end of day Nano 3

[joegoda]

"Lights." he said quietly from the doorway. Quiet indirect illumination blinked and fizzed into existence, casting a blue white haze in the room. Once his eyes adjusted, he checked the contents of his eight square foot office.

His desk was to the left of the doorway, behind the door and out of sight from anyone entering. On the desk was a flat screen computer and an old Olivetti typewriter. A backless, ergonomic chair was pushed into the desk's knee space, out of the way. His bookcase was directly behind the chair, against the opposite wall from the desk where he could easily reach it by swinging around while seated. A table, containing a coffeemaker and another chair was against the far wall. There was an open file folder next to the coffeemaker, the pages it contained neatly stacked and waiting to be read.

It was a sparse, cramped environment. At one time it was a closet, and would have remained so if a special needs department had not been developed. It was the department that Wells and Wells alone occupied. It was called the PO department. PO stood for Paper Only.

When the man called Wells retired from active fieldwork, he suggested the PO department. He explained that, in this age of computerization, where almost any information could be found floating around in series of bits and bytes, it didn't make sense to send the most sensitive information across cables and phone lines that could be compromised by a dedicated hacker.

He suggested returning to an older method; that of the sealed document and courier and the delivery of physical documents by hand. He presented his argument in such a logical method, backing up and defending his proposition that the department was created. It did not pass notice that his presentation of the concept coincided with his decision to retire from the field, and so he was promoted to the department. The amount of Paper Only documents didn't require much more than a single person, and he was more than qualified for the position.

Rumor had it that he actually presented the idea to someone very high up in the company before he presented it to anyone else. This someone, the rumor went, owed Wells a very large favor. The creation of this department was part of the re-payment. Rumor also had it that the department was nothing more than a glorified mailroom. That particular rumor was wrong.

Wells carried the power and responsibility to veto any action on any document that crossed his desk, unless the document specifically forbade modification. He was not empowered to create a document. That was a stipulation he himself wrote into the job description. That would be too much power, too much strength, and too much responsibility.

What he could do was to review the document for errors in logic, for flaws in planning and offer corrections and suggestions. If the document contained too many errors, Wells would simply write, in bold red letters the word denied across it. He would then create his explanation for his denial, clip it to the document, seal it with his own proprietary seal and pass it to the courier that showed up at his door every hour to carry to the next level of responsibility.

There were only two levels of responsibility above him. The President and the Chairman. If need be, and if it warranted, there was really only one level above him, that of the Chairman. Only once before had any document warranted bypassing the President. The result of the denial was the relatively minor thermo-nuclear detonation in the Mediterranean in November of 1999. Rather than losing billions of lives and possibly creating the end of modern civilization, the cost was thirty-thousand residents of Turkey.

The originator of the document that earned Well's denial had been retired. Permanently.

Wells spoke again, "Camera." The flat screen on his desk flared to life, showing the familiar sign-on screen. "Action." At that word, the file drawer in his desk unlocked, and popped open a quarter of an inch and the coffee maker on table clicked on and began to perk.

He pulled the chair from its place under the desk and folded his legs under it as he sat. The chair was chosen by him for the qualities of flexibility. It not only took up much less space than a conventional chair, it required that he sit with his thighs apart and back erect. He believed this maximized blood flow to the brain and allowed him to concentrate to a higher degree than would be possible if he used a regular chair.

Seated in front of the flat screen he asked, "Sarah, what's new?" The screen flickered as it accepted his password. Images flashed before his eyes, scrolling from page to page of news from around the world. His mind gathered what the screen presented and he stored the information away for later processing. He wasn't looking for anything in particular; he was looking at everything in general. He was searching for patterns, oddities and abnormalities.

If taken by themselves, a minor earthquake here, and a rumor of nuclear testing there, the price of coffee increasing somewhere else were small things, to be sure. Added and equated, held side by side and suddenly the butterfly that flapped its wings in china could indeed create the hurricane that roared over North Carolina.

"Give me vocals, Sarah", Wells commanded the computer. A soft, feminine voice started to read the text of the stories that scrolled across the flat screen. Wells swiveled his chair and picked up the first document contained in the folder on the table. While he read, he pulled a mug from the bookcase and held it under the coffee spigot. "Coffee", he commanded. The machine, activated by his voice and recognizing there was indeed a cup below it, calculated the volume of the mug and delivered the exact amount of cold pressed, Colombian roasted, hot liquid the cup would hold.

As he read, he would sometimes chuckle, sometimes nod his head, and sometimes, frowning would simply mutter the word "moron", and write the word denied across the page. He placed the documents that he approved in one stack, and those that he denied in another. It was a simple process and did not take very much time. He read at an incredibly speed and the one hundred eighty four pages were gone through in less than an hour. This allowed him the ability to turn back to the flat screen and continue his scrutiny of the world at large.

The first courier appeared at his door at 10:00, promptly an hour after the official starting time for the company. Wells passed him two sealed manila folders. Security wasn't as tight here, as the courier merely took the folders from Wells' office up four floors to the office of the President. However, if either of the folder's seals were opened by anyone other than the President or the Chairman, the contents would immediately ignite and what would remain would be ash. Furthermore, the ash contained a potent heat activated poison that would cause a painful death to the unfortunate that did not have the code to open the seal correctly.

The courier accepted the two folders from Wells, signed the acceptance form with his initials, dated the initials and then passed a different set of folders back to Wells. Wells accepted the new folders, signed and dated his own initials on the form the courier carried.

This was the process that Wells had dictated, years ago. It was the same process that occurred every day, at the same times, in the same way. It was a pattern that was comforting to Wells. It represented stability in his life, and that stability satisfied him.

It also bored him mercilessly.

Comments

[hdsqrl.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, what's in these documents?? :o

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

The items detailed in the documents would fall under the term UltraBlack Operations. Things that the President of the US just says "Uh... Don't tell me about them." That way he has plausible deniability. There are things that We The People never hear about, because they can be so dispicable that it would cause us to lose total faith in the goodness of our country.

[capi.livejournal.com]

"As he read, he would sometimes chuckle, sometimes nod his head, and sometimes, frowning would simply mutter the word "moron", and write the word denied across the page. He placed the documents that he approved in one stack, and those that he denied in another. It was a simple process and did not take very much time. He read at an incredibly speed..." Um, "incredible"?

Wonderful.... the whole thing has taken shape, and now the colors are solidifying. And it's STILL scary! It's like reading Clancy. I had to STOP reading Clancy; he was destroying my peace of mind!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Yes, it should be incredible. Thanks, Capitani! And thanks for the wonderful compliment... being compared to Clancy. Let's see if I can maintain it, shall we? Hopefully I won't destroy your peace of mind. I prefer happy endings.

[capi.livejournal.com]

I seriously avoid Clancy now, but i also seriously consider the man to be a genius writer. The stuff you've shown me so far has been excellent stuff, but *vastly* different from Clancy stuff.

Serious; i avoid him because his stuff eats away at me. It's too close to real, and it too clearly reveals the ugliest side of man, coming to fruition in ways i wished i had never heard of.

What i'm saying here is, dear one, if you get too scary, i'll have to flee, but it will be a compliment. *L*

[tapestry01.livejournal.com]

You're doing great!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Why thank you, Master Writer Guy! I'm really excited that you've come so far so fast. It encourages me because it makes me really, really envious!

[journiey.livejournal.com]

Amazing Even!