Spies: 7 Short Stories

by Michael D. Britton

It was all just so, so silly.

  “What are you smirking at?” asked Diana, staring across at him from the opposite bench seat as the car pulled into the White House secure parking facility.

  “Hmm-mh. Heh. HA! Uh, nothing, nothing. Sorry.” Gary covered his mouth with one hand and looked out the window, struggling to control the urge to burst out laughing.

  “You better pull it together,” said Diana. “We can afford no mistakes. Focus yourself!”

  “Yes, Captain. Of course.” Gary could barely keep himself from grinning as he fought the feelings that were climbing around his brain and tickling his heart. “I’m just very pleased that our mission has nearly come to fruition. Forgive me.”

  “It’s all right. You need to practice smiling anyway. This is to be a joyous event, and we must appear to be having a good time, in order to fit in unnoticed.”

  “Yes, Captain. I will work more on my smiling.”

  Gary laughed inside, pondering the fact that he’d just said “more on.” Sounds like “moron.” Heh.

  The car came to a stop and a chauffeur escorted them out, through a high-level security screening processing station, where they were deemed to be no threat to safety, and then up an elevator to the main event.

  The music had already started. A large crowd of people dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns milled around sipping beverages.

  Gary heard the music, felt its beat course through his veins. He felt his body begin to move in time with the rhythm.

  “Not yet, Gary,” Diana chastised under her breath. “What are you doing?”

  “I – I can’t help it,” said Gary. “I just want to shake it!”

  As his superior looked on in horror, Gary shimmied quickly to the center of the dance floor, his arms flailing wildly as he cavorted to the music.

  A dee-jay with a keen eye for fun spotted him and motioned to the guy running the lights, who turned a spotlight onto Gary.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said the dee-jay, “let the festivities begin!”

  So much for a subtle operation.

  Gary grinned and flounced and jiggled. He spun and shuffled and tapped. He was having the time of his life.

  He caught a glimpse of Diana, who looked like she was about to vomit. She stood perched at the edge of the dance floor, elbow-to-elbow with the crowd, which had formed a large circle around Gary to watch him shake his stuff.

  Without even thinking, Gary moved to Diana, reached out, and pulled her to him. She looked mortified as he draped one arm around the small of her back and whirled her away, a giddy expression on his face.

  As they pranced around together, Diana managed to lean in and whisper hoarsely, “What are you doing? We are not supposed to cause a spectacle! You must stop this at once – that is an order!”

  Gary laughed into her face. “I cannot! Ha ha! And I would not if I could. Why would I want to? Hee hee!”

  Then he lifted Diana up over his head, did a tight pirouette, and deposited her back at the edge of the crowded perimeter.

  As the song ended, Gary left the floor on the opposite side from Diana and sashayed toward the open bar, his legs, hips and shoulders keeping time with the music that still played in his head.

  “Water,” he said to the bartender, who promptly dispensed a tall glass. He had come to love the ready availability of water on ancient Earth.

  “Those were some amazing moves, mister...,” said a female voice from behind.

  Gary turned around, his glass in hand. “Mr. Warwick, Gary Warwick. I’m here as a guest of Senator Bridges. Pleased to meet you, Madame President. Oh, and thank you. I do love to dance.”

  At least he had enough presence of mind to remember his cover story, instead of blurting out his true identity as an alien spy from the future. That would’ve gone over well.

  “Then perhaps you’ll join me on the floor when they play a rumba I’ve requested. It is my favorite dance, and since my husband is still recovering from his knee injury...”

  “Oh yes, of course, of course Madame President. It would be my horror. Honor! I mean, honor.”

  “Are you feeling quite all right, Mr. Warwick?”

  “Ah, yes, yes. Thank you, Madame President. I’m just horrified by your husband’s knee injury.”

  “Well, it’s not that bad. Just twisted it skiing.”

  “I would just be so devastated if I couldn’t dance. Especially if I could not dance with my wife on such an auspicious occasion.”

  “I see,” said Harrison, “that’s a sweet sentiment. Well, I’ll be looking for you when they strike up the rumba.”

  She smiled and returned to a group of elite senators and judges, flanked by giant Secret Service body guards.

  Gary breathed a sigh of relief, gulped down the rest of his water, and went to find Diana.

  “Well?” asked Diana, when he met up with her across the great hall. “I saw you talking to her.”

  “She will dance with me. The rumba.”

  “You better not cramp up.”

  “I may. It seems those drugs are already wearing off! They seemed to give me confidence, but now I feel nervous. They gave me rhythm, but now I feel awkward and clumsy. And the leg is starting to get tight. Do you have any more of those pills?”

  “Lucky for you, I came prepared.” She handed him another vial of the little red pills, and he promptly sucked down the whole bottle.

  “You do realize that a dose is only two pills?” asked Diane.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Moments later, as the extra overdose of muscle-relaxers kicked in, the rhythm once again claimed Gary’s identity and he found himself twirling and bouncing around the dance floor, free as a bird.

