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A Mircean background makes you a natural for in-theatre work across the Developed World.
Two years of training and conditioning, by 86 you're tapping the phones of mid-tier economists and chloroforming guard dogs with a brilliant young operant from the Remembrancer's Office.
In 89, we catch our break.
Your controller orders you to assemble a new network, in Portofiro.
They knew I had something special.
Special-ish, yet ultimately expendable. The ideal operant.
Branch
End of this branch
Not enough slots.
Branch
Greatest mistake of my life.
Felt so nice you did it twice.
The 10mm bullet in your chest upsets the metal detector at the labour assignment office -- consider this the objective correlative that makes what comes next feel predetermined.
Meaning I never had a chance.
Is it really such a leap to imagine they had it all worked out for us eons in advance?
The bullet, the monotheist agent who fired it, all of them in on it.
You're pulled aside by a heavyset officer with a disconcerting grin. He guides you first to a small booth, then a separate room in the far back.
This room is overlit, oppressive. On the desk: an electric kettle and two small television monitors stacked atop one another. The overweight talent scout behind the desk pours a cup of cold tea and offers it to you.
It reeked of old cigarettes.
The peculiar tang of Suprema 100s, your first time smelling them.
THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE, AUGMENTED WITH PERFORMANCE ENHANCING ADDITIVES UNKNOWN TO CAPITALIST SCIENCE.
I didn't like his questions.
Do you like to travel? Are you good with foreign languages? Can you memorise an arbitrary series of figures and perform complicated maths in your head? Do people trust you implicitly?
His gaze was intense.
He has a round, omnivorous face.
It's not really your answers that interest him, it's how you answer.
Yes, no, yes, yes.
I knew right away something was up.
I know how to make an entrance.