n2020  Check-in [51a51f91ab]

The woman said "You have a little hole in your shirt, there."

Alley looked where the woman pointed, and saw a hole in her Information Society shirt /* around the area of her right kidney */ over the right side of her abdomen.  The hole had been there since before her uncle gave her this shirt as a kid.

She looked back at the woman.  "Yeah," she said.  "I sleep in this thing.  Strangers don't usually get to see it."

Neither of them had the decency to look chagrined at that, but the man looked a bit disappointed about something.  Perhaps he was hoping to be more intimidating.

The man spoke first, this time.  "Are you Alethea Lucas?"

"Who wants to know?"

The woman produced some kind of official government-looking identification card as if she had been holding it ready for a moment just like this all along.

................................................................................

"You're going to have to be a little more specific," she said.

"May we come in to talk about this?" the woman asked.

Alley caught the man giving his partner an irritated look.  "No, I don't think so," Alley answered.

"Are you involved in too many US Intelligence research projects to know what I"m talking about?" he asked.

"It's the opposite," she said, as if really she didn't think he understood.  "I don't know anything about any US Intelligence research projects in my life right now.  Do you want to tell me why you're here, or should we play a guessing game?"

The woman's eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth as if to snap something at Alley, but the man leaned into Alley's personal space.  He blocked half of the view between the two women, and the man's partner closed her mouth again, surprised by the intrusion.

He said "You have access to some experimental task assistance artificial intelligence technology for the purpose of participating in a study for Professor Goulet at the University of California.  Does that ring any bells?" he asked.

................................................................................

She looked at the door, and muttered ". . . men?"  She wondered if the professor expected different people, but this was clearly close enough.  Maybe he just meant Men In Black.

/* Without the stud in her ear, the prioritizer could not speak to her audibly, but it used text again. */

The prioritizer placed text in her field of view.  "There does not appear to be much choice in how you handle this," it said.

"Yeah, no kidding."  Alley returned to the door and opened it once more.

The pair outside broke off in mid-discussion and looked at Alley.

"Here," she said.  She pulled off the glasses and handed them to the closest of them, the man.

He smirked and handed them to his partner, and the woman pulled a small black disc out of her pocket.  The tip of her thumb whitened slightly under pressure for a moment as she squeezed the device, and a light began to blink on its edge.  The charging indicator light on the glasses blinked in time with it.  The woman held the disc near the glasses for several seconds, then the light stopped blinking and she replaced the disc in her pocket.

................................................................................

"No," the man said.

"Have a good day."  Alley spoke without feeling, and she closed the door on them again.

Alley sat on the couch.  "Fuck," she said.  "Who are those people, really?"

"I do not have that information," the prioritizer said.

Alley flipped her laptop open and started searching.  She soon found herself looking at a database search interface for long term Homeland Security contractors.  This absorbed more than an hour of her time without yielding anything conclusive.

She backed out of that line of investigation,and started going through conspiracy resources, following her nose on the first impression the people at her door gave her: Men In Black.

It was ultimately the burgundy stripes that led her to what she wanted.  It seemed to be a standard uniform for "field agents" of Co-Operative Intelligence Networks Corporation, which had ties to the United States Intelligence Community through federal contracts.  The search touched on references to darknet forum groups, and she started to get a little nervous about continuing that lead.  She checked to make sure her various privacy blinds were running properly on her laptop.

"Perhaps you should change your laptop configuration if you are concerned about government contractors becoming aware of your activities while researching them."

Alley sat back, then got up and headed to the kitchen.  "What do you think I should do to start?"

................................................................................

He nodded.  "Dalton Schaeffer-Hearst."

"Yeah."  She looked at him, wary.

"I guess I can see why you don't want to bring that up much.  He's a controversial figure."

"Yeah, he is.  I can't even bring him up around anyone, really.  Either people hate me because I got engaged to him, or they hate me for leaving him."









































































































































/*

Maybe Alley could go to a doctor to get a prescription for something that she can then sell to others as a way to make money.  This is obviously illegal.  It should probably only come up after she ends up on the run because of the people coming to her home and thus scaring her off.  Then again . . . how does she get a prescription from a doctor if she's on the run?

Maybe Alley could just carry drugs for someone.  Again, this is pretty sketchy, and is probably not appropriate right now.

The woman said "You have a little hole in your shirt, there."

