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Diffstat (limited to 'CH-1.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | CH-1.txt | 18 |
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 9 deletions
@@ -12,22 +12,22 @@ Steven smiled and bit into a bearclaw. "DC loves its donuts." While most of her coworkers filled her with a kind of dread she had previously only felt when she stood in line at the DMV, she had come to like Steven. He wasn't cynical, didn't seem to care about punching clocks and in certain lights he was not unpleasant to look at. He had longish hair that made him seem perhaps younger than he was and though she still thought men with hair down to their shoulders generally looked ridiculous, Steven managed to pull it off somehow. She watched him now as a strand of the hair escaped from behind his ear and fell in front of his face becoming entangled with a bit of glaze from his bearclaw. He kept eating, seemingly unaware that the hair was now in danger of disappearing into his mouth. It wasn't in fact until an inch or two was in his mouth that he realized what had happened and leaned forward to deftly sweep the hair away as he swallowed the rest of the donut. She watched him, fascinated by the complexities of donut eating that she had not previously considered. -"Any luck with Sgt. Reese?" Steven used a napkin to pull a few bits of donut glaze out of his hair and tucked it back behind his ear. +"Any luck with Sgt. McCann?" Steven used a napkin to pull a few bits of donut glaze out of his hair and tucked it back behind his ear. -Chase turned around and pulled out a small basket of blueberries she kept in the break fridge. "I'm still waiting on the records from Annapolis to make sure it is in fact that my Sgt. Reese." +Chase turned around and pulled out a small basket of blueberries she kept in the break fridge. "I'm still waiting on the records from Annapolis to make sure it is in fact that my Sgt. McCann." -"Why don't you just hop a jet out to Annapolis?" sneered Dennis Burch he slid past her, out of the break room and back, she assumed, to the small, hellish hole in which Chase was sure he lived out his days. Chase glared at his back and watched Steven stifle a smile out of the corner of her eye. "Anyway, if the field tests in Hawaii match then I'm all set because the paperwork puts him there at the time." +"Why don't you just hop a jet out to Annapolis?" sneered Dennis Burch as he slid past her, out of the break room and back, she assumed, to the small, hellish hole in which Chase was sure he lived out his days. Chase glared at his back and watched Steven stifle a smile out of the corner of her eye. "Anyway, if the field tests in Hawaii match then I'm all set because the paperwork puts him there at the time." "Wow, so you're going to have the oldest closed case this year then." Steven raised his eyebrows at her. "Setting the bar kind of high for yourself aren't you? I mean, what are you going to do next year? Tackle Whitmore again?" Steven giggled and walked out of the break room. Assholes. All of them. Chase picked through the moldy blueberries to find the dozen or so ripe ones which she picked out and piled on a napkin. The rest of her fellow employees began to file out, heading off to start whatever it was they did all day. Chase dumped the moldy blueberries in the trash and threw the rest on her mouth. She leaned against the table and stared out over the low ceiling, florescent lighted basement room where she spent her days. -The Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office was ostensibly charged with identifying and recovering the remains of United States personnel lost in foreign wars and other actions abroad. It was the sort of agency that brought a misty tear to many a Senators' eye and many a snapped salute from Presidents, but very little in the way of funding. So little in fact that its predecessor had been disbanded entirely from 1951 to 1976, during which time missing soldiers effectively became persona non grata in the eyes of the government. Even now the diggers, as one of Chase's exes had called the agency, a name that, at least in Chase's mind, had stuck, consisted of fewer than sixty people. And that included the maids and janitors who cleaned the buildings at night. When Chase had arrived nearly a year ago the DPMO was backlogged with some 230,000 MIA cases, some dating from as far back as World War II, some newer, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Bosnia, Mogadishu, Darfur. Just about any hell hole the United States had ever sent its soldiers into, a few had failed to come home. By the time the files reached this basement the MIA solider was dead. The same was likely true of most POWs. In the twenty years her boss had been working here, he told her, he had never once heard of anyone being found alive. Not even MIA/POW reports from more recent wars. If soldiers were alive their comrades rescued them. If there was no rescue then the paper work became part of a Kafkaian labyrinth that eventually led here, to a filing cabinet, somewhere in the long wall of metal filing cabinets that lined the entire bottom floor of the building -- case records, field reports, eyewitness testimonies and countless other pieces of paper that formed the story, from enlistment to disappearance, all packed into the cold metal cabinets surrounded all of them as they worked every day. Around the turn of the century the overlords at the DoD had seen fit to launch a plan to index the files into a database, something searchable, something they might be able to share with outside agencies. The effort had gotten as far the some 74,000 soldiers still missing from World War II. Thanks to budget shortfalls under the Bush administration there were currently only two