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Date Posted: 16:36:59 02/06/07 Tue
Author: sk
Author Host/IP: puddle46.drizzle.com / 216.162.217.46
Subject: Reveals it by Hiding 3/6
In reply to: sk 's message, "Reveals it by Hiding" on 02:18:15 02/05/07 Mon

The usual disclaimers apply.




I meet Walter at a coffeeshop near the campus for lunch. His crew spent most of last night rigging Ruth Fisher’s office for audio and visual monitoring, and now they’re doing the same thing at her house while she teaches Introduction to American Literature and goes to a faculty meeting. I look over the work order on my PDA: kitchen, living room, hallway, bathroom. Bedroom. I roll my eyes at Walter and try not to think about the next few weeks of surveillance.

“It’s just like Section -- we can’t even let this woman brush her teeth in peace.”

“Sugar, I don’t think it’s her teeth that you’re worried about.”

“No, I suppose not. Did you hear I have to do a L-10 dossier on her?”

Walter looks up from his hamburger. “Don’t we already have a file on her?”

“Yeah, but it’s really thin. It’s only been a day and we’re already getting major anomalies. Either it’s sloppy intel, or the file’s been tampered with.”

“Well you know what they say, sugar, Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

“Walter, where do you get this crap?!”

He just leers at me as we get up from the table.

“Don’t forget to call -- I know how much you’ll miss me while you’re here.”

“I know, I know, just get going. I’ve got stuff to do.” I’m not looking forward to building the dossier, but at least it will be a break from real-time surveillance. “I’ve decided to think of this as a bad version of ‘The Real World’. MTV without the music videos.” Even I can hear my voice get brittle.

Walter leans over to whisper in my ear. “Just keep it straight -- there’s the job, and there’s your life. Don’t get them mixed up.”

Why is it that the best advice is the hardest to follow?

* * *

I’m surprised at how quickly the campus changes during the spring break. There’s almost no one here, just the occasional student at the library, and most of the faculty seem to have disappeared as well. It’s hard to blend in to the surroundings when there’s no one to blend with, so I spend most of my time in Ruth Fisher’s house while she digs in the basement of the library.

I already know the general layout from the schematics and the surveillance cameras, but there’s always a difference when you finally enter a place. You see details the cameras don’t pick up, like the texture of the carpet under your feet or the sun reflecting off the dust in the air. Usually when we break in somewhere, we know exactly where we’re going and what we’re looking for. The room is a collection of security variables -- cameras, alarms and guards. This time I’m not looking for hardware, I’m trying to see the people who live here. Trying to understand them through the choices they’ve made, the things they surround themselves with. I just stand for a moment in each of the rooms, see what they see, hear what they hear, smell what they smell. I look around without focusing too hard on any one thing, trying to get a feeling for this house rather than an inventory. As I move from the living room to the kitchen I realize this place seems like a home to me, and that makes me feel queasy.

I really don’t know that much about homes. I’ve lived in lots of places, hell, I could probably win a Section contest for most previous addresses, even if you just count the places that had actual addresses. But the series of apartments and flophouses Roberta dragged me through were distinctly unhomey, and after that, well, there’s a reason why they call them homeless shelters. Sometimes I’d get “adopted” for awhile by a friend, like Julie and her family, and I’d see a little bit of home life. Places where you had your own hook for your coat and your own seat at the table. Places where your report card was taped to the refrigerator and your school photo was on the sideboard. Places that were full of you.

When I finally understood that the apartment Michael took me to all that time ago was really for me, I wanted to make it into a home -- wanted to make it like me, or what I thought I was like. When I came back to Section I thought maybe I could be more in control of my life if I was more in control of my place, but that hasn’t really seemed to work. At any rate, I usually don’t think of my apartment as a home, and I don’t want to think about what someone else would make of me, looking at it.

