Fake Me (4-6)

Editor’s Note: This picks up where Fake Me (1-3) left off.

Twenty percent of the newsforce disappeared one day.

One month and one week before Alan had his big idea, he had returned from a city hall assignment to find that the bustling newsroom he’d worked in for two years had taken on a different buzz. Isaac Slocust, an intern assisting the ombudsman, stood in the doorway with a clipboard and a runny nose. He checked Alan’s name off the list and gave him a white envelope with his first name written on it in black magic marker, block letter style.

Alan opened the envelope on the way back to his desk and found a flyer inviting him to the circulation manager’s retirement party. According to the date and time, it had started ten minutes earlier. He hurried down to the basement, but stopped when he heard muffled weeping. The major conference room door was slightly ajar, and the light from that crack projected on a wastebasket full of torn white envelopes with first names written in red block letters. He couldn’t see everyone in the room, but he could see the crier, Maureen of the local Arts Connection page. He could also see Lord George’s back. The ombudsman was standing next to a gentle-but-firm HR powersuit who was explaining the process of “separation.” A quick look at the wastebasket confirmed that nearly all of the fired individuals were the most recently hired, Maureen being the near retirement-aged exception. Which begged the question - why wasn’t he in that room listening to descriptions of severance packages? Alan reached out and seized the wastebasket and pulled it out of the light. He stepped into the stairwell and took a closer look. As he expected, there was an envelope with red block letters that read “Alan.” He’d bet a hypothetical severance package that Alan Dirsuwalt, a sportswriter in his thirties, was in that room erroneously.

He returned to Isaac’s doorway and told the intern to go down to the retirement party and get some sheetcake. Isaac needed little urging, leaving the clipboard in Alan;s hands and escaping to the basement.

Alan swallowed hard and traced his finger down the list of red column names until he found his own.

Right under Maureen’s.

……………………………………………………………………………………

He finished the story and fed it to the Account Billing Program before he could change his mind. Mira had told him over lunch that the ABP was at least as dangerous as the phones when it came to employee surveillance, if not more so. She didn’t have access to its inner workings, but she could identify some of its features, including one that recorded all keystrokes from the employees. This wasn’t something to fear under ordinary circumstances, since human intelligence was required to process the content of what was being typed - provided that a certain number of obvious key words hadn’t been triggered to create an alert.

Prolonged inactivity also created alerts, and this too was seldom a problem - unless you were an art editor like Maureen who composed her thoughts offline. Mira had chuckled when she implied that to be a factor in Maureen’s dismissal, and Alan felt the first chilly uneasiness all day that was unrelated to the hoax.

His printer automatically printed out a “received” page listing several attached files, the first being the body copy. If Tulwar were in, he would have received a message at that moment that would have directed him to the copy and suggested edits. As far as Alan was concerned, that story could languish on the queue all weekend, as long as it was time stamped.

Next he took on the infuriatingly redundant progress report, a summary of what he had done. He and the other reporters had learned that “I wrote the story I was assigned to write.” was not considered an appropriate summary. Ramero preferred to see bullet pointed outlines with enough content to imply that the reporter was working hard, but not so much that he or she was wasting company time and money “over-sourcing.” Exactly how much or how little varied according to his mood and his interest in the individual’s suffering. Every so often Alan and the other survivors of the separation believed they had figured out the ombudsman’s strike zone, only to find out that the man was putting the finishing touches on another negative history for HR’s files.

This progress report had to be particularly solid, and Alan believed it was. It probably leaned too heavily into detail for a normal day, but he would need those details on Monday.

008424_AA_dateline - Foreign Desk

Type - Profile
Background: Subject is student, age 19. Oxford, England. GK (confirmed below)

Resource / Topic

o WilsonBio - Father
o WilsonBio - Mother
o Who’sWho - Mother
o LexisNexis - Subject
o Bluebook - Oxford

Contacts:

1. Registrar’s Assistant - confirmed subject’s field of study
2. Professor - Wouldn’t cooperate
3. Classmate - No answer
4. Classmate - No answer
5. Classmate - Wouldn’t cooperate
6. Classmate - No answer

Note: no calls after 10:30 p.m. GMT. Will call again 6:00 a.m. EST (11:00 a.m. GMT)

Conclusion:
Story could run as is pending editorial approval; would be improved by student quote.

