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The contents of this file past the dotted line are classified as
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TOWER, close this file immediately and contact your infocon officer
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Unauthorized access to this file is punishable by death followed by
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Warning:
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the proper key will result in permanent consciousness seizure and
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Be
Aware:
This file was recovered from the archives aboard the derelict USS
Aurora.
It has been translated from an obsolete file format and language.
Unfortunately, due to the deteriorated state of the original medium,
not all of the file could be recovered.
Be
Aware:
The entirety of this file is MaxConInfo, security phrase CRYSTAL
TOWER. No part of this file may be disclosed to any person not
cleared for MaxConInfo, security phrase CRYSTAL TOWER, without the
permission of the HIEROPHANT InfoCon Committee.
XXXX
want to do it, of course, but XXXX so XXXX myself in Fort Detrick,
Maryland, with a camera and a mission.
Explication:
Fort Detrick, Maryland was a town in the Eastern Coastal Zone of the
North American Technate.
He
was reading her e-mail, had gotten some kind of bug inside her
computer. Some software trick, I assume; he probably out-sourced it
to another “contractor”, someone like me with a skill and a sense
of duty stronger then their conscience. He gave me a dozen pages of
printouts of her and her boyfriend's e-mails. He was an sergeant in
the infantry, lived two hours away. So the lady officer was fucking
an enlisted man behind her husband's back.
Explication:
E-mail is a form of text-based electronic correspondence.
They
were going to meet at a motel, halfway between their respective
homes. It was a regular thing, I guess, once every few weeks. I
took a week's vacation from the magazine – I told them I was going
to Vermont to watch the leaves turn – and headed up there.
Explication:
Vermont was a sub-state political entity in the United States of
America. The meaning of “watching the leaves turn” is not
known; contextual analysis suggests it was a recreational activity of
some kind.
Now,
I don't know what you think of reporters, but the truth is I'd never
done anything like this before. I wasn't a paparazzi, I was a
science reporter when I had the opportunity, and did business news
when I didn't. I actually went online to look up instructional
manuals and videos for private investigators. But I figured it
couldn't be too hard. The physicist wanted pictures of them
fucking, but told me he'd settle for just walking in and out if I
couldn't manage that.
And
you know what? It was easy. It was so, stupidly, god-damned easy.
I
took a room at a motel – not the lovebirds' shack, a
different one, one I could flee to if things went bad. There was a
coffee shop adjoining the same parking lot as their motel. I sat at
a table outside, sipping coffee in the hot autumn sun and pretending
to read, while straining to catch the license plates of the cars that
pulled up. After a few hours he pulled in, parked, walked to the
front office. That gave me enough time to get the camera out of
hiding in my backpack and in position, and I snapped a dozen shots of
him walking into room 6, holding the camera in my lap, with my book
tented over it as though that might hide it. I couldn't aim for a
damn, of course, but I got lucky and got his face in one shot. He
was pretty dumpy for an Army sergeant, maybe forty, getting a little
pudgy around the waist. She followed half an hour later, and I got
shots of her too.
They
left again twenty minutes later, for a romantic dinner most likely,
since they left his car. I didn't bother trying to follow.
Instead I got a greasy burger at McDonald's and hid in the shrubbery
bordering the motel. I kept expecting someone to see me. I spent
the whole time waiting for the shout of “what do you think you're
doing!”, but it never came. Nobody noticed me snapping away as
they came back, got out of the car, hand in hand, God they just
looked in love with each other. The pictures didn't catch
it, but if you'd been there you could just see it, the way he
held her hand, the way they couldn't take their eyes off each other.
She was married and for all I knew he was too, but they just looked
perfect together in the dying autumn light.
Anyway.
I got shots of them coming back. Then I waited for it to get
fully dark, and it wasn't long to wait. There was a little window
in the back of their room, way up high, just a slit to let the light
in. It had a curtain, but they'd forgotten to draw it, and through
it I got ten or twenty shots of them screwing. That was all I
needed and it was all I could take. I got in my car and drove all
night until I got to fucking Vermont, and I e-mailed the physicist
his damned pictures, and what he did with them I don't know and I
don't want to know.
And
then I sat down and watched the god-damned leaves turn, and tried as
hard as I could not to think about lights in the night sky or the
physicist or using the love of two people for each other against
them. I just watched the leaves. I don't know what the hell
people see in them.
FILE
ENDS
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