This choice: Time passes in a montage... you're ready to 'graduate' • Go Back...Chapter #17We need a montage by: Unknown Your education is the strangest combination of classes ever set to a curriculum. Sometimes it's in a class, sometimes it's one-to-one, sometimes it's in groups. A third is basic spycraft: personal defense, weapons and tactics, surveillance techniques, a little hacking. The second third is acting. You are taught improvisation, high society etiquette, street corner cred, the finer points of being either sex and any age of adulthood. The final third is perhaps the most remarkable, though: psychology, philosophy and ethics.
You learn how to cold-read others, assess their body language, predict their actions. That's all to be expected. You're taught about psychology too: how to convince, persuade, seduce. You're even taught about Stockholm syndrome – how you will grow close to your skins and current identities, and how to avoid making a connection with your temporary life that you can't sever. You wonder if that applies to your old life... or your new one in the Organization.
But the philosophy and ethics discussions take you by surprise. You find yourself writing essays on the nature of identity: whether it is simply personal information and memory, or if you transcend the concept entirely. You discuss the rules of how to conduct yourself in a skin, why it is important to preserve a moral code and not abuse your unique position, and whether what you do is morally justified. You pen papers on the limits of memory adjustment, stealing lives, impersonating others. You even write a short treatise on why a technology with no limits requires limitation. All the while, stories such as the Ring of Gyges and the Invisible Man tease and taunt your mind.
As a Type 2, each week brings a new face. Early on, Harry explained that you have an affinity for playing women, so at least three-quarters of the time you find yourself as the fairer sex. You've been Cathy, Alison, Julia, Jane. You've been an 18-year-old Korean girl with a strict work ethic and organised life. You've been a 40-year old trailer trash waitress. Every time you take on a new life, you act like them 24/7. You are required to stay in role even while you perform the little 'tasks' you are set around the complex: find out something specific from a different trainee, steal an object unnoticed, replace someone without anyone realizing. Sometimes you pass, sometimes you fail. Always you learn.
Others change in class too: every few days brings a fresh batch of faces. Sometimes your skin knows them, sometimes you know nobody and faces that you shared an intimate connection with become total strangers. At first you don't recognize who's who under the skins: the faces and personalities are bewildering. But gradually, like the rest of your training, it all begins to make sense. You begin to spot small details so that you can track the others. You begin to spot your own tells, too. You never say a word, always stay in character – unless you're made, which happens less and less as time goes on. You even begin to spot when your teachers are someone else. “Harry”, it seems, is just another skin – although Gunther appears genuine... or at least the same agent uses his appearance consistently. Every night, without fail, you write in your journal who played what role. You suspect the handlers know this, and that you'll get extra credit for it. If that's the case, though, they never say.
More details emerge over time. As you improve, you are granted another pen, until all five lie in your possession. Black, for skins. Brown, for information. Blue, for memories. Red, for reshaping and morphing a skin's age, weight, hair color, eye color, skin tone. White for memory erasement and replacement – with a separate setting that can cut away a skin from another. As a Type 2, you are entitled to use them all in field work.
Ah yes: the types. There are four types of field agent. Type 4's are the most common, and their training seems the most basic. A Type 4 is a bit part artist. If the organization needs a receptionist, a police officer, a bureaucrat, a Type 4 is called in. They play small but essential roles in whatever scheme is afoot. Sometimes they use skins from Gunther, at other times they are given a specific person to replace and impersonate.
Type 3s are deep-cover operatives. They stay in skin, taking over someone else's life completely and living it almost autonomously. Some, you understand, have specific tasks – replacing key figures. Others are sleeper agents. You're given a lecture by one of them in the skin of a young, career-hungry intelligence officer whose job is simply to ensure their particular agency never discovers the Organization.
Type 2s are you: quick-change operatives. You infiltrate, flipping faces and skins with ease, never staying in a single identity more than a couple of days. Sometimes you are a thief, sometimes you are gathering intelligence, sometimes your job will be to replace a key individual to ensure a certain event passes as it must. Everyone distrusts the Type 2s, you quickly realize.
