Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. This story is for entertainment purposes only.

Author's note: This story was inspired by Ian Rankin's great short story "Sunday". I definitely recommend it. Rankin's story, that is.

Author's note #2: Before everybody jumps all over me for going OOC (if I am, isn't character often an interpretation?), might I point out a pertinent fact: Martin's personality is shown (and discussed) often as being a very controlled, buttoned up personality. It is my experience that these are quite often the ones with great trouble underneath. What you see, ain't always what you get. And if I've missed a few eps due to my work schedule… nobody's perfect.

Off Day

No alarm, but he woke at precisely 6:00 am, as per usual. He didn't need an alarm, had never needed one, his internal clock kept time better than any manufactured by human hands.

So precise it's almost scary. Not to him, but to everyone around him. Just another one of the legends of Martin Fitzgerald, child of privilege, mankind's first functional human form robot.

He got up, no sense in lying in bed, unable to sleep. Today, not a work day, a rare day off not imposed by incident, but by mere quirk of the schedule. Still, a routine to perform, tasks to be accomplished.

Shower, shave, brush teeth, dress. Glasses, not contacts -- it's a day off. Breakfast: Eggs, cereal, orange juice. No coffee, not a work day. Today was a break from stress, from caffeine. A time to recover, to rest. No phone calls during breakfast, nothing to disturb this day, to say that it need be postponed to a later day, because life – messy and unscheduled – has once again happened to another person.

After breakfast, laundry. First the basics: bedclothes, leisure clothes, separated by colour, fabric and soil. As they wash, collect all deliveries for the cleaners – suits, ties, shirts – and fold to be taken in. Transfer first load of basics to the dryer, start second in washer.

Collect dry-clean-only laundry, take down to cleaners. They know how he likes things done, which creases to leave in and which to take out. That's why them, and not someone closer and more convenient. Never take the easy way out. Perfect creases for the perfect agent. Martian Fitzgerald, they called him on his first assignment, knowing full well his family and nastier because of it. A test of sorts: does Marty run crying harassment, or does he suck it up, and ignore it? Everything a test: who he questioned, how he filled out his forms. They gave him all the nasty ones, the senile ones, the ones no one else wanted to handle.

"Are you being sarcastic with me?" An old lady, belligerent and self-important. Ex-school teacher of the 'apply the strap' type. Not one to take back talk from anyone, especially not a wet behind the ears agent who was trying to explain that reality was not precisely how she understood it.

"No ma'am." He'd said, calm, polite-to-a-fault. "But I can be if that's what you'd prefer."

Next day a t-shirt appears, hung over his desk. Sarcasm: just another service we offer. Another test: how does he handle it? He took it down, folded it neatly and placed it in a drawer. It's never seen again, but a few weeks later, a snooping agent notices a small picture frame on the desk; the words have been neatly cut from the shirt and placed in the frame. Behind the back whispers don't cease, just change tone. Now not just a Martian, but dangerously intellectual to boot. Blue Flamer they call him, eager to advance and with all the connections to do so. Another label soon to be lost among all the others he effortlessly manages to gain.

Home again, change the laundry, fold the newly cleaned and dried, put it away. As the next set continues to follow the process, begin cleaning, starting in the kitchen.

Check refrigerator, empty of all out of date or spoiled foods, discard. Remove all other foods, place neatly on plastic covered counter-top, cover again with plastic. Using heavy gloves, take a solution of 1 teaspoon chlorine bleach with every 3 cups hot (above 75 F) water; scrub out inside of refrigerator, including walls and all storage modules. Allow solution to sit for a minimum of two minutes, then rinse. Replace food in refrigerator, then continue procedure with a new solution on all other kitchen surfaces. Cupboards (follow same procedure as with refrigerator), cupboard doors, counter-tops refrigerator exterior, kitchen table, floor.

After the kitchen, change laundry again, and on to the bathroom. Same procedure here, but with a stronger solution. Mildew afraid to grow in here, knows its life would be short. Polish the mirrors and chrome until they shine almost from within. Attack the corners with an old toothbrush, making sure to get everything. Whole place smells like bleach now – good, strong, clean smell. Like a morgue after clean-up. Clorox: Lethal Injection for Germs.

