A World of Secrets
Musings on my short story "The Joker"
“The Joker” is a fav of mine (both the song and the short story I wrote). The story is layered and addresses the common need to lie while keeping secrets.
I put a lot of truth into a small bit of fiction (1700 words). As in the story, I got a phone message driving an empty highway in Alaska during the winter heading to a place that if on a map, you couldn’t enter anyway. I did that for a lot of years. Odd having elements of life that ought to make great stories, but just can’t be written about directly.
I read Barry Lopez’s “Arctic Dreams” during my month-long drive to Alaska (I had time before having to report and it was the tail end of ski season and back then I was a certified ski instructor in about 5 disciplines). Let’s admit I did not move to Alaska for the secret shit. I don’t think I knew about that crap then (1995).
Following 9/11 my life changed. I had military and government IDs, clearances, and things-to-do. Often alone at the edge of the earth. “Oh, you’re a few hours from Frankfurt, please hop a plane and give a talk at K-Town”. “Hey mind dropping in on Hawaii, you’re the closest.” As a technologist whose published technical books and dozens of the snooziest technical treastise on cyber nonsense, I got odd assignments.
At or near the arctic circle was a (is a) series of early warning systems for stuff launched from over the horizon. What horizon? The narrow one that spans the arctic and faces Russia. The early version was called the DEW Line. I was at a site (or two) during their decommissioning. The movie Dr No had a similar command center. It resembled the image below. Round CRT displays on heavy clunky metal.
While there I stole an old vacuum/radio tube. Still on my bookshelf, but I put it on the floor for a photo as you can see.
That this tech still protected us in the 1990 after years of talking about Star Wars Missile Defense Systems seems odd to me. At that point I was working to design a communications package for a U.S. Army ship (yes, true, not a typo) and supporting the comm links between these remote sites. In terms of the work those folks did/do I was but a tourist — with light fingers I guess.
I haven’t a clue what I am allowed to say today and I haven’t anyone to ask. But all secrets age and secrets become public, which happend to me one night watching TV with the spouse. When I got read into a secret thingy related to my clearance, I got “read in” a project that changed my clearance level and earned me a new colored dot on my ID cards. I hear the project name and description thereof on a TV show that attempted to be edgy. Like a dog whistle, I heard the phrase and paused the TV. Oh, look there’s my super secret, new-color-dot crap in Wikipedia for all to read about. Listen I didn’t care about project. It must have been some threshold project that is used to bump people into a new color-dot-crap. It meant that my major and I would enter rooms without escorts, without amber/red flashing lights and without everyone using manilla card stock to cover their monitors as we walked by. We were on the “in”.
Even that knowledge is 20 years old. To cross these thresholds and slide down the rabbit hole you sign documents and make oathes. But nobody calls you later to tell you, “this ain’t secret no mo’, thanks for the help.”
I did get the email 15 years ago that said that the U.S. Office of Personnel Managment had a security breach. Next to my bookshelf, mounted on the big safe is the access codes to ID and credit monitoring service that Uncle has been paying for. Some enemy has 100% of my personal deets. Is this a momento of those days? Probably, I carry it with me, don’t it (and the odd hurt that comes from me honoring trust the my employer violating that same trust, hardly fair).
I learned when promoting “The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County”, that one of my friends who was outside of that game slipped down a similar hole as me. She landed at the modern version of the DEW Line up there near/on the arctic circle. With my last contact, she was in the Middle East which immediately ended that conversation (Hey S.D., much love, miss ya). I did a basic linear extrapolation. She was there then, and here now, thus therefore she is doing X. Got it!
What I carry with me the most are the snapshot images in my brain and snippets of conversations:
Eielson Air Force Base
“Bowling alley for lunch?”
“Sure.”
“Bundle up, it is a walk.” He left out the “it is -40 outside.”
“Why not drive?”
“Two reasons, one the wheels are all frozen square and two it takes longer to get the car started and warmed than it takes to walk the click”
Yeah, the plastic/rubber tires on wheels freeze firm with a mild flat spot on the bottom. It takes a goodly while of driving (thump, thump, thump) before the wheel rounds out and the ride gets smooth.
One of Millions
I am but one of thousands or hundreds or thousands or even millions that have striven quietly to provide a public service and do it with honor. When I watch contemporary TV/movies, it is all boom-boom/bang-bang. When in fact the world was quiet, cold and the work happened just like it does in every office.
When I returned home and to volunteer fire service, it came clear to me that for every firefighter on hose, in an air tank, or in the building there were 4-5 humans on the team providing support. In Baghdad with a division of 20,000 personnel, I recognized that I was both insignificant and vital. I was a small and invisible part with a wire and a bit of tech that let people communicate.
And the thing that happens when you are a part of a team is that you develop relationships, friendships, and even find variations of love. And that is what I had with a friend who later left Alaska returning to Vermont. What happens next is explored in “The Joker”.
Love and poetry exists even in this world, yes. People are people, aren’t they?
Please go read:
Canada
We need Canada. We need to love our neighbors and respect them. It is our teams of Canadian and U.S. folks who watch our northern border. Let’s not piss them off. They are good folks and, oh, we all need that northern defensive line. Russia seems to be a bit more aggressive today then they were when the president called them the “evil empire”.