Thursday, May 21, 2009

See, I can write about you instead

4:02:09AM ... 4:02:10 ... 4:02:11 ... 4:02:12 ... Mimi bolted upright in her bed, instantly awake. Her Training had been thorough -- she could keep time without a watch, and will herself to wake up whenever she needed to. Mimi tilted her head toward the far wall -- before she became an Agent, she would've had trouble making out the clock there, but now, she did not even need to use her eyes: the distinctive pitch of the ticking told her where the hands were, told her that her own circadian clock was two minutes slow this morning. Time to get to work. Her fingers found the latch to the false bottom of her dresser. She pulled out the laptop and transmitter, and began reporting in.

By day, Mimi was a student at a university in Philadelphia. Student-Mimi needed an alarm clock to wake up, couldn't see without glasses, and had no idea what Agent-Mimi did at night. Student-Mimi occasionally mused that it might be cool to be a secret agent, but sighed that she probably wasn't cut out for it. Except for a subconscious aversion to ever looking in the bottom drawer of her dresser, student-Mimi was perfectly normal.

Agent-Mimi put her gear back into its hiding place and crawled back into her bed. Tonight, she wouldn't need to change out of her pajamas, to trudge outside. She instantly fell back to sleep.

...

Outside her building, a man in a dark coat packed something back into his bag, weaved through the shadows to his van, and drove off.

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