How did he stand on that, anyway? Not the anti-germ stance, but death penalty in particular. As an FBI agent he had to believe in it: to many evils had paraded through his life to let him say that it was wrong, but he didn't fully believe, not like he often said he believed, not like Sam – for instance – believed in it. Maybe he believed in the practice itself, but not its current application. For some – well, people was the only word, but hardly one he wished to apply – it was clearly the only way. They were dangers to society as a whole, well, not society per se, but to the general people who made up society. Guys like Manson – who never actually killed anybody, but certainly convinced enough other people to do it – or Gerry Brudros, or Ted Bundy. Anyone who preyed on children, or the otherwise innocent. But…

An anti-d.p. argument from a cop rose in his head. If some guy knows he's facing the death penalty is drawn on me, and scared, what's he gonna do? He can't get any deader by shooting me down, and maybe getting away. But without the penalty, if he thinks he can stay alive by giving up, well then maybe he's got an incentive to do so. Maybe then he won't kill me, because he's not a stone killer, just a guy scared of dying, like I am. Martin had nodded, had to agree.

Germs, germs on the other hand were fair game. Now that was a good description of the human predators, the serial killers and the rapists… not people, germs. Harmful microbes in the system. Yet, thinking that way… who got to decide the level of harm that could be accepted? Too many people trusted the system; Martin grew up inside that system, knew the ugly truth. The system was people. Good people, bad people, indifferent people. Should the good people decide? Well, who were they? And if they were truly good, they would not be able to decide, because they would be unable to grasp the true nature of evil. The bad ones? The devil to decide who lives and who dies? They did that already, that's why OPB existed (as part of the system, with its own good, bad and indifferents). Surely no one wanted the life and death responsibility going to the indifferent people, the one for whom the Job was simply a job, like stamping out parts in a factory.

Not a good day for existential debate. No, this was a day off, time for other things. Dusting with a damp cloth (oil for wood, water for other surfaces, bleach solution for the ones that can handle it), never a dry cloth to allow the dust to scatter and resettle. Wash the hardwood floors (no carpets allowed, only rugs which go in the wash), use an upholstery cleaner on the furniture.

Still no phone calls, slow day on the disappearance front. Must be everybody's day off today. Place is clean now, as it should be. Only laundry to finish, reading to do. What to read? Burgess, Conrad, Faulkner? Joyce? Something lighter like Bradbury, or Ellison? Books he'd learned not to confess to at work, they only added to the suspicious image of his intellectualism. His elitism. He had enough troubles on that front, even with this group. Jack needling him, challenging him, at the same time afraid to push too hard for fear of attracting the wrath of the old man at the top. Danny close to considering him "Martian" for his inability to slouch, to unbend. Vivian – oh God -- Vivian covering for him, knowing that if anyone learns the truth that Martin is not the one going down. He's not sure what to think of that… she's seen his human side, but it's scared her. Which is why he doesn't let it show all that often in the first place. People don't like it, it doesn't fit the image they've drawn of him. More than that…

It's their own darkest, hated side, isn't it? Pure and utter rage, nothing more. Rage and pain, a one person lynch mob. Yet he's also not sure which has scared her more: seeing that side, or seeing the ease with which he switched it off. Going from Martin the Monster to Martin the Machine within minutes, so completely in control by the time OPB began their questioning that there was no question of them believing him. Not realising that both of them are the same dark person. Bad-Martin, the liar and manipulator, the one who's learned well how to play the game called politics. Who knows all too well the value of half-truths and implied threats. The Monster, truth be told, was the more honest and straightforward, almost better of the two. Violent and dangerous, yes, but at least from a surfeit, not a deficiency of emotion.

Conrad, then. Heart of Darkness for his own dark heart. Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it. Conrad's own advice, words Martin tried to live by. All aspects of him lived by them one way or another. Monster faced the situations in front of him, dealt with them immediately. The Machine knew how the world truly worked, didn't allow for delusions of niceness and justice. And Martin himself faced the fact that he couldn't lose those two – indeed, when he tried, aimed more for human, that was when he screwed up more -- and thus was not the perfect-person/spoiled-brat people took him for.