<>

“So Brits go to bed early on Fridays? I wasn’t aware of that.”
Ramero yawned as he said it, and Alan resisted the urge to make a stinging joke about Ramero’s own bedtime.

“It seemed as if the students who were available were not in the proper frame of mind. If I can catch some good quotes tomorrow, I will, but I suspect we’ll have to go to press without them.”

Ramero held up the paper and deliberated. Alan sensed that the strike zone was moving again.
“Fine,” The ombudsman said, finally. “Send it for review. Dismissed.”

This already done, Alan started to leave.

“Wait,” Ramero was about to add the report to a manila folder, but halted as something had caught his eye. “How did you reach contact #1?”

Alan floundered for a moment. “How…”

“It’s not in the phone log,” Ramero snapped. “Explain.”

“E-mail, then synchronous chat,” Alan raised his chin again and forced his voice into neutrality. “It actually saved money.”

“Kids,” Ramero muttered just loud enough for Alan to hear, and met his eyes with a sickly and patronizing smirk. “Don’t you know, it could be anyone on the other end?” He paused to let this sink in while Alan imagined beating him to death with every blunt object within reach. “Follow up on the registrar’s assistant tomorrow, and we’ve got an airtight story. Dismissed.”

……………………………………………………………………………………

The only drawback to purchasing take out from Soup Dreams had to be the garish paper bags, psychedelically painted with colors that appeared exclusively in dreams and vats of highly toxic inks. Alan felt very self-conscious when he got on the 36B with that bag. All of the other riders traveling into that part of town at that time looked to be assembly line workers from the auto parts facility. He’d interviewed several long time shift managers and line workers for his first major story for the paper, researched the history of the site and the details surrounding the partial closing of the plant. Although it gave him great pain to do so, he condensed the most salient details into a lean 800-word story.

The metro editor trimmed it in half and removed all coherence from the piece.

It was Alan’s first indication that his editors may not have the passion they had when they began their careers, but he recognized that the line workers had it worse, compelled to operate with forty employees where once there were eighty, and maintain productivity or face total closure.

That this bus was filled after a shift change with tired men (and a few women) wearing the distinctive windbreakers meant that the plant had survived in a diminished state. But he recalled meeting workers two years ago who regularly lifted mustard packets and toilet paper to save pennies, so he wondered if yuppie soup like his had ever crossed their taste buds.

Alan got off the bus with more than a few line workers at the Wallace Manor Apartments. They tramped a path across the remains of someone’s attempt at a community garden, and scattered in all directions into homogeneous two-story facades. Each had a single door, one dead potted plant, and one window that already glowed blue from Jeopardy.

He slowly counted over from the first and still marked Landlord’s apartment to the dilapidated number 22A. He prepared himself for a jealous and hostile boyfriend, and considered the ways he could present himself as non-threatening.

Unbidden, his college roommate August Ketchum sprang into his mind. August had started college as a sad sack who quickly latched onto the pretty upperclassman named Nicole who had run his orientation. He rearranged his class schedule, cooked them diners in her apartment, and watched sappy movies with her and friends, never asking more of her, or, it seemed, forcing her to exert herself for any reason.

Alan and the others ribbed August for his efforts, culminating in a night of interrogation when Ketchum shook his hands at his disbelieving hallmates, and swore upon his grandparent’s graves that he was just pursuing the object of his affection from a different angle.

Despite their teasing, Alan and his friends had been fond of poor August. His attempts to woo Nicole by shopping, cooking, dancing and hair braiding all came to naught when she positioned him as her “boy girlfriend” and started dating his antithesis, an aggressive and uncommunicative bully who tormented him mercilessly. Eventually August wised up and dumped both of them, taking up with the kid sister of one of the hallmates and becoming the first one in the group to get married. This demonstrated to Alan that it didn’t pay to misrepresent one’s self - not that he had needed much reminding.

Alan rang the doorbell at what he believed to be 22A - the numbers had been removed at this and all the others on the row - and waited. The blinds were drawn, so he couldn’t see inside this window. No light shined through, meaning that there was at least one detail that set these occupants apart from the Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune watchers in the neighborhood. He rang again and wondered if the sound of the bell actually rang inside or if the chime was broken.