  There was something about the mix of those drugs and his alien physiology that turned him into a mad two-stepping tornado. He careened from one end of the floor to the other, sometimes grabbing a random partner for a brief duet before jitterbugging off in another direction.

  And then the rumba began.

  Gary started to sway from side to side.

  June Harrison entered the dance floor, and the crowd cleared off, leaving only Gary and his target.

  They came together and Harrison smiled. “Are you ready to rumba?” she asked rhetorically.

  Gary answered with his feet, deftly twirling and gently grabbing the newly-minted president by the hand and leading her through the steps with ease.

  About halfway through the song, the pair neared the First Gentleman, who was standing on the sidelines, glued to his crutch. They all smiled at one another, indicating a comfortable level of consent between all three parties.

  It was going exactly as planned.

  As the song began to reach its climax, Gary seized the opportunity to touch Harrison on the neck with his right palm – making contact for only about three seconds – just long enough for the successful implantation of the NTTs. He could actually feel the nanites as they coursed through the skin of his palm and surreptitiously made their way into his dance partner’s body.

  But as the song began to draw to a close, Gary suddenly doubled over.

  His vision blurred.

  He stopped dancing.

  He vomited violently, and Harrison stepped back abruptly before taking a step forward and laying a hand on his back. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  The answer was obvious, when Gary straightened up and stood fully erect at nearly eight feet tall. His skin flushed a bright green and his eyes darkened and grew to the size and shape of lemons.

  Somehow, the drugs, and the NTT implantation process, together with the exertion and the abundance of clean, pure water in his system – had kicked the little yellow pill right out of his system, eliminating his medical disguise and revealing him in all his alien glory.

  Harrison’s face turned to an expression of horror, and people all around began to scream and clamor for the exits.

  The Secret Service men leapt into action,
hustling Harrison out of harm’s way as one big human shield around her, and drawing their weapons to train them on Gary.

  Gary was dizzy and his head pounded. He looked around at the mayhem he had caused and realized he was probably about to die.

  He spotted Diane in the crowd. She looked surprisingly unsurprised.

  Then it hit him.

  He’d been set up from the start.

  The dancing. The drugs.

  In an instant, he recalled that President Harrison had been particularly receptive to first contact with the Reshku because she had seen a similar-looking alien a couple of years prior to their full arrival.

  She had seen Gary.

  He was the “stray Reshku scout” rumored to have been spotted in 2021.

  And he was now taking his place in history.

  Gary recalled the plan, and realized why he could never remember it right. It was because, in reality, there would be no verification of the nanite implantation – the nanites were placebos.

  There would be no egress for Gary.

  No signal to the Master Council.

  Only exposure, capture, and death.

  As the Secret Service men grabbed him and took him into custody, he saw Diane nod at him meaningfully and begin her escape from the scene, having verified the mission was accomplished – just not the mission Gary had thought he was on.

  And only one of them would be going home.

  Gary knew that within sixty minutes, the Master Council would terminate his TimeStream, and his existence would melt into the space-time continuum.

  It was, after all, protocol.

  Gary knew he had danced his last dance.

  And saved the future.

  END

  * * * * *

  Project: Dreamer

  It was just like that nightmare he kept having lately, only this time it was real.

  Program Agent Delta Nineteen, privately known as Ben Vincent, felt his fingers slipping. There was no way he could hold on much longer. The gravel on the ledge was digging into the flesh of his fingers, palms, and forearms. The muscles in his hands and arms were beyond cramped – they were completely seized up – and the tendons in his wrists and forearms were stretched almost to the point of snapping. He was starting to lose the feeling in his fingertips – a blessing because of the searing pain, but no help when trying to hang on.

  It had been over an hour now, and he knew he could not stay like this indefinitely. He was stuck – no way to pull himself up, and nobody around to help him. Reaching for his tool belt would certainly mean falling.

  The cold air lashing against his face, he surrendered to cold logic: he was out of options.

  He resigned himself to his fate, and released his grip.

  He felt the pull of gravity draw him downward, accelerating. Much to his surprise, he felt a sense of relief, rather than a fear of death.

  He took a long, deep breath, realizing that in the last moments he had been holding his breath as part of his effort to keep from slipping. The cool air struck his lungs in a soothing manner, somehow diminishing the panic his mind told him he should be feeling.

  Ben had heard stories of people on the brink of death having their whole lives pass before their eyes. He had never really understood what that meant. It seemed silly to him that a person would have all of his memories play out in a compressed form as he was perishing. What would be the point of such a mental spectacle? A chance, perhaps, for regrets – even deathbed repentance?

  As he continued to fall, his thoughts began to wander further, toward those inevitable regrets. Why had he even accepted this assignment? With his seniority, he could have passed, and waited for another. And while he was waiting, a week would’ve passed and he would have retired from the Program. Thirty years old, and free to spend all his time doing as he wished with all the wealth he had accumulated during his ten year career.

  Ten years was all that was ever expected – or allowed – for someone who’d pledged to the Program. Experts had determined that any longer than ten years would do irreparable harm. Ben had the presence of mind to see the irony of the fact that irreparable harm was now coming at nine years and fifty-one weeks. But he just could not resist one more chance to do what he loved, even if it was considered the most dangerous of all jobs.