His mind flashed to something else. Danny confessing his alcoholism. Telling Martin all about how he'd accepted that part of him. Acting like it would be impossible for Martin to understand. Then again, Danny had no way of knowing about Martin's own little bottles, neatly lined up in his medicine cabinet, each one bearing a neatly typed prescription label, each one never opened. Amitriptyline, imipramine, nortriptyline, all of them tricyclics. Or how about the SSRI's? Fluoxetine, paroxetine and sertraline? Even the MAOI's had their spots: phenelzine and tranylcypromine. New bottles at the front, older ones to the back. Dating from last week, all the way back to his teenage years when dad had first insisted on getting them for him. Intent on fixing a son that had never been broken.

Does it count as a drug addiction if you don't take the drugs? One good thing about coming from money – you weren't dependent on your medical plan to choose a doctor. Keep moving around and they can't check to see whether or not you're taking the pills they're so fond of prescribing. But if the Job ever checks to see whether or not you are doing something to deal with your stress (and with critical incidents, oh, do they check)… well there's a doctor's record and a prescription to show them, isn't there? And isn't a free country still? At least mostly? Can't you see any physician you want? After the Reyes shooting, Jack insisted both Martin and Vivian talk to a shrink. Vivian had fought (and won, she almost always did), but Martin had simply picked up the paperwork and had a nice new doctor fill it out before dutifully handing it in. The bottle from that encounter had it's own special place, the first ones he'd ever felt he might actually take. Then again…

If anyone asked… but they never asked did they? After all, he spent the money on them, common sense dictated that he actually be taking them. Then again, there was the other quote he kept taped to his desk, to keep him focussed during a particularly puzzling case: "The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79." Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy.

Idly he wondered what would happen if he disappeared. How long before anyone noticed? Would it be when he didn't show up at work? Didn't answer his phone? Who would be the first to notice? Jack, angry and impatient, wondering why Martin thought he could get away with playing hooky? Viv, with her attention to detail? Or maybe Danny, or sweet, sensitive Samantha. How would they react? Would they assume he had just decided not to come into work for the day? Would they think that maybe something had happened, that he had been summoned to Washington from above? At what point would they seriously begin to search? Where would they start? Here?

He tried to imagine his fellow agents expressions as they searched his apartment. What would they make of the neatness, the small library, the lack of knick-knacks and memorabilia? How would Jack profile him based on his apartment? What would the reaction be to his stocked full bathroom cabinet? He could imagine Danny, slack-jawed, staring at the contents in shock. Viv shaking her head, sadly. Sam? Naïve little Sam? She, like Danny, would probably be unable to believe it. Would feel sorry for him, an act totally unnecessary. Maybe if he felt a need to take the medication…

As for Jack, he'd probably just get angrier. Would add 'deception' to his list of Martin's transgressions, a list that started with Martin's very birth, or at the least, his choice of parentage. A wry, humourless smile graced Martin's lips as he thought about the profile Jack would probably hand them, a profile that only Viv could reluctantly accept. Borderline obsessive-compulsive. Obvious history of depression – Jack'd just count refusal to take medication as another sign – we should probably start with the hospitals and the morgues, we're probably looking for a body. No, if that were the case, they'd find one. If he wanted to die… well the easiest drugs to fatally over-dose on were the members of the anti-depressant family. Certain irony to that. He could use his gun, but that would make a mess.

Still no calls, maybe he had disappeared, at least from everybody's consciousness. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. They're not my friends. On the other hand, they were, possibly, the closest thing he had. Really. Sure, he knew lots of people, could call them by name, could recognise them on sight and carry on conversations with them, but none of them were really friends in the truest sense. None of them knew anything but the mask he showed them, generally the successful, smart young New Yorker with his Washington family and important sounding job.

As for family… well there was his sister and hers, right? He played Uncle Martin; read them the same stories, listened to the same (bad) jokes. Smiled and played nice, listening to the idle chatter that passed for conversation among the adults. For one brought up in an FBI household, his sister had very little stomach for the details of the work, for the evils of life. She'd converted fully to the two of the three R's: Rich and Republican. Retired would come in it's own time, and she could devote her time to her 'causes'.