The door opened just as he raised his fist to knock.

He only stood a few inches shorter than Alan’s six feet, but spanned a bit broader across the torso. He wore dark brown leather pants and a matching vest, open wide enough to show off a silver necklace that dangled an oval medal with a crescent moon on a peaked cap. His dark hair hadn’t succumbed to any gray, but he was losing some at the widow’s peak. In compensation he had grown an aggressive forelock that curled down over his right eye like an unfinished question mark. His left eye studied Alan from head to toe, and initially satisfied, he stepped back and held open the door, removing a pretzel rod from between two lips stained with red wine.

“Alan, right?” he said in a husky voice that didn’t seem particularly authentic. “Come in.”

Alan’s eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom inside the apartment. Mira’s unusual clash of styles extended from her personal appearance to her décor. Ankhs and Daggers of various sizes were mixed with metal band posters, which competed for space with Zithers and West African fertility totems. Every corner of the apartment seeped paraphernalia, much of it unidentifiable. The kitchen table was clean, and so was a clear path to it, so Mira’s boyfriend (if that was indeed who it was who had let him in) beckoned him to it. Mira was nowhere to be seen, so he sat down.

A series of creaks overhead suggested that someone was moving in a triangular pattern upstairs. He could see a narrow aperture leading to a narrow staircase that must have defeated anyone trying to manhandle a mattress or couch to the second level.

“Rod?” Mira’s probable boyfriend held out a pretzel rod. Alan proffered a neutral smile in return. “No thanks, I already ate.”

“H’oh well,” The probable boyfriend smiled wider and popped another rod in his mouth and pulled back on it to let the salt crystals rake his lips. “More for me.”

Alan paused a beat, thinking he’d missed something significant. He’d expected hostility and suspicion, but instead this fellow seemed diffident and self-conscious all at once.

“You know, ” he began. “Mira never told me your name.”

“Roman!” Mira’s boyfriend rumbled, popping out his hand quickly for a handshake. “Nice to meet you, Alan, really. So you are - wait, don’t let go yet, I’m keen to guess.”

Roman turned over Alan’s hand and studied his palm. Alan politely let him squint at the lines, but snuck another glance at the stairs. A door closed somewhere above, and water ran through some pipes.

Meanwhile, Roman’s head sank lower and lower until the tip of his nose almost touched Alan’s fingers. He was making a low hissing sound with his tongue and teeth.

Then he straightened. “Tsk-tsk. When was the last time you had your palm read?”

“Never,” Alan lied, withdrawing his hand with another neutral smile.

“It shows!” Roman declared, and Alan noticed that his voice had gone up a desperate octave. “You really need a longer session to make up for lost time, but I can tell you that you are a clearly a powerful individual who has yet to unlock his true potential.”

Alan had witnessed something like this before. Sometimes eccentricity could be for eccentricity’s sake. Sometimes it could be put on or amplified in service to a cause. And what could that cause be? He had a strong suspicion, but it seemed so far fetched.

It had been easy to track Mira’s movements upstairs, but she took them by surprise when she silently descended the staircase wearing fuzzy slippers and a blue kimono. She was tying a gray kerchief over her head as she did so, but it didn’t entirely conceal the aluminum foil wrap.

“Alan!” She skidded to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, then looked at Roman, who had only half turned her way. “Why didn’t you say he was here?”

Alan couldn’t see Roman’s face, but it seemed as if his voice had adopted a third timbre to answer his girlfriend. “Mira-love, I thought you heard the doorbell, but I can see that you probably didn’t hear it over the faucet. Will you two be needing anything, or should I go back and hit the books?”

Mira peered at him with the same concentration he had used on Alan’s palm. “The books,” She said flatly.

“Aw, no fun. Guess I’m out of distractions.” He stretched and slowly rose out of the chair. “Nice meeting you Alan. Maybe I’ll see you around.” He took a pair of headphones that had been draped over a fertility statue and a used biology textbook from a small stack of books atop a medicine shield, and ambled out of the room.

Alan turned to Mira and thought of all the questions he could ask her, but saw her expression and easily decided not to. So he held up the psychedelic bag instead. “It actually is very good. Want some?”