  That thought returned Ben from his musings to the present circumstance. He suddenly realized that he’d been falling for a very, very long time. Why had he not struck the bottom yet? He looked around himself and noticed that he could not make out anything distinctly. It was as if he was falling through a thick fog, the light growing increasingly brighter and whiter the further he fell.

  After a while, he started to become immune to the sensation of falling. His stomach stopped sending the signals to his brain that indicated a steep and speedy descent. Instead, he felt like he was simply floating, weightless, in an endless sea of whiteness.

  Ben couldn’t remember it happening, but the whistling wind that had been rushing past his body had gradually faded to nothingness. All was silent and white, like a winter morning after it had snowed all night.

  Except for the fact that he was in a featureless void. With the lack of a falling sensation, it seemed to Ben that his descent had stopped. But that made no sense.

  He looked around himself in all directions, but all was the same – white and empty.

  How long had he been in this place – this non-place?

  In an effort to make sense of his situation, Ben pulled up his sleeve and glanced at his watch. The titanium timepiece had belonged to his father, who had passed it to Ben when he’d told him he was planning on following in his father’s footsteps by becoming a Program Agent. Father had started his family after his retirement, as was typical for those who chose this career. To try to have a family before retirement would be foolishness – since only one in three survived to retirement.

  The watch still bore the scuffmarks on its face from when Ben had taken his first misstep on his first assignment, almost ten years ago. He’d been assigned as a backup that day for a more experienced man, and had to step in at the last minute when his superior had made a fatal mistake. Ben had barely avoided the pitfall that took the life of the other man, and managed to bang up his watch a little in the process of escaping. That had been the first time of many that Ben had narrowly avoided a sudden end to his life.

  But this time, whatever end he was expecting to his life was not coming suddenly at all.

  On a whim, Ben removed his watch and held it in front of his face, then let go. He expected it to float upward, since he assumed he was still falling, and the watch was much lighter than his body. But the watch simply hung there in front of his face. He poked at it with his finger, and it slowly floated away from him, spinning gently on a vertical axis. Before it got out of reach, he grabbed it and placed it back on his wrist. This was very strange.

  Before pulling his sleeve down, he noticed the time on his watch. It was now showing three minutes earlier than it had when he first looked at it. A closer, longer look proved that it was in fact running backwards.

  Very strange, indeed.

  Things were not as Ben had assumed. He started to realize he was not going to die after all, and the realization helped snap him out of his daze and focus his thoughts. It was time to resume his work and figure out what was going on.

  He decided to test his environment by speaking.

  “Hello?” he called out. The sound was flat. There wasn’t the slightest hint of an echo or a reverberation. It was as if he had spoken the word with his face buried in a pillow, except the word sounded clear. He tried again, only louder. “HELLO?”

  The result was the same. He seemed to exist in a bright nothingness – no gravity, no wind, naught but pure whiteness, and no other objects but him.

  Oh, and there was that little “time running backwards” thing.

  Ben started to wonder
if perhaps he was dead, and in that place that religious people called hell. But he quickly pushed the thought aside – he’d never been one to subscribe to theories of life after death. As far as he’d always been concerned, death was the end. You’re alive, you die, then nothing but silent, thoughtless, dreamless blackness forever.

  But this was not blackness.

  And he was still in his body and could even speak. No, this was not anything like what he’d expected death to be. Clearly, something else was going on here. But what? Where was the ground that he had expected to bring an abrupt end to his life?

  For that matter, where was everything?

  Ben noticed something else was missing, too. The pain in his fingers, hands and arms was gone. He was not numb, just no longer in pain. He looked at his hands, and was surprised to see no broken skin, no blood. His wounds had been healed.

  With this latest mystery, Ben felt it was time apply the problem solving skills he’d acquired in ten years on the job. This situation, he decided, would be his final challenge.

  To begin, he would return to the rudiments of his training. First step is to assess the environment, so Ben made a mental list of the attributes he could ascertain. The first descriptor to come to mind was of course, white. Beyond that, he could only come up with cold, but not uncomfortably so, weightless, no other objects and chronometric irregularity. He could not smell or taste anything, and the only sound in the environment emanated from him – his breathing and heartbeat.

  Next step was to inventory his tools. My body, came first. That was followed by my clothing, my watch, my standard tool belt, my five senses, and the most important thing in his arsenal, my wits.

  Assuming he wasn’t actually going crazy.

  Of course, he also noted that his watch might be malfunctioning. However, it still made the inventory because timekeeping was not its only function.

  Now that he had a description of his environment and an inventory of his resources, he needed to assess the threats to his wellbeing and discover the options at his disposal. As far as threats went, there seemed to be none that he could think of. Only an eventual need for food, water, shelter and sleep; but the immediate lack of those required resources could not really be categorized as a threat. More like something to keep in mind for later.

  As for his options, Ben could see very few. Wait, came to mind first. That was followed by some more creative possibilities. Since he had always hated waiting, he decided to work his way through the other options, one at a time.