Fiction Challenge 9/21

I was stumbling around in the dark when I fell and hit the light switch; in the low 40-watts of the one bulb, brown with burned dust on top, I decided that for all my travails, I had decidedly little to show for it. Here I waited, on the edge of the world for a message, a signal, a sign, something to signify the beginning. I looked about my shabby room taking stock of what there was, an old and worn leather satchel, smooth in the places where it had seen constant attention, and rough in the places it had not. The miles, the continents, the situations this bag has seen are reflected in the face I see in the mirror. Precious little to show for a lifetime spent perpetually finding last minute solutions to impossible problems in places that rarely make it on a map, let alone a newspaper.

An inquisitive mind might inquire as to what exactly it is that's being referred to and suffice it to say it's classified, but it's not really. This is often said when someone has a fantastic story to tell, but don't want to because they're lazy, lazy in the sense they don't want to have to process the emotion that typically accompanies a fantastic story, because that kind of processing takes work, takes effort, and who has that kind of ambition.

If you must label me, or more accurately; what I do, you may call me a "fixer" or an "arranger", but more specifically I deal with logistics and logistical problems for very large and wealthy corporations in places where people don't think there might be anything of value there, an oil pipeline, a diamond mine, a gold deposit, pick one; they're all the same.

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