She flies alone,
unseen
unheard
unnoticed
under the radar,
waiting for death.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Remember the television series called “Get Smart”? It was on in the mid-sixties. Buck Henry and Mel Brooks came up with the idea. Don Adams and Barbara Feldon were the primary stars.
A crazy spy-spoof, “Get Smart” featured an organization called CONTROL, shoe phones, the cone of silence, and other unique devices that made fun of the spy gadgets populating more serious spy ventures. Don Adams was a bumbling spy known as Maxwell Smart, a.k.a. Agent 86. Smart always doing things by the book, even though doing so was counter-productive. Feldon was Agent 99. She seemed more competent and intelligent, but 86 often ended up saving 99, mostly by accident, it seemed. The two of them, along with Chief, and other agents of CONTROL, fought the forces of KAOS.
The opening sequence showed Adams as Smart marching through corridors toward walls while the theme music played. As he reached each wall, a door would open, let Smart through, and close behind him. Once he’d gone through a number of doors in this manner, he reached a telephone booth. There, he’d put in a coin and dial a number, and then wait until he was lowered from the booth.
I was reminded of this sequence often during my military career. Working in S.C.I.F.s, underground command posts, vaults, and buildings without windows, that television show’s theme music would stream into my head as we went around corners, up halls, and through doors, often without seeing other people. The biggest differences from the television show were that we all wore badges, security cameras abounded in our halls, signs warning about unauthorized access and the use of deadly force were frequent, and getting past the doors usually required us to punch numbers into a cypher-lock.
There were also red-tiled zones where only one person was authorized to stand or be at a time, to help keep the entrance secure. In later years, we also encountered retinal scans in little booths that weighed you as you looked into a scanner and entered the numbers to pass through. Your weight was on record and accessed via your badge. A five-pound leeway was permitted. This was done under the watchful eyes of security people and cameras.
That was over twenty years ago. I wonder if they still do all those things? They’ve probably moved on to comparing DNA by now.
Prove It
The first thing he thought of, after recognizing where he was, and what he was doing, was the Rolling Stones song, “Get Off of My Cloud.” Not really correct. Does correctness have degrees? Sure, they give partial credit to partially correct answers. Yes, but not in this situation. So, he corrected, not correct. He wasn’t on a cloud. He was on a contrail, as he’d learned they were called, a chemtrail, as others called them in the second half of his life.
Poisonous air vapors, they were. Surrounded by blue sky, he was walking on them. As he didn’t know how he’d reached them (nor how he could be walking on them), he believed he was dreaming. How high was he? Well, very high. He’d read that commercial aircraft generally fly over thirty thousand feet in the U.S. He assumed he was in U.S. air space, although nothing supported that assumption.
Physically, then, he wasn’t doing this, couldn’t be doing this, unless it was a dream or virtual reality. There was no way he could otherwise be surviving so comfortably at such an altitude. At this altitude, if it’s over thirty thousand feet, he was higher than Mount Everest. The air would be too thin for normal breathing, he was breathing normally, he ascertained with tests. At that altitude, the temperature would be forty-nine degrees below zero, or worse. He wasn’t dressed for that kind of cold.
But here he was, in his Lee jeans, knit shirt, Nikes, and Columbia Wear fleece, striding along without issue. Which presented the idea that maybe these contrails were far lower than they should be. That was absurd, of course; that’s not how they worked. Nevertheless, he stopped walking, turned, and looked over the side.
Big, big mistake.
He’d been able to see mountain tops and distant horizons of clustered buildings and farmland when walking along. But now, looking down, he found a true sense of his altitude, and it freaked him out. He was so freaked out, he should awaken at any moment now.
He waited.
Nothing changed. He looked back and forth along his contrail. It stretched on for a long distance. He could do three things now. One, step off the contrail and see what happens. Two, follow the contrail and see if it led anywhere. Three, he could stand there and do nothing until the contrail faded away.
Rapport
The dark-haired feral girl’s name was Courtney, a tidbit discovered via computers when she stormed into his office.
“I should have a computer, too,” she said. An edge of angry tears quivered in her tone. “I have friends. I miss people. That’s not just your computer. It belongs to both of us.” She smirked. A tear rolled down her face. She wiped it off. “We’re both pets.”
This was a change. He’d seen her three times since her arrival. Once when he was eating, she stamped in and started going through the cupboards and refrigerator. The second time, he saw her prowling the cage’s perimeter. Guessing she was looking for a way out, he watched her a bit. When boredom crept in, he drifted away.
The third sighting was a little later. Cleaning in the kitchen, he looked out and saw her trying to shimmy up a cage bar. Idiot, he thought.
“Of course, you’re right,” he said, standing, trying to be reasonable, friendly, and diplomatic. “My name is Thomas, by the way.” He put out his hand.
She pushed past him to the laptop – his laptop. “Whatever,” she said.
Je-sus. “Do you need help with anything?”
Stopping everything, she said, “It’s a computer,” as if that answered and explained everything.
She typed in her name. Courtney.
“Your name is Courtney?” he said.
“No, that’s my alias,” she said. Swinging around, she said, “Do you mind? Can I have some privacy?”
“Yes. Of course.”
This set up the constant battle. She was always on the computer, getting on the computer, or asking him to get on the computer. He liked his computer time . Now he had to share it with her. Courtney.
He knew he was being irrational and selfish. Didn’t matter. He used the network for porn, games, and searching for news. His friends weren’t on Facebook. All those accounts for the relationships built through the years were listed as inactive. Many emails bounced back. None of his friends tweeted back to him.
Must be something the aliens are doing, he figured. The aliens were damn cunning.
Like the language thing. He was pleased his owner (God, he hated to think of that) had learned his name was Thomas. He remembered, though, the aliens were using a device to speak the languages of Earth when they arrived. That included English. Where were those devices now? Apparently people authorized to have human pets were not allowed to openly communicate with them. Bet it’s worries over the Stockholm Syndrome, he figured.
They didn’t want the masters and their pets to develop a rapport.
****
Previous Pet stories
Paper
They sort the good from the bad,
the advertisements from the EOBs,
coupons from newspapers,
mementos from those worth something spendible,
the bills,
the ones commemorating dead presidents,
and the ones that must be paid.
Meowtometer
Meowtometer (catfinition) – device catologists employ to access the strength of a cat’s meow. The magnitude and intensity of the meows are usually reported on the NutterFlutter scale, named after the inventor’s calico cat, Nutter Flutter.
The River
Do you sometimes feel like life is a swollen raging river, and that it takes everything to keep from getting sucked under?
Yes, sometimes.
Tumblefloof
Tumblefloof (catfinition) – shed cat fur that collects and tumbles around a house; a cat who likes to tumble around.
Monday’s Theme Music
This is another from the latter days of my childhood. I guess David Cassidy’s passing juxtaposed with the holiday season has opened the memory stream onto that era of my existence.
I learned of Shel Silverstein through Playboy magazine. People would throw them out for recycle pickup; we’d ferret them out of the piles while we were waiting for the school bus. I didn’t know he was a song writer. I enjoyed several of his songs without being aware that he’d written them, not learning about his part in the musical portion of my childhood until Shel died in nineteen ninety-nine.
Streaming today is a Shel classic. Written by him and performed by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” was ubiquitously played and referenced in every sort of social media available in nineteen seventy-two and seventy-three. Why not? The satirical lyrics about the meaning of success substantially differed from other songs out there during that era, and the band played it way over the top. Fabulous.
Listen for yourself and decide.
Michael Seidel, writer 