Black Box, Page 3

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  The presence of another person can be sensed, even when not directly perceived.

  The discovery of another person at close range, when you thought you were alone, may occasion fear.

  Leaping from a supine into a standing posture will induce a head rush.

  “I see you. Come out” must be uttered calmly, from the Readiness Position.

  If you show fear, make sure that it isn’t the fear you actually feel.

  When you’ve expected a man, the appearance of a woman may be shocking.

  Despite all that you know and are, you may experience that shock as a relief.

  “Why are you here?,” uttered by your new host’s alpha beauty, is likely hostile.

  Respond to abstract questions on the most literal level: “He left without me.”

  “Bastard,” muttered bitterly, suggests familiarity with the phenomenon of being left behind.

  Sympathy from an unexpected source can prompt a swell of emotion.

  Measure the potential liability of shedding tears before you let them fall.

  The perfumed arm of a beauty may pour strength and hope directly into your skin.

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  A lavish clifftop villa may look even more miragelike on a second approach.

  Sustaining an atmosphere of luxury in a remote place requires an enormous amount of money.

  So does coördinated violence.

  Your job is to follow money to its source.

  A powerful man whose associate has fled the premises after a false alarm is unlikely to be cheerful.

  The reappearance of the vanished associate’s stranded beauty will likely startle him.

  Astonishment is satisfying to witness on any face.

  “Where the fuck did he go?” is remarkably easy to decipher, even in a language you don’t recognize.

  A shrug is comprehensible to everyone.

  An alpha beauty’s complete indifference to the consternation of her mate may mean that he’s easily moved to consternation.

  It may also mean that he’s not her mate.

  As a beauty, you will sometimes be expected to change hands.

  Generally, you will pass from the hands of a less powerful man to those of a more powerful man.

  Greater proximity to the source of money and control is progress.

  Your job is identical regardless of whose hands you are in.

  If your vulnerability and helplessness have drawn the interest of an enemy subject, accentuate them.

  Scraped and dirty legs may accentuate your vulnerability to the point of disgust.

  They might get you a hot shower, though.

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  Homes of the violent rich have excellent first-aid cabinets.

  If, after tending to your scrapes, you are shown to a bathing area with a stone-encrusted waterfall, assume you won’t be alone for long.

  The fact that a man has ignored and then insulted you does not mean that he won’t want to fuck you.

  Slim, powerful men often move with catlike swiftness.

  Begin your countdown early—as he lowers himself into the tub.

  By the time he seizes your arm, you should be at five.

  By the time your forehead is jammed against a rock, you should perceive your body only vaguely, from above.

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  If you feel, on returning to your body, that much time has passed, don’t dwell on how much.

  If your limbs are sore and your forehead scraped and raw, don’t dwell on why.

  When you emerge from a warm, churning bath where you’ve spent an indeterminate period of time, expect to feel shaky and weak.

  Remind yourself that you are receiving no payment, in currency or kind, for this or any act you have engaged in.

  These acts are forms of sacrifice.

  An abundance of diaphanous bathrobes suggests that the occupants of this bathroom are often female.

  A soiled and tattered white sundress can seem oddly precious when it’s all you have.

  Keep with you the things that matter—you won’t come back for them later.

  The stationing of a male attendant outside the bathroom means that you haven’t been forgotten.

  If he shows you to a tiny room containing a very large bed, your utility to your new host may not have been exhausted.

  A tray containing a meat pie, grapes, and a pitcher of water suggests that visits such as yours are routine.

  At times, you may wish to avoid the moon.

  At times, the moon may appear like a surveillance device, tracking your movements.

  The ability to sleep in stressful conditions is essential to this work.

  Sleep whenever you can safely do so.

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  Your abrupt awakening may feel like a reaction to a sound.

  In moments of extreme solitude, you may believe you’ve heard your name.

  We reassure ourselves by summoning, in our dreams, those we love and miss.

  Having awakened to find them absent, we may be left with a sense of having spoken with them.

  Even the most secure houses achieve, in deep night, a state of relative unconsciousness.

  A beauty in a diaphanous lavender bathrobe can go anywhere, as long as she appears to be delivering herself to someone.

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  A universal principle of home construction makes it possible to guess which door will lead to the master bedroom.

  Linen closets, with doors closed, can resemble master bedrooms.

  So can bathrooms.

  Bare feet are virtually soundless on a stone floor.

  Even a slim, catlike man may snore.

  When trespassing in a sleeping man’s bedroom, go straight to his bed, as if you were seeking him out.

  An alpha beauty who has appeared to have no tie to your new host may turn out to be his intimate, after all.

  Their sleeping entanglement may contradict everything you have witnessed between them.

  A small crib near the bed may indicate the presence of a baby.

