shithub: thrice_great_hermes

ref: 31f3d45b284ee9d7b9372d88fab70305aa9af2d7
dir: /troff/0308.ms/

View raw version
.PP
.ps 10
she could write it all on paper.  three\-ring binders and the color
coded system of underlining: black, white, pale green, orange, blue,
red, gray, yellow, purple, brown, taught to her by her father.  little
paper collars that fit snugly around the ring holes she'd punched into
each sheet\(emviolet didn't know what they were called.
.PP
.ps 10
a small bookshelf housed the binders.  she transported them back and
forth between locations (work, home) in an oversized duffle bag.  once
full she was barely able to hoist it into the truck.
.PP
.ps 10
contract work, mostly.  human intelligence was not dead.  disney paid
well for this deniable variety of collection and analysis.  compared
to her normal salary, which the county sometimes decided to pay out.
she compiled new dossiers and revised existing ones.  fact\-checked
analyses written by other contractors, sometimes being paid to
re\-fact\-check her own.  she was at once a writer and an editor, which
was normally frowned upon by the corporate bean counters.  demand had
normalized the tacit abrogation of standard protocol.
.PP
.ps 10
disney's competitor, gogol/verizon, also paid, though not quite as
well as their older, more openly aggressive sibling.  sometimes she
submitted the same report to both entities.  no one ever seemed to
notice, or at least no one ever complained.
.PP
.ps 10
before she submitted a report she would always gogol the text of her
article, just to make sure that any uncredited borrowing she'd
committed wasn't immediately apparent.  in a way, she'd come to
realize, this was a form of early submission.  but whatever flags
she'd triggered hadn't seemed to have affected the demand for her
work.  they just kept on paying her to write.
.PP
.ps 10
violet vaguely remembered the first request she'd received that
mentioned her son.  it had been quite a while ago, and at the time she
hadn't considered it out of the ordinary\(emat one time or another
she'd reported on all the members of her family\(embut the requests
had kept coming in, steadily increasing in frequency until some months
it felt as though she did nothing but keep track of her son.  which
felt\(emsomehow, she guessed\(emwrong.  was it a conflict of interest?
were there tax implications?  she concluded these considerations were above
her paygrade.
.PP
.ps 10
the duffle bag was secured with a small padlock, the key to which she
wore on a chain around her neck.  other technicians at the base mostly
stayed out of her stuff, but it wasn't wise to take chances with the
sensitive material, especially when that material frequently concerned
family.
.PP
.ps 10
additional security concerns were dealt with as they arose, on a
case\-by\-case basis.
.PP
.ps 10
one thing she insisted on: she turned off her visor while she wrote.