Merritt Sivertsen never really fit in at the NSA. He'd gotten that feeling pretty quickly after he'd joined right out of college. He'd gone to a prestigious school though not an absolute top tier one. That'd been one thing from the start. The boys from those schools seemed to go out of their way to keep things among only the other greedy apple polishers who'd gone to their same schools.
But it was more than that. Sivertsen took it all seriously, completely seriously. Duty, justice, the protection of the Constitution. He cared about these things. A lot of his fellow agents seemed to only care about promotions and pensions. They had nothing but contempt for their fellow citizens.
His first operation in the field, he'd caught a guy running from the scene. He'd caught him but that little weasel from Yale, Carruthers, had claimed that both of them had caught the guy. Sivertsen barely noticed but since that day Carruthers had had it in for him. He'd taken credit for what Sivertsen had done but somehow carried a grudge against him. Maybe a greedy, grasping little slime couldn't stand that another guy was better than him.
Many of his co-workers spent their time trying to network their way up the ladder. They seemed to spend half their days making sure they didn't use a pronoun that might offend someone somewhere. He griped about it in the cafeteria once to an older man near the top of the agency and found a receptive audience. The man told him that there were people who had noticed him and not to despair. Keep up the good work. You'll get real field assignments, the most meaningful kind.
But encouragement seemed rare at the NSA for Sivertsen. So, when, one Friday morning,, he got a call at his desk and was told to go up to 713 right away, he wasn't completely taken by surprise. He took the stairs up rather than the elevator, jogging up easily as befitted a guy who ran 30 miles a week and stood six foot one and weighed 164 pounds. He looked good in a suit but he looked good in anything.
Inside the room was a guy at a desk he'd never met but heard of in hushed whispers. Off to one side was that weasel Carruthers. Off to the other was that supervisor who Carruthers was always sucking up to. The guy behind the desk announced it like it was just completely matter of fact, as though it was so obviously necessary that he was slightly offended that Sivertsen was making him do this. But it was completely ridiculous. They couldn't cite a single deficiency in his performance. Instead, to his amazement, they told him that he was being let go because of "incipient vulnerability".
He interrupted. "What the hell are you talking about?"
The guy behind the desk sighed. Are you really going to make me say this? "Your, ah, your status as a, uh, a-a closeted, uh, homosexual makes you, uh, vulnerable to blackmail and therefor unsuited to uh, either field operations or even the uh, the security clearance you already have, which is surprisingly high for a 3rd-"
"What?! I'm not gay."
"Do you have a wife or girlfriend?"
"Not right now."
"Annnnnnd . . ," he flipped through the file folder in front of him. "It says you, uh, you took ballet class as a boy and, uh, then again in college."
"Taking ballet doesn't make a guy gay!"
"Maybe you were already," muttered the supervisor to one side. Sivertsen shot an angry glance at the guy who now leaned away from him.
"I took ballet in college with my girlfriend."
"We're not here to, uh, argue about this, just to tell you. Your employment at the NSA is being, uh, terminated effective immediately. You'll be, uh, be allowed to remove your effects from your desk with security personnel present and then escorted from the building."
"This is ridiculous. You can't cite any deficiency in my performance so you make up crap like this?!"
The guy behind the desk just sighed his bored sigh and two minutes later, Sivertsen found himself at his desk removing pictures, pens and packets of cashews along with a snapple green tea. They wouldn't let him take his phone or his ID.
Out the door, the security guys left him and he marched straight for a black BMW convertible in the parking lot. Of course, he owned a Ford. Carruthers owned this BMW. Under cover of the box held at his waist in front of him he whipped it out and pissed in the slightly opened window all over the driver's seat before zipping up and marching away to his own car.
He stood there several moments, shaking his head and occasionally banging a fist on the roof in time with an expletive. He felt a toxic mix of anger and despair. He was a good agent. He knew he was good. What the fuck is going on there that they want someone like me out?
He looked in the box sitting on the hood of his car. He couldn't even remember exactly what he'd taken with him. The whole morning was a blur, a disgusted blur.
A glance told him there wasn't anything in there that he'd miss. He started marching for the dumpsters off on one side of the building. He would've thrown the box in from 15 feet away and spun on his heel back to his car but it was the kind of dumpster with the black plastic top that was always down and that you had to lift up to throw anything in. He lifted it up and as he tossed his box in, he saw that other one.
Ch vac 4.0, there were some Dunkin Donuts cups covering part of the box. Why did that catch his eye? Just another piece of garbage someone had thrown out. Maybe it was the uncertainty about the rest of the title. He'd always been kind of a nut for puzzles. He brushed aside the discarded coffee cups and a protein bar wrapper.
Chronivac 4.0, the front of the box announced in gold letters on a black background.
The puzzle solving impulse kicked in again. Chronivac? What the hell's that?
"Hmmph."