Waiting for a warm day

What more have I to prove? Nothing more. Relentless as the well trod avenues in mid-morning, I made my way to the Bureau, to inform them of the stakes. They had the wrong man. They were messing with the wrong man.

What they could have known for sure: That’d I’d been out of country for the last year, on business, Africa, emerging markets, tribal unrest; that I’d expatriated a large portion of my wealth and had appropriated arms for various factions, possible future business partners.

What they could not know, though, unless they were God: my true purpose in it all.

“You aren’t giving me the real dirt in all this, you aren’t telling me why.” My voice out loud, the chip embedded in my larynx translating to the digital, encrypting and transmitting that to the nearest telerouter through the antenna in my spine, instantly relayed to my boss’s headset, somewhere in the City. He’s old and old fashioned, doesn’t trust chip enhancement. Says he’s too high level for that shit, has all these what ifs: What if the NSA or the competition were able to hack in? What if the chips themselves gave you cancer?

“If I told you why, Silverspoon, you wouldn’t do this thing right. Look, if I’d steered you wrong in the past, then I think you’d have grounds to ask--I think you’d have grounds to be told. Have I steered you wrong yet, Johnny?”

“It’d be a lie if I said yes, sir.”

“Good lad. Take the system like I told you. Hide it away deep down so no-one’ll see it with a surface scan. Book yourself that flight to Cyrenaica. Rendezvous with the aforementioned contact. Do the deal. Got that?”

“I got it.”

At the airport. Security lines. Full body scans. Suspicions aroused. Background checked. Flight made, barely.

In the air. Window seat. The sun setting, casting a fire across the city landscape. Tiny houses and tenements. Microscopic highways and side streets. Everything losing its identity.  Apparent enervation. The fire blob ebbing, retreating, fading. Cold grey through the clouds. Darkness. Reticence. Indolence. Sleep.