The Contractor - Part 4c - by nova

There was a bit of an awkward pause after that.  Times like this always made me wish I had a beer in my hand and two or three in me. He broke it by asking, and I didn't miss the underlying maliciousness, "So you have no clue about what is expected of you and what we're doing?"

"No."

He crossed his legs like a girl and looked down at his left shoe, it did have a nice shine, and told me, "We're expendable cogs in the great fuck machine of life."

He looked at me, If he thought that was pretty deep, he needed to hang out with more drunks, "Yeah. I already got that part."

"Yeah" he said a bit ruefully, the maliciousness gone, "If you're here than you know." He took a deep breath, and told me, "I'm going to make some assumptions, mostly based on my past life, some reading, and my current reality. We're working for some kind of fed agency, maybe the FBI, maybe not, not that it really matters. Your going to be the "face" for them and I'm going to be the face for the neighborhood. We're going to hand out poisoned phones, tablets, laptops, and whatever else they come up with.  You understand what I mean by "poisoned?"

"Oh yeah. GPS tracking with the phones, conversations, text messages, searches on Google an email.  They're going to vacuum it all up."

He was nodding approvingly, an asked, "And then what?"

"Lock them up and throw away the key. Off to the land of Supermax with them I suppose."

He laughed. A fucking fake ass laugh this time.  "You think? You heard of SOPA?"

"Of course." I was in IT, I had heard about it an ignored it. Like they would do that.

"You do know a US citizen can be detained by the military indefinitely now if they are suspected of being or supporting terrorism?"

"Um...yeah." I vaguely remembered reading that.

"Who defines what a terrorist is?"

He laughed, the light bulb going off over my head must have been comic book obvious. He continued,  "Now think about a global economic crash. You think people might get a little restless here if the big screens, an Internet went away along with eating and a warm place to sleep?" He didn't wait for my answer, he kept going, I had a feeling I was going to be getting used to that, "They're going to get restless and start making demands. When they don't get what they want, and I don't think they will, they are going to start smashing things. What they are going to find out is what it feels like to be smashed upside the head by a sociopath who enjoys doing it."

"And we're going to help?"

"Do you have a choice?"

I thought about that. Oh well, go with the flow and the winners. "Do we get guns?"

He looked at me like I was nuts. "You ever shoot one?"

"No." It was my turn to smile. "I bet I would like it."