And finally, there are the Type 1s. Nobody is recruited as a Type 1; it's a role that is assigned. The Type 1s are all senior, experienced agents. If a Type 1 is called in, it's because something important is going on – or something has gone horribly wrong. The Type 1 is a troubleshooter, pure and simple. Some nights, you wonder if 'Elena' was one.
You're told several times who the Organization is and its purpose. Each time the story changes. Sometimes it's a corporate history, sometimes initially governmental before the organization decided to step up beyond its remit. Sometimes the pens are developed technology using some kind of quantum pocket. Sometimes they are alien tech. All of this is an elaborate way, you are convinced, of telling recruits one thing: it doesn't matter what the truth is. You are here, and you do your job. That's the end of it.
As for your personal theories? One of the first explanations you heard is your favorite. There is no sinister conspiracy running the world: the truth is far scarier. The world is rudderless, meandering along with a lack of coordination at the top, individuals pursuing their own short-term agendas or long-term legacies. This creates conflict, but also creates room for humanity to strive for greater things. The Organization helps keep the balance. It acts as a sort of checks and balances system, preventing any one person or group from gaining the upper hand. It does this through replacement, subterfuge, and gentle nudges.
You're mulling on this particular thought one day as you head into the lab, deflated skin in hand. For the past week you've been Mila, but now it's time to change.
“Hey Gunther,” you say. Your own voice always feels strangely alien now: as does your own flesh. You're so used to feeling everything as someone else that, when you emerge from your chrysalis, it's a disconcerting experience. “Got Mila here, I'm ready for a new skin.”
The scientist shakes his head. “No new skin for you,” he says slowly, pointing to a set of double-doors in the far corner of the lab. “Today, you report for detail. Good luck, Type 2.”
You gulp. Reporting for detail... that means they're going to send you into the field. You're both nervous and honored at the same time.
“Vell?” Gunther's think accent barks. “Go on! You'll be coming back here soon enough for ze Blanking process. Off you go.”
You have no idea what that means, but Gunther has never been a man to question; you once asked him about some of the strange tech, and he told you it was so far beyond your comprehension it wouldn't be worth his time to explain. The fact that you were in the body of Dr Mariana Cortez, an Ivy League graduate considered at the top of her field in theoretical physics, did not seem to bother him at all.
You step through the doors. Behind them is a briefing room of sorts: comfortable chairs, a lectern, and a large video wall. On the screen is a familiar face: Harry's. The moment you step in he proffers his usual half-smile. It's a new Harry. The replacement is almost perfect, and if the TV wasn't high definition the impostor would have gotten away with it, but you can spot a few fine flaws. You don't speak, instead just taking a seat to await instructions.
“Hey, David.” He's addressing you with your real name, no matter how strange it sounds, as that's the flesh you're wearing; your own body is little more than a final suit, after all. “Wow. It's been a long road, hasn't it?”
“You could say that,” you agree. That day with Jessica/Jimmy/Elena as David/Denise/Phoebe/Lucy seems a lifetime ago. Several lifetimes.
“Well, you'll be glad that, today, the road to becoming an agent is almost over. As part of your final grading, we'll be giving you one last test. In the field.”
You feel as if a rush of butterflies has surged up from your stomach. A field test - both nervous and exciting. For a Type 2, that will invariably mean several skins. There's no denying you find that appealing, no matter how much your ethical standards require you to look after your temporary bodies. “Great,” you say, enthusiasm spilling over. Harry grins.
“Glad you're up for it. Just don't screw up; we've invested a lot of time and effort in you, after all. And you've got potential, too. According to your trainers, you're achieving almost immersion: when you become someone, you are that person. Scores in spycraft are... average; marksmanship could use a little work, and you're hardly Bruce Lee in hand-to-hand. But when it comes to being someone else, you're one of the most gifted prospects we've seen.
“So, you are probably wondering what your test will be. It's simple, really – a field exercise, under supervision of an agent already in situ. You're going to...”  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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