  Avoid indulging your own amazement; it wastes time.

  Master bedrooms in lavish homes often divide into “his” and “hers” areas.

  A beauty’s closet is unmistakable, like a quiver of bright arrows.

  The closet of a slight, catlike man will usually be compact.

  Having penetrated a man’s personal space, immediately seek out his Sweet Spot.

  The Sweet Spot is where he empties his pockets at the end of the day and stores the essentials he needs to begin the next.

  The Sweet Spot of a secretive, catlike man will most often be inside a cupboard or a drawer.

  When you find it, consider using a Data Surge to capture the contents of his handset.

  A Data Surge must be deployed with extreme caution, and only if you feel confident of an exceptional yield.

  The quantity of information captured will require an enormous amount of manpower to tease apart.

  Its transmission will register on any monitoring device.

  We can guarantee its effectiveness only once.

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  Reach between your right fourth and pinky toes (if right-handed) and remove the Data Plug from your Universal Port.

  Attached to the plug is a cable with a connection pin at one end for insertion into the handset’s data port.

  Sit on the floor, away from sharp surfaces, and brace your back against a wall.

  A red ribbon has been tucked inside your Universal Port; enclose this in one of your palms.

  Spread apart your toes and gently reinsert the plug, now fused to your subject’s handset, into your Universal Port.

  You will feel the surge as the data flood your body.

  The surge may contain feeling, memory, heat, cold, longing, pain, even joy.

  Although the data are alien, the memories dislodged will be your own:

  Peeling an orange for your husband in bed on a Sunday, sunlight splashing the sheets;

  The smoky earthen s
mell of the fur of your childhood cat;

  The flavor of the peppermints your mother kept for you inside her desk.

  The impact of a Data Surge may prompt unconsciousness or short-term memory loss.

  The purpose of the red ribbon is to orient you; if you awaken to find yourself clutching one, look to your foot.

  When your body is quiet, unplug the handset and return it to its original location.

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  A Data Surge leaves a ringing in your ears that may obscure the sound of another person’s arrival.

  A face that brought you relief once may trigger relief a second time.

  When an alpha beauty accosts you at high volume in an unfamiliar language, it may mean she’s too sleepy to remember who you are.

  It may also mean she’s calling someone else.

  Beauty status will not excuse, for another beauty, your appearance where you are not supposed to be.

  Should you be perceived as an enemy, prepare to defend yourself at the first sign of physical encroachment.

  Your new host lunging at you, shouting, “What the fuck are you doing?,” constitutes physical encroachment.

  Thrust your elbow upward into the tender socket underneath his jaw, sending him backward onto the floor.

  The wails of a newborn will lure its mother away from almost anything, including the physical travails of her mate.

  A man disabled by an elbow blow will have little reaction to infant cries.

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  At the revelation of martial-arts expertise, a man who has perceived you as merely a beauty will recalculate your identity and purpose.

  Watch his eyes: he’ll be measuring the distance to his nearest firearm.

  An immediate exit is advisable.

  A slim, catlike man may well rebound before a hasty exit can be made.

  Obstructing the path of a violent man to his firearm will nearly always result in another encroachment.

  Kicking him in the foreneck, even barefoot, will temporarily occlude his windpipe.

  The alpha beauty of a violent man will know where his firearm is kept, and how to use it.

  A woman holding a gun and a baby no longer qualifies as a beauty.

  No beauty is really a beauty.

  Disabling a gun holder is likely to hurt the baby she is holding, too.

  When self-preservation requires that you harm the innocent, we can provide no more than guidelines.

  As Americans, we value human rights above all else and cannot sanction their violation.

  When someone threatens our human rights, however, a wider leeway becomes necessary.

  Follow your instincts while bearing in mind that we must, and will, hew to our principles.

  A woman holding a thrashing baby in one arm may have trouble aiming a firearm with the other.

  Bullets do actually whistle in an enclosed space.

  If a person has shot at you and missed, incapacitate her before she can fire again.

  We are most reluctant to hurt those who remind us of ourselves.

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  A lag time exists between getting shot and knowing that you have been shot.

  Assuming there is no artery involvement, wounds to the upper limbs are preferable.

  Bony, tendony body parts bleed less, but are harder to reconstruct if shattered.

  The right shoulder is a bony, tendony part.

  When shots have been fired in a powerful man’s home, you have minutes, if not seconds, before the arrival of security.

  Your physical person is our Black Box; without it, we have no record of what has happened on your mission.

  It is imperative that you remove yourself from enemy possession.

  When you find yourself cornered and outnumbered, you may unleash, as a last resort, your Primal Roar.

  The Primal Roar is the human equivalent of an explosion, a sound that combines screaming, shrieking, and howling.

