Cheating on the Brain

Cheating on the Brain

My eyes opened and focused on the alarm clock sitting on my nightstand. 6:27am for the third morning in a row. The internal clock within the human brain was just another of its amazing apps included with the basic operating system we call life. I reached over and turned off the alarm before it hit 6:30 and had it shatter my morning with its jarring noise from hell. I sat up and placed my feet on the floor in search of my slippers which should be right where I now had my feet. Not finding them, I got down on my knees to look for the slippers before remembering I took them off last night while watching television.

I was getting ready to get back up when I noticed something white on the floor between the nightstand and the bed. Shit, it was one of those damned balloons from my birthday party last month. I had found several of them scattered around the week after the party, so I reached over and grabbed this one as well. It was wet and sticky and I realized it wasn’t a balloon. What I had in my hand was something I had not used in more than four years since I met Cindy and before that, they were only used to prevent STDs. Due to a severe case of childhood mumps, my little swimmers could barely float and certainly couldn’t swim.

I rose up to peer across the bed at my lovely wife of three years and thought “Cindy, you got a lot of splainin’ to do.” I then rushed as quietly as possible out the bedroom door and down the stairs to the guest bath off the family room and preceded to empty my stomach of everything I had ever eaten. I sat on the bathroom floor for the next two days (probably more like ten minutes) and cried for the first time since that morning five years ago when my parents went down in dad’s Cessna. In my mind there was no other explanation for this recently used condom to be under my bed except for a massive betrayal by someone that held my heart in her hands.

This was just such a shock since I had no idea anything was wrong with what I had thought to be a perfect life. A beautiful wife, a job I absolutely loved, a home that most would kill for, money in the bank plus a healthy retirement account and last but not least, my full race tricked out 1990 Miata. Not a Vette or a Mustang, but give me the Mazda and a curvy mountain road and you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I guess the thought of another man fucking Cindy might just cure that smile problem for some time to come.

I went into the kitchen and put the evidence (now, I’m a CSI tech wanna be) in a plastic sandwich bag. I had to get away to think before I did something really stupid, so I washed up in the sink the best I could, snuck upstairs and got my clothes and left like a thief in the night. I thought about stopping at IHOP for breakfast, but decided the old stomach didn’t need an excuse to do its best to permanently stain my leather seats. I decided the best place for me to be right now was the workplace, so my little red zoom-zoom and I took the back roads to the Store.

Now, I better take the time to fill you in on a few things about myself. My name is James Nesbit, Jim to just about everyone, thirty years old, five foot ten, 170 lbs of mostly lean muscle and I am a genius. Not Einstein smart, smarter. I entered college to pursue a business degree which I figured would lead to untold wealth due to superior mental abilities. I imagined within a few years I should be the King of Wall Street or at the least, a Crown Prince. Well, things were going full speed ahead and I even found some of my arrogant professors seeking me out for my opinions on upcoming changes in the business climate.

About the start of my junior year I discovered an online puzzle site that was different from others I’d played with before. The answers were not immediately apparent and I actually had to spend time thinking about the possibilities before typing in the solutions. This was a site that required a log in with a user name and my e-mail address with the idea that as I solved puzzles, more difficult challenges would be forthcoming. The puzzles got harder and then a great deal harder, but never beyond my ability to find solutions. I’m not sure the solutions I found were always what was expected, but I kept getting e-mails telling me that new puzzles awaited me.

April of that year, I was coming out of a class when I was stopped by a man in a suit that asked me if I was James Nesbit. When I said yes, he stated he had something to discuss with me and could he buy me a cup of coffee. I was curious and since I didn’t have any place urgent to be, I accepted. We walked over to the student union, got our coffee and a sweet roll for me and found a table in the corner as far from others as possible. He was from the puzzle site, well actually he was with the government and his agency had developed the site.

“Mr. Nesbit, my name is Bill Smith and I want to talk with you about your future. We have been using the puzzle site for two years looking for someone with a certain skill set we need. Up to now, of the more than 300,000 individuals that have visited our site, you have surpassed everyone else by a factor of four. We have given you puzzles that we felt had no solution and yet you showed us we were wrong. We have a position for you if you’re interested.”

