MISSING PERSONS

Tired.

So tired. Eyes burning. I think I'm dying. I think this screen is killing my soul and eating my life. I can't tell you how long I've been sitting here. Time is nothing. Life is nothing. Yet, here I am, watching both go flying by. I'm supposed to be watching for…anomalies…for my employer. It's very secretive work. Both high-tech and high-stress. I'd tell you who I work for, but it wouldn't mean anything to you. You'd have never heard of them. We are what you'd call 'behind-the scenes.'

You know those cameras that you see everywhere? The ones that catch you speeding and stealing and cheating on your wives? That's not me. That's a cover. That's far to obvious for what we do. No, our methods are quite a bit more clandestine.

I've been awake for 43 of the last 48 hours. That sounds worse than it is. It's not all at one stretch—we can take breaks whenever we need to, but we're responsible for whatever we miss, and missing something is NOT something I want to do. There's this girl I know—Tessa. She does the same thing I do: feed monitoring. Well, she did until she disappeared last week. We all thought that she'd quit, but nobody can find her. Nobody can find any evidence that she had ever existed at all. She's just…gone. Rumor has it she missed…something (I'm not at liberty to say what). Not some basic little transgression that we always see, but something important. Something huge.

That's what we all fear. That we're going to fall asleep or look away and we're going to miss that one critical action that we needed to catch. They never say what'll happen if we miss an important occurance, but I'm pretty sure it's not good.

Hence, my five hours of sleep over two days. I don't want to take any chances. Sure, things quiet down in my observation sector between 10:00 and 13:00, and again between 20:00 and 23:00, but I don't really go offline even then. I really only sleep when I pass out, and even then I usually start awake after an hour or less.

That's the thing this job breeds more than any other: paranoia. Extreme paranoia. I mean, you know things are bad when you can't even sleep for fear of doing a poor job. The thoughts are the worst: can't sleep, I won't see the guy in a turban slip across the border; can't eat, I'll miss the atomic signature passing into the maglev station; can't run to the bathroom, the gun-nut in the chatroom will make a defiant statement and logout quickly. I keep two buckets in here next to my garbage can, for God's sake! Would a healthy person do that?

I shouldn't even be typing this to you, but I feel like you deserve an explanation. (Besides, I've set everything up to record for the few minutes I'll be


© 2007 Steve Gooch
( Ween - 12 Golden Country Greats )