Alley looked where the woman pointed, and saw a hole in her Information Society shirt /* around the area of her right kidney */ over the right side of her abdomen.  The hole had been there since before her uncle gave her this shirt as a kid.

She looked back at the woman.  "Yeah," she said.  "I sleep in this thing.  Strangers don't usually get to see it."

Neither of them had the decency to look chagrined at that, but the man looked a bit disappointed about something.  Perhaps he was hoping to be more intimidating, and maybe he failed because he was distracted by the shirt.  He was certainly looking at it, like it was significant somehow.

The man spoke first, this time.  "Are you Alethea Lucas?"

"Who wants to know?"

The woman produced some kind of official government-looking identification card as if she had been holding it ready for a moment just like this all along.

................................................................................

"You're going to have to be a little more specific," she said.

"May we come in to talk about this?" the woman asked.

Alley caught the man giving his partner an irritated look.  "No, I don't think so," Alley answered.

"Are you involved in too many US Intelligence research projects to know what I'm talking about?" he asked.

"It's the opposite," she said, as if really she didn't think he understood.  "I don't know anything about any US Intelligence research projects in my life right now.  Do you want to tell me why you're here, or should we play a guessing game?"

The woman's eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth as if to snap something at Alley, but the man leaned into Alley's personal space.  He blocked half of the view between the two women, and the man's partner closed her mouth again, surprised by the intrusion.

He said "You have access to some experimental task assistance artificial intelligence technology for the purpose of participating in a study for Professor Goulet at the University of California.  Does that ring any bells?" he asked.

................................................................................

She looked at the door, and muttered ". . . men?"  She wondered if the professor expected different people, but this was clearly close enough.  Maybe he just meant Men In Black.

/* Without the stud in her ear, the prioritizer could not speak to her audibly, but it used text again. */

The prioritizer placed text in her field of view.  "There does not appear to be much choice in how you handle this," it said.

"Yeah, no kidding."  Alley looked at the door a moment longer, and said "There's something familiar about that guy."  She shrugged, returned to the door, and opened it once more.

The pair outside broke off in mid-discussion and looked at Alley.

"Here," she said.  She pulled off the glasses and handed them to the closest of them, the man.

He smirked and handed them to his partner, and the woman pulled a small black disc out of her pocket.  The tip of her thumb whitened slightly under pressure for a moment as she squeezed the device, and a light began to blink on its edge.  The charging indicator light on the glasses blinked in time with it.  The woman held the disc near the glasses for several seconds, then the light stopped blinking and she replaced the disc in her pocket.

................................................................................

"No," the man said.

"Have a good day."  Alley spoke without feeling, and she closed the door on them again.

Alley sat on the couch.  "Fuck," she said.  "Who are those people, really?"

"I do not have that information," the prioritizer said.  "Your internet research skills should help you learn more about them, but it seems likely your question was rhetorical."

"That's right."  Alley flipped her laptop open and started searching.  She soon found herself looking at a database search interface for long term Homeland Security contractors.  This absorbed more than an hour of her time without yielding anything conclusive.

She backed out of that line of investigation, and started going through conspiracy resources, following her nose on the first impression the people at her door gave her: Men In Black.

It was ultimately the burgundy stripes that led her to what she wanted.  It seemed to be a standard uniform for "field agents" of Co-Operative Intelligence Networks Corporation, which had ties to the United States Intelligence Community through federal contracts.  The search touched on references to darknet forum groups, and she started to get a little nervous about continuing that lead.  She checked to make sure her various privacy blinds were running properly on her laptop.

"Perhaps you should change your laptop configuration if you are concerned about government contractors becoming aware of your activities while researching them."

Alley sat back, then got up and headed to the kitchen.  "What do you think I should do to start?"

................................................................................

He nodded.  "Dalton Schaeffer-Hearst."

"Yeah."  She looked at him, wary.

"I guess I can see why you don't want to bring that up much.  He's a controversial figure."

/* "Yeah, he is.  I can't even bring him up around anyone, really.  Either people hate me because I got engaged to him, or they hate me for leaving him." */

"Yeah, he is.  There isn't really anyone I can talk to about him.  Either people hate me because I got engaged to him, or they hate me for leaving him."

"I could see that," George said.  "I won't hate you for either reason."

"Thanks," she said.  "That's good to hear."

"I'll just be completely straightforward with you about what I think about him, and you can decide whether you want anything more to do with me.  I won't hold it against you, whatever you decide, but I guess it wouldn't matter if you didn't want to be around me any longer anyway."