“I sometimes had a feeling many of the puzzles did not lend themselves to a single solution, but found the challenge helpful in keeping my mind occupied what with the somewhat mundane nature of my university studies. And besides, I’m not looking for a job right now and I certainly have no desire to work for some government agency all my life. Hell, I still have three years to get my MBA,” I replied.

“We’ve done an extensive amount of background on you going from childhood to what you had for dinner last night and after talking to everyone concerned, we feel you should be teaching here, instead of attending as an undergraduate. We could arrange to have your MBA a reality in weeks instead of years. Write a fifty page thesis with your views on the coming world economic conditions and within a week, you’ll have your MBA.”

As I almost swallowed my tongue, he went on “Jim-may I call you that? This is not just any old government job. You would be in a position to truly help your country survive the threats coming from all over the world and maybe even save the entire world from its own insanity. The compensation would be roughly three times what you would start out in any job on Wall Street and we would pay any debt you have incurred with attaining your education. This is not a job we advertise in the help wanted ads, it’s a job being created for one very unique individual. You are the only job applicant and we’re willing to do just about anything it takes to make you happy. Please step up and as they say, come to the aid of your country.”

Well, that’s about how it actually happened. I wrote my thesis on economic destabilization of Europe and its effects on the world in four days and a week later, to the day, I went to the University president’s office and received my degree. I figured it would be better spending the next three years earning money than listening to a bunch of lame assed professors who had no idea how things worked in the real world.

The job itself is really quite fascinating and pretty simple. They pay me to think. I look at all available data and look for ways to best serve America’s interests both at home and abroad. I have several rooms including a gym, a shower and a whirlpool bath. It’s an office with a very comfortable couch and a workspace with numerous computer terminals, blackboards, several TV monitors and a dynamite sound system. I’m given anything I want and after six years, I am pretty well set for life financially. Best thing of all, I absolutely love what I do. Sometimes I have to make some fairly grisly suggestions based on the best data available. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is an even grislier world than what was faced by past generations.

Of course, with any job like this, you need to sign about a million documents including one about your first born, if I remember correctly. Pretty much comes down to if I say one word about what I do, they have the right to stick me face first into an old well and Lassie ain’t bringing Timmy to haul my ass out. The complex I work in has several other active projects, all of which I am totally clueless about. I casually know and have meals with some of the other workers in the complex, but discussions are more about sports, books and movies. We do not discuss world events, politics or what our work consists of. Those are the rules if you work at the Store. Problem with this store is we are ten stories below ground and customers might have a tough time getting past the heavily armed young men who occupy the ground floor.

Back to me and my beloved Miata. I arrived at the front gate, slid my pass into the slot and waited for the gate to open. I then drove toward the main building and entered through an overhead door that opened as I approached the building and parked in the clearly marked space. I lowered the passenger window, took my keys from the ignition with my right hand and put both hands on the door. The security officer opened my door, watched me get out of the car, took my keys which he flipped to his partner and started the pat down and wand sweep of my body. Nothing was said as the second man searched my car while floor scanners confirmed I wasn’t driving a rolling bomb.

This was an everyday procedure and in six years I had no idea if any of these men had a falsetto voice or a southern drawl. It was exactly the same procedure with the exception that I occasionally had to wait outside the door while another car was being processed. I was handed back my keys and headed over to the elevator, stepped in and felt my feet nearly lift from the floor as it dropped like a lead weight. When the door opened, I walked down the corridor thirty two paces, turned right for another twenty four paces, keyed my door and entered my home away from home.

With what I learned this morning, maybe this was my only home. I didn’t have a secretary or assistant, or a reason for either. A maid came when I called and only when I was present. She was the only one that really ever came into my suite unless I requested something special be installed or there was a problem with a computer terminal. This all might seem a bit strange to someone who works in an office filled with co-workers, but I was actually quite contend to be on my own.