The Agency seeks to level the playing field by introducing intelligence, strength, artistic and empathic traits to populations in need of leadership from within.
It's helping me to write by remembering that I don't have to get it right, I just have to get going. So I'm writing it in story form. Then I'll go back and decide what I can show v. what I can tell.
"Really, young man, you don't want to keep doing this."
I hear her first, then I see a flash of red neath my blindfold and the cigarette that has been shoved, unlit, between my lips by Ike. The guy is clearly programmed to like old spy movies. Irritatingly, Ike gave me the cig and then refused to light it, citing FUZE environmental health and safety regs. But I'm getting a little hit of nicotine, so I don't spit it out.
If I squinch up my face, I can see a little bit under the blind. It's an Apple. Shit. I've only seen those in kid's picture holos. It's both more an dless than what I thought it would be. Now it's gone; I hear a crunch and it's back, this time with a bite taken out of it. It's not red all the way through. That surprises me. But the smell... it's sweet and crisp. It's incredible. My mouth starts to water. Even if I wasn't half-starved, I suspect that smell would set me off. It smells like something I've forgotten and I'm just about to remember...
"No, thank you, " I lie. "Ike promised me a meatball while I wait for my papers to be analyzed."
"You don't want that meatball, McMurdo."
This brings me up short. Again. Who is this? I squinch my face again to move the blind, but now the apple and the voice are slightly behind me.
"Haven't you ever wondered how they make those meatballs, McMurdo?"
No; this is the FUZE: the Land of Milk and Honey.
"Cows. The meatballs are so big here, sometimes you find a bell in them." I can hear the smirk in her voice when she replies.
"Bossy's dead, McMurdo. But you don't have to be, if you come with me. " Who IS this?
"If you don't mind, I'm being processed for entry to the Free United Zone: Europa, right now. Can you come back later?"
"You're always asking me to come back, and every time I do, you're dead. Can't we just skip to the part where you come with me?"
(Transition scene TBA.)
McMurdo is not where he thinks he is. This whole time, we've seen him as he sees himself: in a dashing spy outfit, blindfolded and cigaretted in a pristine waiting room. Mary Marie McMurdo thwhips him in the nose, hard. As his eyes water and he reacts in pain, the scene changes. They're in an abandoned industrial zone, overgrown with weeds, and instead of a bespectacled bureaucrat politely looking through papers, IKE the automated sentry squats. McMurdo is wearing a grubby utility suit. The "cigarette" is a stick lozenge with drugs in it that change his perceptions and keep him calm.
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| See blog entry for picture source. |
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