"You don't have to do that," she said.

He smiled, perhaps a bit sadly.  "I think it's for the best, unless you really just refuse to hear it for any reason.  I'll respect that choice, if that's really what you want -- to hear nothing about it."

She hesitated, then shrugged.  "Go ahead, I guess," she said.

He nodded.  "I thought he was pretty great.  He had a lot of good insights about things -- politics, economics, culture, technology, law enforcement, war, and just about everything he talked about on his show and his writings.  After a while, though, he seemed to start sliding to the right a bit much, and I was disappointed by the change.  I still checked in once in a while, because he still had some smart things to say, but more and more it seemed to be skewed in what I might think of as an alt-right direction, and that's not my direction, if you know what I mean.

"No offense, of course, but I never really paid any attention to when people talked about you.  DSH seemed to talk around who you are when he did mention you, but never had anything negative to say; I just didn't really care as much about his personal life as I did about his ideas, so you didn't get on my radar.  I do remember, before I kinda gave up on listening to him, that he said something to a listener who called in to ask about you.  He said that it was true that you had called off the engagement and moved on with your life, and that he still respected you despite your differences, and he would like his listeners to respect your desire for privacy and peace in your life, then said that was pretty much the only thing he had to say about it."

"Oh," she said.  "I didn't know about that -- about him saying that."

George shrugged.  "It was the stand up thing to do, but it didn't make his change in direction on ideology any more interesting to me, so it didn't keep me listening."

"Yeah," she said.  "I get that."

"So . . . what do you think?  Are my views on it intolerable?"

Alley smiled.  "No, not at all.  That's actually kinda how I felt about his ideological shift.  I liked it more before the change than after, and we had some arguments about it.  He still had principle, and still wasn't the caricature of alt-right that people assumed, but I didn't like his new politics at all."

"That must have made it difficult to live with him."

"It took its toll.  Part of it, though, was the fact that it affected my life in other ways.  The moment I realized I needed to get out was after some woman actually started screaming at me on the street, calling me the 'side dish' and accusing me of being a racist and stuff like that, then actually started hitting me.  I shoved her back and ran to my car, drove off and called in a police report, but of course nothing would ever happen from that.  I never heard back about it."

By the time she was done, George's expression took on a dark, stormy look.  "That's terrible.  I'm sorry that happened to you."

She shrugged helplessly.  "What can I do?  I just decided I was going to distance myself from his sphere of controversy as much as I could and try to wait for the world to forget about me.  It still hasn't happened, though.  I went to what I thought was going to be a job interview, and it turned out the only reason the hiring manager approved the interview was so he and a couple of his underling developers could heckle me when I showed up.  They found out about my connection to Dalton when they searched for information about my name on the internet, and realized they all hated me, I guess."

"Is that why you called me today?" he asked.

"What?"

"You said you wanted to talk about what I do.  Are you looking for an opportunity to work with me?  It doesn't matter to me that you were engaged to DSH; I take people as they come.  I guess you'd want to know what I'm doing before you ask for an opportunity to work with me, though."

"Oh."  She paused a moment.  "Well . . . maybe?  I wasn't exactly thinking that, but it's an interesting idea, I guess.  You did offer to help me learn some new skills if I need it, and I guess this might be connected tothat.  I was just, err, concerned about what kind of business I got into when I sold those frames to you."

He chuckled.  "Oh, that.  Yeah, well, I can see why."  His smile faded, and she saw a new, serious look about him.  "Tell me something, before I answer, please.  A couple of things, actually.  If you don't want to answer, it's fine, but then I won't answer your questions, about what I'm doing."

"Okay," she said, an uncertain upturn in the tone of the word tacked onto the end, almost like it was a question.

"First, I want to know when you think it's okay to lie."

"Oh.  That's an interesting question."

"Yeah.  It is."

She thought about it.  "Only when it's to protect yourself or someone else from something that would otherwise be done, wrongly, to you or that other person."

"Hmm.  Can we explore that a little?"

"Sure, I guess."

"What if it's a government employer and you're trying to get access to bureaucratic resources by getting a job there, which you can use to help make the world a better place by using that knowledge against government?"

"It depends, I guess."

"Hmm."  He thought about that.  "What if you need to lie to the police to keep them from arresting someone you care about from getting thrown in prison for decades or even killed when what the person did may be illegal, but isn't wrong?"

"Yeah," she said, "I guess I might lie, unless you work for the police, in which case I'd tell the truth."

