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defrogI am signing up to work for the CIA. Again.
I say "again" because as I go through the hiring procedure (which involves epic amounts of paperwork), I feel that I’ve done this before – a lot of it seems familiar and no real surprises. This may be because I had some kind of pre-briefing beforehand, but my feeling is I worked for them before under a freelance contract, and I’m doing so again, though it’s been awhile since the last gig.
My recruiter – who later turns out to be my supervisor – is John Goodman (or is played by him).
I meet him in the parking garage of some hotel resort complex somewhere in Southeast Asia to sign the various contracts involved. They include things like T&Cs, list of duties, an inventory of the equipment I'll be using, and – strangely – music publishing rights, under which if I record any music as part of my undercover duties with the CIA, they’ll handle the publishing to ensure I get paid royalties for any sales (though of course the CIA will take a percentage).
All of this makes sense to me – I read over everything and sign everywhere Goodman tells me to sign.
Goodman welcomes me to the team. He hands me a small square radio that clips onto my belt. It looks like an old MP3 player, with a toggle switch on the side to search the various menus – you move the switch to the center and push it once to select an item. One feature is that you can tune in to the radio comms of any other agent that yr authorized to listen to – either live chatter or MP3 archives of conversations. The idea is that the transparency will keep everyone honest, though I’m pretty sure at least some agents are cagey enough to develop code words or routines to work around that – or even delete or edit recordings.
We walk over to a flatbed truck and climb on the flatbed part. As the truck pulls out of the garage, I ask when I start.
“Soon as the truck leaves the resort premises, yr on the clock,” he says. “Literally. We track everything by GPS, so the satellite will log your hours in the system automatically.
I consider this. “So I’m being paid by the hour?”
His answer is non-comital, and I start wondering if this means I’m going to be making less money per month than I planned on. I also wonder if the radio is also the tracking device, and what would happen if I should lose it or leave it at home.
I’m not entirely sure yet exactly what I’ll be doing – Goodman is talking about how they’re embedding agents into China as a way to somehow exert influence on North Korea, but that doesn't seem to be what they have in mind for me.
Shift: I am in a vast and busy library, where I am wheeling around a kid in a wheelchair. I’m looking after him until his parents arrive. He’s also my cover to arrange a meeting in the library with Goodman.
I bring the kid to the computer section, which is mobbed by other kids who are all playing eSports games. He wants to watch, so I park him and leave him to it, send a message to his parents telling them where he is, and I take a lift upstairs to meet Goodman.
He asks me if I’ve familiarized myself with the radio’s functions.
“I’ve been playing with it, but I haven’t gone through all the functions yet,” I admit.
“How about the equipment catalog?”
"Not yet, no.”
“Yeah, well, you won't find much there – it’s more like a placeholder for now.”
“Placeholder for what?” I ask.
He explains that our particular department doesn't have the authorization or the funding to develop our own specialized field gear. It’s a chicken/egg situation – we can’t get authorization without funding, and vice versa.
Goodman is obsessed with the idea that we should be able to develop our own technology solutions and then sell them to other govt departments. For example, he has ideas for comms components that could be used in military tanks to make their radios more efficient and their guns more accurate.
“I tell ya, we’d make enough money from the patents alone to justify the funding for it,” he says. “Check out the catalog – I’ve put some of my ideas in there. Let me know what you think – I could use the feedback.”
“Sure,” I say, although I’m starting to understand why the CIA won’t give him the funding for this.
And then I woke up.
Working for the man,
This is dF
I say "again" because as I go through the hiring procedure (which involves epic amounts of paperwork), I feel that I’ve done this before – a lot of it seems familiar and no real surprises. This may be because I had some kind of pre-briefing beforehand, but my feeling is I worked for them before under a freelance contract, and I’m doing so again, though it’s been awhile since the last gig.
My recruiter – who later turns out to be my supervisor – is John Goodman (or is played by him).
I meet him in the parking garage of some hotel resort complex somewhere in Southeast Asia to sign the various contracts involved. They include things like T&Cs, list of duties, an inventory of the equipment I'll be using, and – strangely – music publishing rights, under which if I record any music as part of my undercover duties with the CIA, they’ll handle the publishing to ensure I get paid royalties for any sales (though of course the CIA will take a percentage).
All of this makes sense to me – I read over everything and sign everywhere Goodman tells me to sign.
Goodman welcomes me to the team. He hands me a small square radio that clips onto my belt. It looks like an old MP3 player, with a toggle switch on the side to search the various menus – you move the switch to the center and push it once to select an item. One feature is that you can tune in to the radio comms of any other agent that yr authorized to listen to – either live chatter or MP3 archives of conversations. The idea is that the transparency will keep everyone honest, though I’m pretty sure at least some agents are cagey enough to develop code words or routines to work around that – or even delete or edit recordings.
We walk over to a flatbed truck and climb on the flatbed part. As the truck pulls out of the garage, I ask when I start.
“Soon as the truck leaves the resort premises, yr on the clock,” he says. “Literally. We track everything by GPS, so the satellite will log your hours in the system automatically.
I consider this. “So I’m being paid by the hour?”
His answer is non-comital, and I start wondering if this means I’m going to be making less money per month than I planned on. I also wonder if the radio is also the tracking device, and what would happen if I should lose it or leave it at home.
I’m not entirely sure yet exactly what I’ll be doing – Goodman is talking about how they’re embedding agents into China as a way to somehow exert influence on North Korea, but that doesn't seem to be what they have in mind for me.
Shift: I am in a vast and busy library, where I am wheeling around a kid in a wheelchair. I’m looking after him until his parents arrive. He’s also my cover to arrange a meeting in the library with Goodman.
I bring the kid to the computer section, which is mobbed by other kids who are all playing eSports games. He wants to watch, so I park him and leave him to it, send a message to his parents telling them where he is, and I take a lift upstairs to meet Goodman.
He asks me if I’ve familiarized myself with the radio’s functions.
“I’ve been playing with it, but I haven’t gone through all the functions yet,” I admit.
“How about the equipment catalog?”
"Not yet, no.”
“Yeah, well, you won't find much there – it’s more like a placeholder for now.”
“Placeholder for what?” I ask.
He explains that our particular department doesn't have the authorization or the funding to develop our own specialized field gear. It’s a chicken/egg situation – we can’t get authorization without funding, and vice versa.
Goodman is obsessed with the idea that we should be able to develop our own technology solutions and then sell them to other govt departments. For example, he has ideas for comms components that could be used in military tanks to make their radios more efficient and their guns more accurate.
“I tell ya, we’d make enough money from the patents alone to justify the funding for it,” he says. “Check out the catalog – I’ve put some of my ideas in there. Let me know what you think – I could use the feedback.”
“Sure,” I say, although I’m starting to understand why the CIA won’t give him the funding for this.
And then I woke up.
Working for the man,
This is dF
