Transplanted Life
Saturday, May 06, 2006
 
Working on deadline sucks
Bad enough I've been up against a project with a hard deadline at work - the government apparently needs data for a certain transportation study right now or nobody will be able to get from Houston to Chicago or something. Of course, when it comes to processing someone's tax return, that they'll take their sweet time with. But what's worse is coming home from that - or more accurately, not coming home from that, but going straight to FBI headquarters or Harvard Square or wherever else Agent Jones wants me to try and sniff Korpin out.

Because there's a pretty hard deadline on that, too. Harvard's school year ends May 19th, and since Jones and Gertie both tell me that no students, faculty, or staff have done a disappearing act yet, Korpin-in-whoever must still be around. But in two weeks, folks start dispersing to all four corners of the globe, landing outside the FBI's reach or meaning that the Boston office will have to let a lot of other agents in on it, and they'd like to keep it quasi-secret. One girl with a blog isn't a huge threat to national security, especially when it's usually categorized as "fictional", but once we start talking about interagency co-operation and a nationwide search, the rest of the world starts to take this seriously.

And it's not like Jones's task force has a whole lot of support. It's about four agents, and though they don't admit that Gertie and I are important support or let us into meetings. They'll have us and Telly watch them question people from behind the one-way mirror so that we can try and pick up on Misha-isms, but the thing is that Telly and I almost never agree. They've got the field narrowed down to a couple dozen more likely suspects, but that's too many for us to keep tabs on, and even if we do narrow down which one is "Korpin", what are we supposed to do, arrest her? For what; any crimes that were committed were committed by Korpin in his original body, and the person still walking around is legally someone else, much like I'm legally Michelle Garber with a name change. And they would really rather I didn't blog my daily life, since this now takes up a bunch of it. No need to tell Korpin the details of how she is or is not being surveilled.

Anyway, that's my life for the next couple of weeks and the past month or so. Which is why I was so happy to be able to play hooky and go to a Sox game with Alex Thursday night (or was there a suspect there, too? I can't say...). Our relationship is getting sort of weird, I guess - we're going out, we're having fun, but we're not having sex, though not through any apparent reticence on either of our parts. Jones has wanted me to "work" a lot of weekends, since that's when most of the suspects are doing things other than class or studying and might be able to be caught in something incriminating. So prime dating time is being used up, and weird stuff keeps coming up.

I still weird him out a little, too - we were sitting up in Section Seven (same as Patriot's Day), and there were an unusually high number of pretty girls around, so he was sort of looking at me, then them, then me, just like, man, you fit right in here.

I pointed out to him that every new person requires the combination of male and female pieces, and I just took an unusual route. He liked that - it is, after all, an awesome metaphor - but it served to remind him that I was odd. Good when you're talking about the latest Doctor Who; bad when you're trying to get him to stay the night at your place.

-Marti

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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