This is not this month’s story: it’s a surprise for my MMO cabal. I’m pretty sure none of them read this site, so it should stay a surprise, too. It’s not going to be going on forever, either: I want it done in time for Christmas.
Moe Lane
PS: This was what I was working on yesterday. But it was crap, so I threw all of it out and started over. Sometimes you just gotta.
Operation JOE
I flipped through the mission folder with increasing incredulity. Bad enough it was physical — the Illuminati never use a digital mission brief for anything seriously classified — but the mission objectives were out of the ordinary, even for me. I was so startled I actually let that register on my face.
“Seriously?” I said. “You want me to ride shotgun for the JOE? The JOE? Since when did we get into that business?”
Yes, that was unprofessional of me. In this line of work of ours, you never boggle at the crazy shit that your bosses assign you; because once you get into that habit, you’ll never get out of it. But my boss just shrugged at my outburst and took another drag on her cigarette. That worried me a bit more. If she was taking this seriously, I would have to.
“It’s the job,” my boss said. “And They have their Eye on this one, so we’re doing this straight-up.”
“Great,” I said. “But why do They care? I didn’t think that They cared about the season.”
My boss frowned. “This would be where I tell you to stop asking questions about our bosses.”
“Sure,” I replied. “And then I point out that I’m an immortal doing contract work for the Illuminati, not an actual member, so nobody really cares what I say as long as the job gets done. And then you remind me that I still have that Illuminati chip in my spine, and then we get bored at all the dancing around and start focusing on the mission.”
“Tradition’s important,” said my boss. “Don’t tell the Templars I said that, though. They’re stuck-up enough as it is.” She opened up her own folder. “Anyway, this is simple. It’s a literally overnight job, and the JOE has his own security team; they’ll probably do all the work anyway. You’re just going to be on-site looking badass and scary.”
“Yeah, sure,” I replied. “It’ll be a piece of cake. And I’m going to finally get a pony for Christmas.”
“Talk to the JOE about that,” said my boss. “That’s so much more his thing than it is mine.”
…
There are a half-dozen ways for somebody like me to get to the North Pole, but today the easiest path was the mundane one. Well, sort of: I could portal from Thule Air Base to the Pole, but I still had to fly into Greenland itself. That meant being extra weight in a USAF off-the-books cargo transport, which worked out. The Air Force shields those, the better to keep scrying eyes away.
I’ve had flights I liked better. Or liked worse, come to think of it. One of the nice things about my version of immortality is that stuff like freezing cold and heavy air turbulence are optional problems to me now, and I wasn’t feeling masochistic enough to bother with frostbite and projectile vomiting. Hypoxia might have been a risk, but there was just enough air pressure to keep the lungs working properly. I mostly worried about what would happen if the plane crashed; swimming back to shore would take forever. I hate being bored.