He laughed aloud.  "I see what you did there."

She smiled back.  "I thought you might."

"Okay, I know that was technically more than one question, but now I'm ready to ask the second question I mentioned I wanted to ask."

"Uh . . . okay."

"If I tell you about illegal things I'm doing that might result in people getting hurt due to events beyond my control, but to the extent of my knowledge the only people who would get hurt are people who deserve it and need to be stopped from hurting many other people . . . will you keep it secret, even if you don't ever want to be seen around me again, for whatever reason?"

She thought about it, and he thought it looked like she might be chewing on the inside of her cheek a little bit.  At last, she said "Yeah, I should be able to keep a secret like that.  You should know something, though, before you tell me anything like that."

"What is it?" he asked.

"Some kind of Men In Black, if you know what I mean, showed up at my front door this morning to ask me about some stuff.  It wasn't about you -- it was about me -- but it creeped me the hell out, especially when I started learning a little about them with some online research."

He stared at her.  "When you say 'men in black' . . ."

"Yeah," she said, "I mean two people, both in their fifties, I think, one man and one woman, showed up at my door in plain black suits that looked expensively tailored but otherwise totally nondescript, with black sunglasses and some kind of government contractor laminated ID badge.  The only thing that didn't look like the typical Men In Black stereotype is that there were deep red stripes on their shirts."

George sat back, and his tone of voice dropped.  "Vertical stripes."

"Uh . . . yeah.  When I did some research, they turned out to be COIN Corp employees."

"Yeah, I know about them.  They're bad news."

"Fuck."  She looked down at her hands.  "Really?"

"Yeah."

"That's pretty much what I thought, after what I read about them.  I guess they sometimes just build bullshit cases against people as an excuse to make them disappear and get some kind of contract bonus or something like that, and don't have to worry about the evidence being flimsy because it never goes to trial."

George nodded solemnly.  "Yeah, that happens.  You know, if they decide to take you in to pad their résumés, they're probably going to interrogate you until they get you to say something about me, even if they don't know you met up with me at all, just because they'll dig into everything you've been doing for the last few weeks."

She remained silent, looking at her hands.

"I'll tell you what I do on one condition."

"You want me to swear I won't tell them, of course.  I swear I'll try, but it's not like I know how well I can hold up to torture."

He shook his head.  "No, I know that's not a promise you can really make, or at least that I can expect you to keep, no matter how much you want to keep it.  The thing is, I want to keep you out of their hands, for your sake, but mine too."

"Oh."  She looked at him, curiously, and he could see the fear in her eyes.

"I'll tell you what I do if you let me help you avoid getting hauled off by them, take this threat seriously, and do everything you can to protect yourself from them."

"You want to help me."

"Yes, I do."

She thought about it.  "Yeah," she said, "of course.  You don't want them coming after you."

"I don't, but that's really not the main reason.  If I didn't care about helping you for your sake, I'd just keep an eye on things, and wait to see what happens.  If they scooped you up, I'd know it was just a matter of time, and I'd be ready to disappear.  If I help you, though, that's going to be a lot more work, and expose me to more danger, and even if it works -- even if I can help you get away -- I'll still probably have to pack up and disappear, so I'm really choosing the hard path by offering to help you."

"Why are you offering, then?"

He looked toward the window, or perhaps at something that wasn't there except inside his own mind.  "It's the right thing to do," he said.

The silence stretched as she looked at his profile, the determined set of his jaw, the hardness of his eyes, and the miles of hardening experience that seemed to lie behind his wrinkles and grey hairs.  Text scrolled across her field of view, the prioritizer saying "I advise you to take his offer.  I believe he has connections that can help you."

"I'm sorry to impose on you like this, even if I had no idea it was going to come to this."  She met his eyes when he looked at her.  "I'll take your help, though."

He nodded.  "I'll tell you that part of what I do, and part of the reason I needed those frames, is because I supply people who make it their job to do things like help people in your situation right now."

"You're kidding."

He shook his head.  "No, I'm not kidding."

/*

Maybe Alley could go to a doctor to get a prescription for something that she can then sell to others as a way to make money.  This is obviously illegal.  It should probably only come up after she ends up on the run because of the people coming to her home and thus scaring her off.  Then again . . . how does she get a prescription from a doctor if she's on the run?

Maybe Alley could just carry drugs for someone.  Again, this is pretty sketchy, and is probably not appropriate right now.