Just so long as none of them get in the way of free enterprise. His stomach still flip-flopped thinking of all those kids sick from industrial waste in the water supply, uncovered only because the guy out to expose the event disappeared. Jack had thrown out a sarcastic suggestion that he, Martin, use his Washington 'contacts' to get something done, knowing full well that none of those people would do anything. No, he had a different set of contacts for that kind of work, contacts that if the Job knew about them wouldn't only get him fired, would result in his arrest.

His eyes flicked over to the living room, to the mid-height bookcase that covered most of the length of one wall. Would anyone recognise it for what it truly was, or would they see only the surface? Would they look at its contents… the eclectic mix from the Conrad he held in his hand to the Pratchetts that covered the bottom shelf and assume that he was simply over-read. Would they be observant and realise that the cables behind it didn't all run into the wall, that a few hooked into the case itself? That he didn't have the normal cable connection to his television set or stereo, that the set had no outside connection whatsoever? Would they move it out and discover that the shelves themselves had been hollowed out and the insides coated in plastic? What would they make of the network of circuit boards that nestled inside each shelf and riser? Would they realise then why he kept the air-conditioning cranked?

Add paranoid to that list, Jack. Actually, it wasn't paranoia that inspired that particular construction project; it had been a desire to see whether or not he could actually do it. The result had been impressive: a computer more powerful than any you could buy off the shelf. At the same time it was nothing compared to what the hardcore hardware freaks could come up with. Not only that, but it doesn't take up that much space. He doubted most people would find it though, they had a set idea as to what a computer should be, all of which were there. A box shaped CPU: well the shelf was vaguely box shaped. A keyboard. In its own box on the top shelf, high tech, foldable and wireless. A monitor…a good High Definition Television set worked perfectly for that purpose. Speakers? Top quality, surround sound, woofers, tweeters, the works. And this puppy didn't run Windows, either. He preferred something a little more open source, something he could tweak to his own preferences. What it didn't do was look like the proto-typical desktop that everyone recognised as being a computer.

Hi, my name is Martin F., and I am an unrepentant geek. I wrote my first computer program when I was ten years old, hacked my first system when I was twelve. My favourite school subjects were Math and English Lit, I didn't take computers because I knew more than the instructor. Thus, why he didn't work in the computer section of the Bureau: he wasn't technically qualified. Sure, they'd done a skills assessment on him when he joined, but it was the same one they gave to everybody, a little sleepwalk of a test to see whether you could log on to a network and send files back and forth. What they didn't bother to find out was whether you could log on to the network as somebody else and send files you weren't supposed to know about back and forth to the wrong people, or make them disappear entirely.

No, if the government knew the full extent of his skills, he'd be logging time at a different agency, probably with the initials NSA. Or as it was currently known (in certain circles) No Secrets Allowed. If the Patriot Act was regarded as a double edged sword within the FBI, the NSA embraced it as a letter from God. Legally allowed to read anybody's correspondence? No such thing as confidential files? It was the Agency's ultimate wet dream, the only problem being is that they didn't, would never have the personnel and resources to monitor every single piece of correspondence in North America every day, forget the rest of the world. They would try, though, oh God would they try. And that was something out of Martin's worse nightmare. Ideologically the thought of a world without privacy was bad enough, but personally, the thought of having to slog through all that minutiae and nothingness for the one germ of something that might mean something else… Then I think I would kill myself, just from sheer boredom. It bothered him even now, prying into people's private lives even when it meant saving their life.

Why hadn't the phone rung? They'd found it hadn't they, the exculpatory evidence? They'd found their missing person, and the proof a man was innocent of murder, did not deserve death, they found them at the same time. So why didn't the phone ring? Wasn't justice supposed to err on the side of caution? Especially when it came to the d.p.? They'd waited, and waited… and the phone did not ring.

Night now. Time to sleep. To dream. To recharge for tomorrow and the Job. Where he would be Martin the Martian, Martin the Machine. Calm, controlled, perfect. Contacts, not glasses. Perfectly pressed suit, not bleach spotted T-shirt and jeans. The two R's emblazoned all over him, from the Windsor knot in his tie down to the shine on his shoes. And no one to guess that Superman went home to become Clark Kent.

And the phone did not ring.