I guess the longest I’ve spent in a home lately is the time I lived with Michael and Elena, those awful weeks at the end of the Vacek mission. At first I wanted to believe it was all Elena’s doing, that the art, the books, the little collections of things here and there were all just assembled by her. But the longer I was there, the thinner that illusion became. Michael was everywhere in that place, not just his clothes in the closet and his coat by the door, but his handwriting on the grocery list, his book on the endtable by the fireplace, his picture on Adam’s nightstand, with a note on the back -- “I love you always, even when I’m not here. Daddy.” The longer I was there, the more things Elena showed me, all this evidence of her life with Michael. There was a little shelf in the living room of things he brought back for her from his “business trips.” I never looked at it too closely -- I was afraid I might recognize something from a mission we’d been on. That time was so strange -- I don’t think I’ve been more uncomfortable in my life, and yet I wanted to stay there. Wanted to stay at home with Michael.

The home that Ruth Fisher shares with her brother is actually alot like that other one. Not on the surface -- this is probably one of the most cluttered places I’ve ever been, with books and papers scattered everywhere. But the feeling is the same, the feeling that people live here, that this is their place and these are their things. I wonder if Michael will notice that, when he’s here. I really don’t want to imagine Michael here with her, so I try to get down to business.

If Ruth Fisher had an actual decorating style it would be called “finding more places for books.” They are everywhere -- lined up on shelves, stacked on tables and desks, piled up on the floor. Put in a circulation desk and you’d have an instant library. There seems to be a bit of everything: textbooks, novels, histories, philosophy, biographies, how-to books. There’s even a huge box of magazines next to the tub in the bathroom. The third time I catch myself reading something I’ve picked up somewhere I realize this is out of control.

The space that isn’t stacked with books is covered with papers. The alcove that Ruth seems to use as a home office is full of student files and lecture outlines, with cryptic sticky notes dotted everywhere. A beat-up copy of Emerson’s “Essays and Other Writings” is open face down on the top of one unsteady pile. I lift it up to see what her students were so excited about

“How much of human life is lost in waiting.”

I put the book back down where I found it.

The hallway walls are covered with photos and postcards, some obviously sent by traveling friends and others collected by Ruth and her brother. Tourist shots of Florida bathing beauties from the 1950’s hang next to views of the temple gardens in Kyoto and a picture of Einstein with his hair sticking out at all angles. There doesn’t seem to be any order to them, but they make a kind of happy chaos as you walk down the hall. Next to her bedroom is a photo of the two of them, probably on holiday, sitting on a rock in the sun. They’re both squinting at the camera, but even so they look relaxed and happy. You can see the family resemblance, but they’re not twins. He’s tall and a bit gaunt, while she’s smaller and curvy. But they have the same curly brown hair with lighter streaks, like tortoiseshell, and the same easy smile.

Seeing them in that photo makes me feel like an eavesdropper, and I retreat to the basement, where Walter said Robert Fisher works. The tech crew has already downloaded what they can from his stand-alone system, and the code breakers are working on it, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to ferret out the encryption program Operations wants. We need to go through the rest of his files, and my heart sinks when I see the piles of material there. Ruth wasn’t kidding when she called her brother a packrat -- just on the top layer I see notes on index cards and napkins, diagrams on pizza boxes, and strings of code on what looks like wrapping paper from a child’s birthday gift, as well as sheets and sheets of computer printouts. I spend three hours sifting through the top levels of this mess, but it’s pretty clear from the start that I’m not going to pull a rabbit out of this particular hat.

As I walk back up the stairs into the hallway I realize that I like Ruth Fisher, I like the woman that lives here. I like the squashy brown hat she’s hung on the coatrack and the collection of salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen windowsills. I like the list of quotations that hangs over her desk (“The only completely consistent people are the dead,” “A computer is an Old Testament God, with alot of rules and no mercy.”) and the way she’s piled her shoes up next to a bench beside the front door. I like her, and I don’t like what we’re going to do to her. I had hoped that I’d be able to find something here in her house to resolve this mission, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. Unless Birkhoff’s geek patrol can break what is supposed to be an unbreakable code, we’re going to have to use her.

