Contact Agent, Chapter 9
by Jacob Malewitz
Blue Vest, 200
Tommy Sport, 300 mill
Apartment 9, 300
Siege of Eltradorean Knights, 3 mill a page
Z
wrote the headline ."First contact scenario from the past,a
memory we forgot." He scribbled it out. His headline work went
into old fashioned notebooks; he didn't care if this was the 1,000th
century of mankind or the first era of the written word. You put your
words on paper, then you moved them back to the screen. Headlines
were honey: you played with them too much, it got messy.
He crossed out the second and third tries. He looked up from his
small chair, which he'd acquisitioned from Crossman. Crossman,the
agent of a former time, a time where you could be different and still
live, was looking out the window. Z was beginning to see beyond the
second life, the chip, the Red Gate. He saw a man on the rim of
thought. He saw a story.
"I will tell this
story until we listen." He just started the article, forgoing
headlines. You could do that. "I will explain how we made first
contact and why no one is covering it. I will explain what we've
done, seen, and what we will do. Mankind has made first--"he
slowed. Should he say it? There was no solid evidence; even wire
feeds required some ratio of evidence. You could expound on literary
thought while writig at night, but of assassins, hitmen, space
soldiers, and conspiracies? Was this too big even for the Lucky
Journalism universal feed?
He crossed
lines.
And he scribbled out most of what he'd
written. "Jamesian and First Contact," he wrote in his
notebook. Then he went to writing.
Toward the
end of the article, at a point where he felt like sharing, a nature
of the artist, he calmly read it out loud. Crossman listened to every
word, but kept his eyes outside; what was he expecting to appear in
the night?
"In theory, the Red Gate is
from an ancient race who built it to escape the galaxy. Why escape
the Milky Way? Is there something here which drove them to an end, or
are these aliens, who could be so many varieties of intelligence and
physical being that you could never master exactly what they are,
curious? Did we send a fleet of ships toward this gate, and did
the scout ship, once thought lost, which no one knew of, have
actually returned for the briefest of moments." He took a deep
breath, a slight tug on him for a cigarette.
"You have to say I saw him."
"Proof,
you mean. Journalism is more than proof. We aren't being read by
enough to have exact proof."
"But you
need something. I saw it. The Living Red Gate. The ship with
Jamesian. And I remember him."
"You
remember?
"He was a contact agent."
"When did you remember this?"
"It
gives me bits and pieces. He was practically a brother. I took
the girl, he took the mission. He worked so hard back then. Jamesy,
we called him. He knew so much about crossing space and time you
would have thought he'd become president of the entire operation. But
he was part clone, black, and had no ranking individuals in the
Sphere. So got picked over .Took the mission, the one I missed
out on because Babel had me flying. He took it, and I thought he
died. He must hate me. I took Day. He was forgotten, a nobody, no
heroic name, just another contact ops mission with no one taking
credit, blame, or even mentioning it. it's worse to be forgotten than
to be hated, at least in a man's true heart."
Chapter 10,
2 Points
Crossman stepped out first, noting the hover craft
floating about 100 stories up across the ciity; then came Z, a
journal in his hand and a monitor over his eye.
They slowly crossed 2 points of picking up tails.
He's good, Crossman thought.
Z had so often
lost tails that it was second nature. If you weren't
followed,something was wrong with your articles. You had haters who
wanted to pick up on things you did; picking up hookers or hitting
the pipe. You had government officials who 1) liked you and wanted
you to live or 2) didn't like you and hoped you'd disappear in the
middle of a gun fight.
Crossman, on the other
hand, had no second nature on tails. He could lose them, he
could spot them, but crossing the stone tablets of the road and on
his way to the destination, he almost forgot they were even
there.
By the time a man with a short pistol
appeared behind him, he'd not only made the man but had decided not
to kill him. Probably brainwashed. Probably Red Empire agent who
wanted the chip. Or maybe the chip was playing games with him.
Could it?
He turned back, walking directly
toward the assassin. Curious.
"Hi,"
he yelled, and Z, following him via the feed, spotted two more tails
converging on him. Why not just kill him and get it over with? Sniper
rifle. Bad dope. Knock on his door and knife him in the
guts.
Why?
They wanted
something. What?
And who were they?
So the plan was working. Crossman stepped into the first tail, who
seemed more surprised by the apparent absurdity of the situation than
anything. "Have you seen the way angels lie to you at
night?"
"I have," Crossman
stopped. He was going to give a line back, but stopped himself. "I
have seen angels, falling."
"Crossman,
what are you doing? What is your mission?"
He almost stopped again, picking up the other tails. This man was
alone. Who the hell was he? He calmly said his mission back to him,
word for word, like he'd memorized it. "First contact with the
Orderman beings. Rendevous with Jamesian. Set ablaze the world
who resist. And create god."
"You are
going to fail that mission if these two agents take you out."
He started crying. He remembered more. Training. A special mission.
Something Boss had given him, years ago. Then, robotically, he turned
toward 2 agents coming from 2 points who were calmly sifting through
a light crowd in the street.
The chip
burned.
He slit the throat of the first man
from behind, dragging him into the alley like an orcmach. The other
tail stood right in the alley, gun drawn.
"He
was a second gener. Pity."
A fire
resounded, but Crossman felt no pain. He felt on fire. Falling to the
ground, he could almost see the Orderman in the sky, watching over
him.
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