MICHAEL : N/A
HOUR -6 : 10:05, MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2122
RICHMOND 7 : OFFICE 1 : BRIEFING
As the last of my coworkers filed into the shabby meeting room, I banged my coffee mug on the table like a gavel. “Here, here! I now call together this meeting of the society of-”
Doug sighed loudly over my joke. “So you’re saying this could’ve been an email.”
Most of the room laughed. At his, not mine.
Deflating a bit, I opted to just get on with it already. “After we fed Jameson Simmons, alias Jason, the location of a suspected BS Matter Converter, we doubled our watch on him.”
Doug raised his hand. “Why?”
“A watch we’ve budgeted for double-duty until the date of our own retrieval operation. Which is scheduled tomorrow. For those of you who can put two and two together, I’ll give you one guess at what Jameson is doing right now.”
“Hey!”
Another agent stopped voraciously eating a donut long enough to gasp. “He’s doing FOUR??? Oh my god, no…”
I shook my head. “Yes, thank you Norm. And thank you once again for bringing your comically large donut box to another briefing. I trust you brought enough for everyone?”
Norm snorted as he grabbed another. Then he looked around the room at a bunch of annoyed, hungry officers about to receive a day-long assignment.
Grimacing, he shoved the box forward into the middle of the table. “Fine.”
Almost everyone took turns grabbing one.
I got in line like the rest.
As I did, Doug marched up to me. “Hey Williams? Seriously… Why are we spending what little bandwidth we have, watching this kid?”
“That’s classified.”
“Is it because he’s dating your niece?”
“That’s classified.”
“If so, that’s a gross misuse of government funds.”
I got right up in his face. “Look, Douglass-”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Shut up! This is a BS Original we’re talking about! Do you have any idea what that means? For the city? For what’s left of the COUNTRY???”
Doug’s face blanched as he thought through the realization I basically had to shove down his throat.
Meanwhile, Norm looked up from his nearly empty box. “Spoilsport…”
I look down at him, over the donut I was already halfway done with. “Oh shut up. You’re not even on this task force.”
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Norm froze in place for a moment. “Ah damn… Busted.”
Then he grabbed another donut from the box and leaned back in his chair.
After an extended stretch of direct eye contact with yours truly, Norm made a get-on-with-it motion.
Sighing, I got on with it.
But as I talked, more and more of my task force got up to ogle out the meeting room window, at the contractors installing a cutting-edge VR pod into a corner of the office.
Once I stopped talking, every single one of them complained. Some maligned how it would rob us of what little free space remained in our cluttered office. Others just knew what it was and wanted to play instead of work.
Bill had another concern. “What’s the MRI for?”
Bob craned his neck over. “Whoever said ‘there are no stupid questions’ clearly never met you.”
“Meaning?”
“Haven’t you seen the ads? They’re everywhere. That’s that new game, isn’t it? Wish Fulfillment Online?”
That got a laugh from about half the room. Apparently that’d been the original name of the project before they’d changed it.
I chuckled at how on-the-nose it still was anywy. “Yes, yes. It’s a new VRMMORPG-”
Heather called over my explanation. “Pipe down, grandpa!”
I made my voice as raspy as I could. “Now, now, children. I know you’re all excited to play with the new doohickey with all the lights. But that there’s for little girls only.”
Heather perked up.
I threw her a warm, grandfatherly smirk. “Littler girls.”
Norm took another bite of another donut. “Why the sudden sexism?”
I dropped the act. “It’s for the sister. Jessica Simmons. All intelligence points to her being an introverted gamer type. So how better to keep her here and pacified than the biggest, best carrot the department can afford.”
Paul blanched. “We can afford that?”
“We’re leasing it.”
More groans came from all around.
“Oh, now you want to keep the thing? What happened to your precious uncluttered office space?”
Bill folded his arms. “Well, now that we know it’s for that ‘fun’ we’ve heard so much about…”
But Doug had different concerns. “So that big-ass thing’s getting installed to… What’d you say? Pacify a teenager?”
Bill cackled with laughter. “Yeah, boss! You sure we shouldn’t castrate you for the good of the community?”
I barked out a laugh of my own. “Wh-h-hat?”
Bob supported Bill like he liked to do exactly half the time. “He’s right, Williams. Those urges are unsafe. You can’t be allowed to release them. Removing the urges entirely will be better for you in the long run. And for society.”
I tried to get ahold of my admittedly inappropriate laughter. “No Bob, that’s how you create serial killers. Cumming hits the addiction center of your brain. Once you’re old enough to tell whether anything you find attractive is ‘too young’, it’s already far too late for castration to do anything but turn serial rapists into serial murderers. And I’m not even judging them by saying that. If you took that away from me, then let’s see…”
I looked around and pointed to each member of my task force in turn. “I’d murder YOU, murder YOU, you, you, NOT you, um-”
I paused for a moment on Director Einhorn, who just happened to be walking by the meeting room window and was now watching me point at him. “Yeah, I can still see it. So, YOU-”
As the director shrugged and kept walking, I continued around to the other half of the room. “-murder you, you, not you, not you, aaand sorry, yeah, I’d murder YOU first.”
I lowered my hand from Norm. “Anyway, while I pick up the girl from school and escort her here, the rest of you will-”
Bill choked out another laugh. “You? Alone with the girl? Didn’t we just go over this-”
“Why thank you for volunteering, Agent Peters. First up, we’ll all get to work setting up for the interception. If no one slacks off, it shouldn’t take more than an hour. After we finish the prep, consider yourself on standby until we confirm the location while Peters and I fetch the sister.”
Bill groaned.
I grinned at his groan.
He groaned at my grin.
And thus the Earth spun round and round.