The Media Candidate – politics and power in 2048

by Paul Dueweke

CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Singular Lesson

  Fifteen-year-old Sherwood sat on his front porch one Saturday awaiting his monthly issue of Double Agent. It was two days late, and he fantasized the mailman taking it home. “If he does not bring it today,” he mumbled, “I am going to tail him and find out what he did with it.”

  He relived last month’s “true life” spy adventure. Saber Tomb was last seen setting up an inflatable M-53 antenna on the balcony of X-Dog’s apartment to transmit ocean-test data on the latest Q-Line North Korean nuclear submarine. The story was continued just as the North Korean RF source locator had locked on to a side lobe of the transmitter signal and pinpointed the source. Tomb is smart, he thought, but how would he get away?

  Suddenly the robotic mail tricycle cart appeared rolling down the sidewalk. Then the mailman appeared, head bowed to the packet of mail in his hands.

  Sherwood fixed his eyes on that packet, looking for the international orange cover. When it appeared, he sighed with relief. Yes! Come to me Saber Tomb, he thought. Now we will see how you deal with those North Korean devils!

  These heroes had been his real family. The secret codes of a dozen spies crowded his mind like baseball statistics do most boys. He knew each agent’s tricks. He applauded their ingenuity, celebrated their bravery, and imitated their treachery.

  He bought kits for a laser-bounce listening gun and an infrared snooper-scope from the Double Agent classifieds. His financial resources might include the change he forget to give his mother or the few dollars that would disappear from her dresser. She encouraged his enthusiastic purchases of rare stamps, so he solicited cash for those special stamps, then bought some cheap surrogates to satisfy her alacrity. Sometimes she wrote him a check to the stamp company. He preferred cash.

  His parabolic listening device introduced him to the “natural state” of girls. He found that some girls thought about sex as much as he did, which repulsed him and his Victorian model of females.

  He planted an FM wireless microphone under a library table where a group of girls sat, and what he overheard nourished his plan for his first sexual encounter with a girl. He built an audiotape mixer in his basement electronics shop. He taped some erotic music and electronically mixed it with a spoken message of his own that subliminally suggested that the girl was getting very excited and should take her clothes off. His plan, however, assumed he would be able to get a girl to listen to the tape with him. It was never field-tested.

  He bought an ultra-miniature TV camera, which he installed in the ceiling of the girls shower room from the crawl space above it. This became his new window to sex. The sting of his subliminal tape defeat made him aware of a basic shortcoming in that earlier strategy. He’d failed to use the resources available to him, information privy to him alone that could make the difference between victory and defeat. His arrogance propelled him toward spying like oxygen draws a whale to the ocean’s surface.

  He listened again to a conversation he’d recorded with his library bug.

  First Girl: “Gary thinks he’s perfect cool in bed, but he’s, like, really flapping me lately. I just don’t know anymore about him … or any poke.”

  Second Girl: “You still like me, don’t you? You know, I never, like, had anybody like you. You are so major gris.”

  First Girl: “That’s what’s so, like, ripping. I’d rather rip with you than any poke. I think about the other night, like, all the time. I want us to rip again so bad, and I don’t give a damn if I, like, ever see another boy again. Especially that Gary drub.”

  Second Girl: “Why don’t you, like, meet me at my sister’s place tonight? She’s total cool.”

  First Girl: “Okay, but we have to be, like, total prude. I told you what my brother or my father might do to me if they found out I was dishonoring the family.”

  Second Girl: “But you know I'm not religious. ”

  First Girl: “That's even worse. It would be better even if you were, like, Christian. They hate Infidels plenty, but if you're, like, atheist, that's even worse. I told you what they can do to girls that dishonor their family. ”

  Second Girl: “But there are, like, laws, you know. They can't just, you know, totally kill you. Or whatever. ”

  First Girl: “Ha. You just don't get it. My brother says the cops are afraid of us now. You've seen all those riots and stuff on TV. My brother says the president, or somebody, makes them say, like, they're sorry or something if they butt into anything religious. He says there's this law that says nobody can say, like, anything bad about any religion. So he can frag the cops and do anything he wants, as long as it's for our religion. Because nobody, like, dares to say anything against him. ”

  Second Girl: “Well, don’t worry about my sister. She's, like, totally prude for me. She'd never say anything”

  Sherwood played that part over repeatedly and propped up color printouts of Fatima and her lover from his shower collection. The pictures motivated his greatest espionage adventure yet.

