. Using his connections with Major Dastun, Roger tracks down an apartment Seebach is renting. There he discovers a typewriter and a large stack of papers, which he begins to read when gasoline pours in under the door and lights. Roger jumps out the window to escape and is confronted by Seebach, now calling himself Schwartzvald and wrapped in bandages. Seebach tells Roger to report to Paradigm that they will never see him in the city again, then disappears.