Silos of Man

Chapter 24 - Intersecting Paths

I reach out sleepily as our glowing curtains wake me, and just feel sheet.  Oh yeah, all alone.  Sadness.  Mistoffelees pops onto the bed with a chirp and trots across my back.  "Hey buddy", I give him a nice head rub, while he comforts me with his purring.  I get up and out of bed since there's no reason to linger, without her in it.

After setting myself coffee and searching the GMS for any sign of this supply degradation news, I settle down at my desk to write-out my lesson plan for tomorrow when I think I hear a faint sound at our door.  Mistoffelees confirms it, when he perks up from his nap and trots over to the door.  Poor little guy is probably expecting Ryann.  I assume it's just noise from a passing neighbour, but because he always holds it straight up in the air, I can see the tip of Mistoffelees' tail, and he seems to be pacing back and forth in front of the door.  I go over to where he is and find him circling and sniffing another envelope slipped under it.  My stomach turns and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

Just as I'm reaching down for the envelope, my device vibrates on the coffee table where I had placed it down and scares me so much that I jump and yell, sending my poor kitten scurrying away.  Holding the envelope in one hand and my device in the other, I answer it. 

"Dan, my dear, so glad you agreed.  I'll be there in about five minutes."  "Okay, Tom, I'll see you soon."  I know the drill now.  I'm grateful for the interruption, despite the jump-scare, because I would have been obliged to open my door to see if I could see the envelope's delivery agent, but I was feeling pretty freaked-out and didn't want to.  I retrieve the first delivered envelope from the back of my bathroom cupboard, tuck both envelopes into my backpack and zip around getting dressed.  At minute five, I grab the bag and head downstairs. 

My timing's spot-on, because Tom's car is pulling-up just as I walk out.  I see her through the windshield and am struck by how much older she looks than usual.  There's clearly shit going down, and I deeply inhale this moment of freedom, before getting into her car and learning of some other shocking or terrifying truth.  Oh, how I just want things to go back to normal.  Before any of this corruption conspiracy bullshit and before Ryann's ambush by NASA.  I want to spend Sunday morning in bed with my fiancé, rather than learning how to keep her safe within a Potemkin Utopia.

I realize how deflated I'm feeling as I open Tom's passenger door.  When it closes beside me, she asks, "How you hanging-in there, Dan?"  "Okay."  She can tell exactly how I'm feeling so I don't need to say anything else.  "Yeah.  Okay.  Good.  We have some movement and it looks like we'll be sending you and Ryann to a safe house later this week."  "Tom?  A safe house?  Seriously?  Safe from what?  My government?!  How the hell can this have happened?!  What the hell is going on?!"  "Well Dan, to be perfectly honest, I think it's because of a lot of inaction on the part of my collaborators, and predecessors over the years." "What!?  Sorry, pardon?"  She chuckles at my self-corrected politeness.

"My friends and I, the ones we met at the lab, are a part of a watchdog group, of sorts, as I mentioned before.  Our small, but wide-reaching group, has been covertly and discreetly monitoring the inner workings of the 21 Leading Councils. for over fifty years, assigned to do so by the Integrity and Transparency Council.  This sister Council, coined 'The Sorrociety', was established just nine months after the Leading 21, by the Sisterhood just as some of their founding members were passing away, and they realized that the new blood was tainted by personal agendas.  They established the I&T Council, and then fostered a more covert wing of it, within, to monitor the newly established Council itself, as well, because the Sisterhood realized that it's hard to avoid corruption within groups with power.  Even groups established to combat that very same corruption.  People have an amazing way of reasoning or explaining away their dishonesty or personal-agenda based decisions and denying that their actions are corrupt.  My group was established as an additional safeguard layer, with different recruitment protocols."