* * *

It’s a couple days into spring break and I’ve sifted through as much of the rats nest that passes for files in Robert Fisher’s basement as I can without leaving a trace. His office was trickier, his sister wasn’t kidding when she said his grad students slept there, but a well-timed fire drill bought me enough time to realize that those files are a wild goose chase too. Michael has been trying to work Ruth, but we need to shake her loose from the library basement if he’s going to get very far. Birkhof has tracked down the term paper she’s looking for in an online directory – he’s going to nudge Robert’s programmer friend in the right direction so we can get that out of the way. I’m compiling material for the dossier as fast as I can to help Michael refine his approach, but it still feels dicey to me. Madeline is impatient with both of us, she thinks Michael should be further along by now. They talked about it again last night, on our three-way videoconference.

“This is not acceptable – you know the timetable, Michael, and we expect you to keep it.”

“Fisher is hesitant, probably because of her experience with Red Cell. I’ve had to move carefully.”

“Nikita, we need the dossier now, or this will drag on too long. Approach her this week, while she’s on break and her regular patterns are disrupted. It should be easier to get a reading on her, and then you can compile your report.”

“How should I approach her? I need some kind of cover.”

“You wouldn’t pass as an English scholar, I think you’ll have to be a potential student, someone who’s thinking about coming back to school after being away. I’ll forward a profile to your PDA.”

“Fine.”

“Operations and I want to see results from this soon, or we will have to consider other options. I’ll speak with you both again tomorrow.”

Other options ... I don’t even want to think what those might be.

* * *

Michael’s gone out with Ruth for coffee twice since Birkhoff managed to spring her from her library. I’m supposed to conduct real-time monitoring whenever they’re together, so I’ve had to listen to him chat her up and try to turn the conversation to her brother. I have to admit I’m uncomfortable with the view from the camera in his glasses. I see whatever he’s looking at, and when she looks back at him it’s like she’s looking me in the eye. It’s better when they’re in her office and I can use the other cameras Section’s installed. At this rate I’ll be happy if they wind up in bed, if only because he’ll have to take off the damn glasses.

It’s the Friday of spring break and Section finessed her schedule so I’m standing at the same door where Michael was last week, with an appointment to discuss my “transcript.”

* * *

“Come in -- hi, I’m Ruth Fisher.”

“Nikita Wirth.”

“I’m glad to meet you Nikita. I understand you’re thinking of coming back to school to finish your degree?”

“I’ve thought about it for a couple years, and now seems like a good time for me.”

“I just wanted to say -- we all do these meetings here, and just because I’m in the English department doesn’t mean that we think you want to major in English. Mostly I’m here to answer any questions you’ve got, and help you decide if you think this place would be a good fit for you.”

“Well I am interested in English, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to have a major right at the start.”

“You certainly don’t have to, most students don’t, though I actually did, when I was an undergrad.”

“But you probably just always knew you were interested in English?”

“Hardly! I was a history major for awhile, and then anthropology -- I flirted with sociology too, or really just flirted with a sociologist. But in the end I realized that what interested me in all of those topics were the stories they told, about people and their relationships. So I figured I should just cut to the chase, and go where the stories were. You shouldn’t think of my experiences as a model, though, I was a very eccentric student.”

“I think it sounds great.”

“Well, it worked for me, but I wouldn’t suggest it for everyone. But please, this is your appointment and we should be talking about what you’re going to do. Tell me why you’re thinking about coming back to school.”