  The Roar must be accompanied by facial contortions and frenetic body movement, suggesting a feral, unhinged state.

  The Primal Roar must transform you from a beauty into a monster.

  The goal is to horrify your opponent, the way trusted figures, turned evil, are horrifying in movies and in nightmares.

  Deploy your camera flash repeatedly while Roaring.

  When approached by a howling, spasmodic, flashing monster, most women holding newborns will step aside.

  Discontinue Roaring the instant you’re free from immediate danger.

  Those stampeding to the aid of a powerful man will barely notice a dishevelled beauty they pass in a hallway.

  If you’re lucky, this will buy you time to flee his house.

  Resume your beauty role while running: smooth your hair and cover your bleeding wound with the sundress scrunched in your pocket.

  The fact that you can’t hear alarms doesn’t mean you haven’t set them off.

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  After violence in a closed room, cool night air will have a clarifying effect.

  Get to the bottom of a hill any way you can, including sliding and rolling.

  In residences of the violent rich, there will be at least one guard at each port of egress.

  In deep night, if you are extremely lucky (and quiet), that guard will be asleep.

  Assume, as well as you can, the air of a beauty larkishly gambolling.

  If running barefoot onto a dock transports you back to your childhood, pain may be making you hallucinate.

  Lying with girlfriends on a still-warm dock in upstate New York, watching shooting stars, is a sensation you remember after many years.

  Hindsight creates the illusion that your life has led you inevitably to the present moment.

  It’s easier to believe in a foregone conclusion than to accept that our lives are governed by chance.

  Showing up for a robotics course by accident, because of a classroom mixup, is chance.

  Finding an empty seat beside a boy with very dark skin and beautiful hands is chance.

  When someone has become essential to you, you will marvel that you could have lain on a warm dock and not have known him yet.

  Expect reimmersion in your old life to be difficult.

  Experience leaves a mark, regardless of the reasons and principles behind it.

  What our citizen agents most often require is simply for time to pass.

  Our counsellors are available around the clock for the first two weeks of your reimmersion and during business hours thereafter.

  We ask that you allow our Therapeutic Agents, rather than those in the general population, to address your needs.

  Secrecy is the basis of what we do, and we require your extreme discretion.

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  Even preternatural swimming strength cannot propel you across a blue-black sea.

  Staring with yearning ferocity from the end of a dock cannot propel you across a blue-black sea.

  When your body has been granted exceptional powers, it is jarring to encounter a gulf between your desires and your abilities.

  For millennia, engineers have empowered human beings to accomplish mythical feats.

  Your husband is an engineer.

  Children raised among wild animals learn to detect irregular movements in their landscape.

  That particular awareness, coupled with scientific genius, has made your husband a national-security hero.

  Intimacy with another human can allow you to scrutinize your surroundings as he would.

  Along a rocky, moonlit shore, the irregular movement is the one that is lurching in time with the water beneath an overhang of brush.

  A speedboat has most likely been hidden by your new host as a means of emergency escape.

  The key will be inside it.

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  Slither between branches and board the boat; untie it and lower its motor into the water.

  Be grateful for the lakes in upstate New York where you learned to pilot motorboats.

  Fluff up your hair with your functional arm
and essay a wide, carefree smile.

  A smile is like a shield; it freezes your face into a mask of muscle that you can hide behind.

  A smile is like a door that is both open and closed.

  Turn the key and gun the motor once before aiming into the blue-black sea and jamming the accelerator.

  Wave and giggle loudly at the stunned, sleepy guard.

  Steer in a zigzag motion until you are out of gunshot range.

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  The exultation of escape will be followed almost immediately by a crushing onslaught of pain.

  The house, its occupants, even the gunshots will seem like phantoms beside this clanging immediacy.

  If the pain makes thought impossible, concentrate solely on navigation.

  Only in specific Geographic Hotspots can we intervene.

  While navigating toward a Hotspot, indicate an emergency by pressing the button behind your knee for sixty continuous seconds.

  You must remain conscious.

  If it helps, imagine yourself in the arms of your husband.

  If it helps, imagine yourself in your apartment, where his grandfather’s hunting knife is displayed inside a Plexiglas box.

  If it helps, imagine harvesting the small tomatoes you grow on your fire escape in summer.

  If it helps, imagine that the contents of the Data Surge will help thwart an attack in which thousands of American lives would have been lost.

  Even without enhancements, you can pilot a boat in a semi-conscious state.

  Human beings are superhuman.

  Let the moon and the stars direct you.

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  When you reach the approximate location of a Hotspot, cut the engine.

  You will be in total darkness, in total silence.

  If you wish, you may lie down at the bottom of the boat.

  The fact that you feel like you’re dying doesn’t mean that you will die.

  Remember that, should you die, your body will yield a crucial trove of information.