Transplanted Life
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
 
Gone
The FBI was back at BioSoft today, checking more machines, saying they found indications that incriminating things on Dmitri's was referencing files elsewhere on the network. It's really starting to piss the people there off, because the FBI has only told the executives what they're investigating, and they've been asked to keep quiet about it. So everyone is being inconvenienced by the FBI, they've started to say "Patriot Act" when people ask for information, and now they're starting to stop worrying about what I've been through and start wanting information from me. Kate and Maureen have been good about standing up for me, and so has Jen, but it's killing Jen to know that there's something I'm not telling her. I'm sure it's bothering everyone else, but Jen really likes knowing things. Not only that, but her fiancé was the first policeman on the scene when three people she knows were involved in a shooting, and the FBI is freezing him out, too.

And I'd tell them if not for Carter. Not all of them, but Kate and Jen at least. I think Jen could keep something this big to herself, or just between her and Carlos. But then I'd have to explain the whole Carter/Sam thing, which Carter has said he does not want, and I've got to respect his wishes on that. Of course, eventually they're going to want some sort of explanation of why "Sam" is living with me when I really don't have room for a roommate.

But right now, Carter's not my biggest problem. One of the agents, a nice enough guy named Khalil Jones, took me aside and asked if I knew where Martin Hartle might be. I asked him if he'd been briefed, he said he had, and maybe he could phrase it better. I asked how many people knew, and he said just the top four or five people on the investigation know "the process" has actually been used. Anyway, he asked, had I had any recent contact with Alexei Gubanov, currently occupying the body of Martin Hartle? No, I say, why?

He's missing. The FBI sent someone from their Seattle office to pick him up for questioning last Wednesday, and they said he hadn't come back from vacation that week. They'd alerted the police, but you're apparently supposed to wait 48 hours before filing a missing-persons report, and they figured that was more the purview of his fiancée...

My reaction is, of course, along the lines of waitaminutewaitaminutewaitaminute - he's just running around with my old body and no-one knows where he is. What about my mother, or my friends? They ask me to give them a list of any people "Martin Hartle" might try to contact, so I mention Kurt and Wei, but they're not terribly optimistic - after all, these are people who might be willing to help Marty Hartle if he/I was in trouble, but who Alexei had never really met and who, for all he knows, might know everything. They've been questioning Dmitri, but he's apparently not telling them anything useful. Apparently the search for information at the long-term care facility where Alexei's body (and Sam's mind) is resident is getting nowhere, and they're getting interagency runaround from the CIA, trying to find Alexei's handler. The FBI doesn't trust the CIA, so they don't want to tell the spooks about "the process", but in the meantime it is, as you might imagine, difficult to get information on who someone who is verifiably in a coma might turn to if he was in trouble.

-Marta
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Note: This blog is a work of fantasy; all characters are either ficticious or used ficticiously. The author may be contacted at JaySeaver@comcast.net