For some time, a buzz accompanied any mention of this strange duo’s name: Daft Punk. The dance floor exploded when the speakers spit out the first kicks of “Da Funk,” the mega hit from the two boys. Fred smiled. Before him, dozens of young people embraced a wild frenzy. Head in the clouds, they were all trying to catch the mirror ball that they hallucinated as the sun in their night.

Someone put his hand on Fred’s shoulder. Turning around somehow, stuck between two ecstatic, sweaty partiers, he ran into Zdar. The breathless DJ had just handed over to Daft Punk, but would have liked to keep on playing. He had only one desire, and that was to play records until daybreak. All he had to do was take over from Jef K. who had been wearing himself out behind the decks in the room below. The party was in full swing.

Fred was dancing, thinking of nothing, when a security guard came to whisper in his ear. Outside, dozens of uniformed men were taking position in front of the gates. The castle was under siege. Not the booted henchmen of the Duc de Guise, but the police. They wanted to shut down the party – illegal, according to them. Fred slipped in beside Daft Punk. Everything had to stop. Everyone had to clear out.

While the word went round, Fred spotted some men among the crowd donning red police armbands. They were already there. Fred melted into the middle of the crowd. If the police got hold of him, he was screwed. He grabbed the night’s takings, handed a few bank notes to the DJ, passed some girlfriends pushing notes into their cleavages and escaped through a small door before starting to run like hell. He ran as far away from the castle as he could, without really knowing where he was going. He ran. He could plunge into the nearby woods, or escape by swimming in the Marne River. Force the roadblock, maybe. Everything was getting muddled in his head.

He was still running when an Austin Mini burst out of what remained of the dying night. The passenger door opened. At the wheel, Fred discovered the young Pedro Winter. He slackened his pace and flopped down next to the driver in a final cloud of bank notes. At the entrance to the castle, as Fred curled up in his seat almost disappearing under the glove compartment, Pedro Winter offered the rookie his best smile before slipping through the net and returning to Paris with the first sun rays.