Dear Amritsar,
I work for a spy agency so secret only three people in the world know of its existence, and four of them are dead! We like to think this ensures the organization's...umm, okay, my math may be a bit suspect. Still, the point is that my organization is so secret that WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'VE HEARD OF MI SWEET 16? WHO LEAKED THAT INFORMATION? WHEN I FIND OUT WHO -
Ahem. I sat in the vertical lotus position for 20 minutes, and I'm feeling a lot better, now. I'm not going to let myself get too worked up about a mole in the organization - that's Smiley's department. So. I would suggest you forget whatever you think you know, not only for your sake, but for the sake of your children, the manufacturers of the braces your children wear (whether on their teeth or to hold up their pants) and Justin Bieber.
He's not suspected of anything; I'm just not a fan.
I have worked for four years in signal unintelligence. (If you knew how easy it was to crack most people's passwords, you would understand my departmental designation.) My job has been to search for potential terrorists in other dimensions using a Home Universe Generator(TM), then match their behaviours to that of their counterparts in this universe (using our top secret database of all information generated in the world known as Big Hoover). If the behaviour patterns were identical (with a 67 per cent margin of error), we began an investigation of the person in this universe.
Easy peasy greesy cheesey.
I enjoyed the work. It was certainly easier than being lowered into a vat of piranhas while a sumo wrestler threw a steel-brimmed hat at you at the same time as a woman with a poison-tipped knife in her shoe tried to stab you (although I have long suspected that field agents exaggerate their exploits to some degree). Anyway, my contribution to freedom and competitively priced onion rings was just as important as any field agent.
My enjoyment ended two weeks ago. I was watching a man named Drake, John Drake on Earth Prime 5-4-3-3-2-2 dash Eta. In his prime, he had been one of MI Sweet 16's best operatives, but his behaviour had become erratic of late, and Control was worried that he might defect, or, worse: write his memoirs. I was assigned to monitor him for signs of cracking; the last thing we needed was a bad egg! I had been watching him for almost a month when, out of the blue, he said: "I know you've been watching me. I suppose I would do that, if I was in your position. But, who watches you? Eh? Who watches you?"
At first, I shurgged his question off (no, it's not a typo - it's a special meditation technique only taught in a small dojo in Chinatown). But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized he had a point. In the infinite multiverse, there were going to be people who were watching me. If there were enough of them (and, if there is one thing I have learned in 30 years of spycraft, it's that in an infinite multiverse there are always enough of them), there would be somebody watching me every minute of every hour of every day.
I found this next to impossible to shrug, shurg or commabulate (an ancient full body origami technique that is surprisingly soothing) off. When I'm in the bathroom, somebody is watching me. When I'm telling my son not to do the things I used to do when I was his age (hey! - I'm older and wiser, now), somebody is watching me. I have no doubt that somebody is watching me as I compose this question - stop watching my life and give me back my privacy, you evil ferker!
I became paralyzed by the knowledge that everything I did was scrutinized. I stopped going to work. I stopped answering my phone. I did kill the agents MI Sweet 16 sent to "question" me about my recent behaviour, but that was just a reflex, and, in any case, although it was definitely an action, I don't believe most people would consider it a positive one.
How can I get past this and reclaim my life?
CODENAME: Bristling Hogties
Hey, Babe,
How do you stand on the whole "irony" issue?
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: Just because Amritsar deigns to answer your question does not mean she has to sympathize with your plight. If you want a sympathetic response, try being a sympathetic human being!