I give her the story that Madeline gave me, that I’d left school to pursue a job opportunity which led to several others, until I realized that I wanted to step back from work and consider something new. It’s supposed to make me sympathetic to Ruth’s scholarly nature -- she’s not especially interested in business and might open up to someone trying to leave that world. On one level, though, it doesn’t really matter what she thinks of me, or even what she talks about. The surveillance tapes from the office cameras and the bio-readouts from the sensor in my purse will give the analysts back at Section a cache of personal information that they’ll use to create a physical profile of Ruth Fisher, one that describes her basic, unconscious reactions to people and situations. It’s like those ‘read your partner’s body language’ books you find in the self-help section, only far more detailed. Posture, breathing patterns, gesture sequences -- everything from the way she lifts her eyebrows to the rhythm she taps out on the table as she looks over my file is grist for the analysis they’ll make. When this kind of data is folded into the profile, it’s almost impossible to resist. We’ll manipulate Ruth’s most intimate, subconscious impulses to make her respond to Michael, like an emotional reflex. Underneath everything she thinks of as communication she’ll be played in a subtle game of call and response. She wouldn’t be able to withstand it, even if she really knew what was going on.

When I first heard about Valentine work, after I was jerked into Section, I thought it was just prostitution. I knew plenty of prostitutes from the streets, and though I never wanted to do that job, there seemed to be a kind of honesty about it. People bought sex, they bought access to your body for a time. Sure, there were all kinds of games that got played, and sometimes things got out of hand, but in some ways it was just like a real estate deal.

But this isn’t like regular prostitution. It isn’t just sex, no matter what Madeline says, it’s a mind fuck, and a particularly nasty one at that.

Ruth lifts her head from the files on her desk and takes a look at me before she speaks.

“I’m not the final authority, but from what I see in your file, you’d be here for at least a couple years to finish a degree, maybe more. That’s a big chunk of time in your life -- you want to make sure this is the place you want to spend that time. Don’t misunderstand me, I like Taylor College and I think we do good work here, but this is a small school in a small town. You’ve been moving around for several years, your experience is much broader than most of our students. Honestly, I don’t know how happy you’d be here.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but I’m looking for a change. If I’m going to be in school I don’t really want too many outside distractions.”

“I appreciate that, but I want you to be sure what that really means. There aren’t too many times in your life that you actually get to make a choice. Mostly we just cope with the fallout from choices that other people have made for us -- when you have the chance to really make a decision you should do it thoughtfully, try to understand what it could mean for you.”

That’s too close to the truth by far. Even before I got to Section I’ve felt like a pinball in an arcade game, zooming back and forth across a crazy landscape, only to drop through a hole in the ground and wind up back where I started. The best I’m able to do is try to control the momentum and stay loose when I collide with a flipper. Forget landing on my feet, I’m happy when I still know which way is up.

She’s still talking, about the school and the student body. I can see why they like to watch her in class – Ruth is very physical in conversation, moving her hands in a kind of faux sign language and shifting forward in her seat when she makes a point. She shakes her head when she smiles, and her hair bounces a little in response, like waves rippling on a pond when you skip a stone. Without really thinking about it, I realize again that she’s a genuinely nice person, that she cares whether the woman I’m pretending to be finds the right place to finish her non-existant degree. I’ve know this for a long time, but the thought pops up into my head once more.

I hate my job.

My cover story has me working in the area for a couple months, so Fisher urges me to spend some time on campus and see how it feels. I’m increasingly uncomfortable misleading her, so I cut the meeting a bit short by agreeing to her suggestions while I’m rising to leave.

“Thanks so much for meeting with me -- I’ll definately try to spend some time on campus while I’m here, but so far it seems great.”

“I’m glad you think so, but just keep your own goals in mind while you’re looking. And if you have any questions, please do ask them.”

I gather up my pack with the biosensor in it and adjust my jacket as I stand up so she can’t see my gun in its holster. Sometimes late at night, I worry about how natural it seems to carry a weapon everywhere. It’s been ages since I had any real ideas about escaping Section – those particular dreams are just a part of my fantasy life now, but every so often I’m reminded exactly how far my life has moved from the normal world we all left behind. We both make goodbye noises and I walk down the hall and out of the building into the spring weather. It’s such a beautiful day – I’d like to sit on the grass and soak it all in, but I’ve got work to do, and I’m pretty sure Madeline wouldn’t be as forgiving about a late assignment as the teacher I’ve just left.

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