  The next day he implemented the plan. His mother would be gone that evening, so the opportunity window was open. It wasn’t easy because he so rarely talked to girls, least of all like Fatima. But as he approached her to a safe distance, something else took charge. Fear retreated. It was replaced by hunter instinct.

  Fatima stood under a tree while Sherwood watched for the right moment. Her dark hair teased an amber neck. A single earring dangled from her left ear. She talked to another girl whose animated gestures didn’t detract his attention from his prey. The two girls laughed, their notes radiating in unison; but he was tuned to just one. Then the second girl began to back away from Fatima, talking then listening, then talking again. Laughter rang once more. The second girl walked away.

  He approached Fatima with eyes fixed. Short, regular steps brought him efficiently and discreetly to engagement range. He’d always found it easier to talk to someone if he imagined himself on an espionage mission. At last, he didn’t have to pretend.

  “Hello, Fatima.”

  A smile spread over her face as she turned around. As the inertia of the dark strands carried them beyond her turn, she reached up to sweep them aside, and saw it was Sherwood. The smile immediately evaporated. Registering a look of disappointment, contrived grace appeared and triumphed. “Hi.”

  “How are your soirees with Sara at her sister’s place?”

  Fatima’s jaw dropped, and she could do nothing more than simply stare at Sherwood. Then her legs automatically retreated a step, and a swallow went down hard as the amber quality of her skin turned chalky.

  “Is she still better than Gary?”

  “What … Where did you—?” Fatima stammered, retreating another step.

  “Is she still major gris?”

  Breathing stopped as her eyes glazed over. Then she willed air back into her lungs. Her next breath was labored and raucous. “What do you want?”

  “Do not be alarmed, Fatima, I can keep secrets.” A grin just began to unfold.

  She turned her head sideways, biting her lips. “How’d you find out?”

  “Suppose you come over to my house this evening, and we can discuss it.”

  “Why should …” She stopped and turned back toward him. The same fragment of a grin greeted her again. “You want me to—”

  His mouth curved slightly upward as his eyes wandered toward the canopy of leaves above them. With the snap of a whip, they rotated back to hers, the incipient grin still pursuing. “Then we can discuss this in a more civilized, and intimate, setting.”

  That evening, Fatima responded to Sherwood’s invitation. This was nothing like his fantasy with the subliminal tape. This was real flesh. This wasn’t plotting and subterfuge and watching. This was the payoff. This was where the juices of his dreams filled in the gaps of his life. The bottom line, he thought as he collapsed on top of Fatima. Yes, this is the bottom line.

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nbsp; Sherwood found that sex was the most challenging adventure yet and well worth the effort. And Fatima and Sara were qualified instructors. After his first few encounters, he anticipated wallowing in this sea of soft flesh and liquid touches forever. The intensity was beyond what he could’ve imagined, especially when all three of them mingled purely for his electricity.

  But anxiety swelled in him as their encounters continued. Whether he was unable to relate to others, even on his terms, or he couldn’t submit to any form of control, even to achieve his own agenda, was never resolved. All he knew for sure was that he couldn’t enjoy long-term anything with anyone but himself.

  Their encounters became less frequent and finally stopped. His subterfuge world held the real pleasures that could be delivered day after day, without a price.

  But as many questions as this adventure raised and as intense as his gratification had first been, what he remembered most was a single lesson. For years, he’d followed the exploits of fabled spies and emulated their conquests. Now he understood why such attention is given to this game he’d once played just for fun. He now understood that dealing from a position of superior knowledge made a vast difference in the outcome of the game. This was why spies plied the earth. It wasn’t just for fun.