temps entering data and only one programmer, Steven, trying the wrangle it all into something organized. +The Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office was ostensibly charged with identifying and recovering the remains of United States personnel lost in foreign wars and other actions abroad. It was the sort of agency that brought a misty tear to many a Senators' eye and many a snapped salute from Presidents, but very little in the way of funding. So little in fact that its predecessor had been disbanded entirely from 1951 to 1976, during which time missing soldiers effectively became persona non grata in the eyes of the government. Even now the diggers, as one of Chase's exes had called the agency, a name that, at least in Chase's mind, had stuck, consisted of fewer than sixty people. And that included the maids and janitors who cleaned the buildings at night. When Chase had arrived nearly a year ago the DPMO was backlogged with some 230,000 MIA cases, some dating from as far back as World War II, some newer, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Bosnia, Mogadishu, Darfur. Just about any hell hole the United States had ever sent its soldiers into, a few had failed to come home. By the time the files reached the basement the MIA solider was dead. The same was likely true of most POWs. In the twenty years her boss had been working here, he told her, he had never once heard of anyone being found alive. Not even MIA/POW reports from more recent wars. If soldiers were alive their comrades rescued them. If there was no rescue then the paper work became part of a Kafkaian labyrinth that eventually led here, to a filing cabinet, somewhere in the long wall of metal filing cabinets that lined the entire bottom floor of the building -- case records, field reports, eyewitness testimonies and countless other pieces of paper that formed the story, from enlistment to disappearance, all packed into the cold metal cabinets surrounded all of them as they worked every day. Around the turn of the century the overlords at the DoD had seen fit to launch a plan to index the files into a database, something searchable, something they might be able to share with outside agencies. The effort had gotten as far the some 74,000 soldiers still missing from World War II. Thanks to budget shortfalls under the Bush administration there were currently only two temps entering data and only one programmer, Steven, trying the wrangle it all into something organized. Despite a promising career as an academic historian, Chase had shunned the cushy university posts offered to her by well wishing professors and administrations, opting instead to, as she blithely told Dr. Rosenbaum the morning she accepted the position at the DoD, "do some research that actually affects peoples lives." Rosenbaum had just shrugged, rubbed the white stubble of his sagging chin and hrumphed quietly, as was his nature. She knew that he, and rest of her professors thought she was crazy, that they all, like her mother, thought she was throwing something away, but she didn't care. She didn't want to spend her life just talking about the past, she wanted to touch it. She wanted to see it in front of her, to feel it between her fingers, to dig in the soil, to make it part of the present, the way it had always been to her, as far back as she could remember. So she shoved her PhD in a box, filled up the back of her old Volvo station wagon and drove from Massachusetts down to Washington DC where she had accepted a job as junior research fellow at the Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office. With Dr. Rosenbaum's half-hearted help she managed to get herself assigned to what everyone referred to as the skull and bones department, which specialized in field work and connecting, as the joke went, the skull with the bones. But despite a reputation for fieldwork, Chase had only, thus far, been out of the office once and that had been her own doing, not the DoD. -As the new girl Chase had been handed the worst job in skull and bones, trying to find Whitmore and Hume. It was a ritual, a kind of hazing for history nerds. The case had been handed, amid chuckles and snickers from old timers, to every new Skull and Bones employee for the last twenty years, none of whom had ever managed to find the skull, bones or even vague whereabouts of Lt. Whitmore or his gunner, Sgt. Hume. The two had simply disappeared into a cloud. Like most newcomers Chase had accepted the file as her first challenge, her opportunity to prove herself. She heard the snickers. She heard the chuckles. She knew the case was a dog even before Steven took pity on her and pulled her aside one day at lunch to say, "You know you can't solve Whitmore and Hume, right?" He lowered his voice to a whisper, "We've all had to dog it for a while. I had it three years ago when I started, before they found out I could write code. Fuckers think it's funny." He grimaced. "Just thought you should know." +As the new girl Chase had been handed the worst job in skull and bones, trying to find Whitmore and Hume. It was a ritual, hazing for history nerds. The case had been handed, amid chuckles and snickers from old timers, to every new Skull and Bones employee for the last twenty years, none of whom had ever managed to find the skull, bones or even vague whereabouts of Lt. Whitmore or his gunner, Sgt. Hume. The two had simply disappeared into a cloud. Like most newcomers Chase had accepted the file as her first challenge, her opportunity to prove herself. She heard the snickers. She heard the chuckles. She knew the case was a dog even before Steven took pity on her and pulled her aside one day at lunch to say, "You know you can't solve Whitmore and Hume, right?" He lowered his voice to a whisper, "We've