Black Tide

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Authors: Brendan DuBois
Tags: USA
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rescheduled during this current Administration and the four numbered copies of my work had entered a shredding machine that morning. By now they were being converted into ash in another basement office in the same building.
    I wasn't in the best of moods.
    My desk was clear of work for the moment and I felt antsy, so I pulled my chair back, climbed up on it, and poked my head over the cubicle wall. Carl Socha was there, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on his desk, flipping through a magazine that had a smiling Soviet soldier on the cover. The magazine's title was in Cyrillic characters. Carl had on a tight red polo shirt and designer jeans, and in the fluorescent lights, his skin looked smooth and polished. He had taken off his shoes and socks and was letting a small electric fan cool his feet. He claimed that cooling his feet helped him to think, and since he was one of the best in our section, George Walker --- our section leader --- pretty much left him alone.
    We were definitely an odd section compared with the others in this part of the building. Each of the other sections had an easily assigned title and task. There were Soviet experts and Soviet republic experts, people who could tell you the history of the Communist Party in Central America, and bright and earnest people in sections on Far East affairs who could talk you to for hours about the economic and military links between Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.
    Every now and then, though, there came through a research project that fell between the cracks, and that was the job for our section. George Walker, our section leader, didn't like his job and didn't particularly like us, and one reason was the name for our section: we didn't have one. We were just known by the letter and number that designated our room. We called ourselves the Marginal Issues Section, which suited us but didn't suit George Walker.
    The people who made up the section were the ones who didn't quite fit in. I, for one, was bored after doing a project or two on the same subject. I needed to root around and try something different each time. My neighbor, Carl Socha, knew his Soviet history better than that of his home country, yet he kept butting heads with the orthodoxy in vogue during the current Administration. They thought they were punishing him by placing him here and making him my neighbor, and I think we confused them by becoming friends.
    He was chewing gum as he flipped through the magazine and said, "What are you looking at, farm boy? Ain't you never seen someone read before?"
    I rested my chin on the cubicle's metal top. ''Ah, such a life," said. "Remember how it was during orientation? After they swore us to secrecy and made us sign all those forms? A relaxing job, they said. Like spending all day in the library, the best library in the world. Do some writing here and there. Make a contribution to national security in the process. Grow and develop as a unique individual."
    "Man didn't force you to do anything, son," Carl said, still looking at the magazine. "You entered on your own two feet. You knew what you were gettin' into. Me, when they told me how much I was gonna get paid for reading and writing, why I damn near had to change my underwear. Would have to be a moron not to take it up, and stay in it while you can."
    "That's right, and I did the same thing," I said. "Reading and writing for a living. Almost sounded too good to be true. And what they didn't tell you was that after you spend days and weeks researching and preparing a report, your hours of effort can get trashed because one D.C. bonehead doesn't like the voting record of another D.C. bonehead. All for nothing. Carl, I could have submitted a hundred and twenty pages of cookie recipes for all the good it did."
    "Still pissed?" he asked.
    "Still pissed," I said.
    Carl looked over his magazine, but didn't look at me. He glanced out into the central area of our offices, which had additional computer

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