And I thought waiting for news about west-coast baseball games was bad...
This is even more nuts-making. The search for Carter and Alexei is going on out there, but Mo and I are here, and since we're not needed on the scene (and can't afford to fly out there, since we each had to pitch in a couple hundred dollars of extra rent this week), we just take what information we can get.

Nat is home, now. Although I suppose the Patriot Act might allow the Feds to hold her for more than twenty-four hours, Agent Jones isn't quite ready to bet that doing so with a single mother from a wealthy family because of a threat he can't describe without sounding foolish isn't career suicide. There's probably a tap on her phone, too, which explains why, when I asked her what had happened to Alexei, she just said she hadn't seen him since he ran out on her. Wouldn't want to contradict the line she fed Khalil Jones.

That line being that the private detective who found Alexei and recovered the laptop unfortunately lost him while attempting to bring him to Federal authorities. The laptop and vials, she said, was in the hands of Carter Drummond (aka Samantha), since it was obvious she had the most reason to use it.

This is, of course, complete crap. I know "my" voice, and even with a Russian accent, that was the body of Martin Hartle talking to me on the phone two weeks ago. I know Nat has to try not to incriminate herself, but unless Carter finds some man who'd rather be a woman to take the Samantha body and lets Alexei go, well, someone is eventually going to talk unless someone dies. And while I can imagine Alexei deciding that leaving a wild card like me running around again is a bad idea, I think Carter and Nat are better people than that.

Nat seemed kind of distant when she was talking to me. I mentioned it, and she said that she had really thought that I'd jump at the chance to be myself again. Not just because the pregnancy, with the mood swings and lugging a bunch of extra weight around and having her breasts suddenly become more than fashion accessories, had somewhat soured her on womanhood, but other things. She admitted that she had a fantasy of living happily ever after with the father of her child, and that if I were in Martin's body again, that would be ideal. If, of course, Alexei hadn't escaped, wink wink (yes, I can hear her winking over the phone).

I told her that it wouldn't be me, just someone a lot like me who remembers being me, and she says she gets that but doesn't quite get it, that it takes too much thinking for something that should be instinctual. I see her point, and that frustrates me, because I want to say, I'm me, Martina Hart, born 19 July 2003, but I do keep thinking of Nat's baby as mine in some way, or otherwise feeling proprietary about my pre-Martina experiences.

So, anyway, the Feds are looking for Carter and Alexei, and have told Maureen and I in no uncertain terms to call them should Carter show up here.

-Martina
- posted 10:09 PM - (0) comments - (archive use only)

 
It's a boy
They found Nat today, at a community hospital in Seattle with contractions only minutes apart when she got there. She gave birth to a healthy eight-pound baby boy at 2:46 PST (quarter of six here) and, I'm told by reliable sources, named him Martin, which is pretty cool.

My reliable sources are not, however, the FBI. I'm sure they'll be calling me soon, but it was her parents who were making the phone ring when I got home, asking why their daughter had instructed them to bring a lawyer to the hospital, why there was a guard posted outside her door, why someone flashing a Homeland Security badge was asking about some kind of laptop, why the FBI had been looking for her for the past two weeks, and why, for the love of God, was some girl in Boston whom they'd never heard of before the one Natalie had said could be trusted to tell the truth?

They had at first thought she had lost her mind, if only for naming their grandson after the man who abandoned her, thought after seeing my name they were even more confused - had their son-in-law to be had some kind of sex-change operation and moved back east? But my voice didn't sound anything like Martin's, and the FBI seemed completely uninterested in my whereabouts while still more determined than ever to find Martin, so we couldn't be one and the same, so what the hell was going on?

So, I asked Mister Tartakovsky how many ridiculous things they could believe, started telling them my life story, and was rewarded with them hanging up fairly early on. I had just started sitting down to write this when Nat's mother called back Evidently Mr. T screaming some of my nonsense at Khalil Jones loud enough to be overheard had gotten them to let Natalie hold her baby, so she wanted to know what other insane things I could tell them. Can't trade for "basic dignity" without having something the other side wants, even if it's silence, right?

So I spilled. I mean, what the hell, I'm not hiding who and what I am any more, and their lawyer had assured them that anything I might say to them about anything Nat had done was hearsay and nothing that could be used to make them incriminate their daughter. I don't think she believed a word of it, what with it being quite clearly insane and all. She'll probably sidle up to a Senator at some fundraiser or other and demand that the FBI and Homeland Security be taken to task for the way they're wasting their time and the taxpayers' money on this foolishness. But if it gives them leverage, fine and dandy.

I guess now I can call all my friends and announce that I'm a something-or-other, and so is Carter (though he'd be a different sort of something-or-other; an adopted biological father?). Exciting times.

-Martina
- posted 8:20 PM - (0) comments - (archive use only)

 
Yip
Found via Websnark: a cartoon dinosaur explains my life and how things could be worse.

-Martina
- posted 11:08 AM - (0) comments - (archive use only)