all had to dog it for a while. I had it three years ago when I started, before they found out I could write code. Fuckers think it's funny." He grimaced. "Just thought you should know." Thank you Steven," Chase was twirling a pen through her fingers wondering if perhaps the case were solvable despite years of failure. She knew of half a dozen mathematical proofs that for years had been considered unsolvable and then one day, damn it all, someone solves it. And she wasn't even a mathematician, probably there were far more examples. Still, history was trickier, Amelia Earhart was still unsolved, Jesse James' gold was still missing, DB Cooper was never heard from again. @@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ Sometimes the past is truly gone, swallowed up by time. Other times it just look ----- -Chase had just finished typing up the last of her report on Sgt. Reese when Steven wandered into her office and sat down on the edge of her desk, one leg on the floor, one draped over a stack of files Chase need to send back to the Archives. +Chase had just finished typing up the last of her report on Sgt. McCann when Steven wandered into her office and sat down on the edge of her desk, one leg on the floor, one draped over a stack of files Chase need to send back to the Archives. "Steven," she said without glancing up from her laptop screen. "Something on your mind?" @@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ Chase smiled, but kept her head down. "A lady never tells Steven." She could see "Sorry, that didn't come out right did it?" He picked up the cheap nameplate from her desk and toyed with the edge where the fake gold laminate was already peeling after barely a year. At least they weren't wasting money on frivolous stuff he thought to himself. "It's just that, well... there are rumors see, rumors you're going to go back to the Whitmore case or something crazy like that." -She said nothing while she finished entering the last of the Reese report and then clicked save and closed the laptop. "Steven, you know as well as I do that Whitmore is unsolvable." +She said nothing while she finished entering the last of the McCann report and then clicked save and closed the laptop. "Steven, you know as well as I do that Whitmore is unsolvable." "Actually, I would've thought that you knew that even better than I do." Steven had set down the nameplate and pulled out a small package of nutter butters which he proceeded to eat, distractedly. "Chase, listen, you know how everyone here thinks that you're trying to make them look bad?" @@ -71,7 +71,7 @@ She said nothing while she finished entering the last of the Reese report and th "Well, see, the thing is, I'm starting to think that maybe they're right. You've been here just over a year, so this is technically your second year, but I'm going to keep calling it your first year, since it's your first full year, your first year in which anyone can really judge your case work and quite frankly it's really good. You didn't solve Whitmore. So far that's you're only smudge, if it can be called that. So that means you cleared what? fifteen cases? -"Reese makes eighteen actually." Chase leaned back in her chair. "What's your point Steven, just spit it out." +"McCann makes eighteen actually." Chase leaned back in her chair. "What's your point Steven, just spit it out." He stared at his shoes. "I don't know. It's just that, if the rumors are true they're going to start giving you even more old cases, cases they think the rest of us can't do. I mean, here's the thing, you know how I told you I ended up getting moved over to the tech department because I knew Python? Yeah, well, that's true, but it's also true that my last case was for a missing snipers in Afghanistan that turn out to be on loan to the CIA for things that are way the hell over my pay grade and quite frankly terrify me. In other words, I got fucked, a snafu that turned out to embarrass half a dozen very high ranking military officers, not to mention my own bosses who have to admit they assigned it to me.... But you, you just keep solving things. I used to be you, but ever since that stupid case I've been writing code, which is fine, but then you came along and it reminds me of how I fucked up, or how I got fucked." @@ -115,7 +115,7 @@ She's definitely crazy thought Chase, "can I help you?" Chase considered saying no, but she was curious. She glanced back inside. Steven's head was buried in the newspaper. Chase stepped back out to the street and let the door close behind here. "How do you know my name?" -"Well, there you go. I thought he might be crazy." She laughed nervously. "Man asked me to give you something. Actually," She flipped her hair back over her shoulder and grinned at Chase, "he promised me five hundred dollars if I gave you this." She reached into her purse and retrieved a small slip of pink paper folded in half. She thrust it out to Chase who took it from her fingers and without looking at it said, "Okay. Thank you," as if it were perfectly normal for a stranger to be handing her a slip of paper on behalf of another stranger. +"Well, there you go. I thought that boy might be crazy." She laughed nervously. "He asked me to give you something." She flipped her hair back over her shoulder and grinned at Chase who was too shocked to respond. The woman reached into her purse and retrieved a small slip of pink paper folded in half. She thrust it out to Chase who took it from her fingers and without looking at it said, "Okay. Thank you," as if it were perfectly normal for a stranger to be handing her a slip of paper on behalf of another stranger. The woman seemed to accept that it was in fact normal. She nodded. "Well, anyway. Have a good day." And she turned and walked back toward the corner. |