Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck or Mad Men.
A/N: Okay, this will serve as a short companion piece to my fic "Chuck: the College Years". I almost classified it as a Mad Men crossover, but seeing as it doesn't deal in any way with the actual storyline of Mad Men, I decided against it. Anyone with a working knowledge of the AMC original program will get an added treat with the recognition of a character, though. This the first Chuck piece I've written that didn't even mention Chuck or Sarah by name at least, and also the only one that didn't involve them, really at all. That said, I hope you can still enjoy it for what it is. Thank you for taking the time to read and please leave a review. Thanks.
Orion: the Early Years
Stephen Bartowski, or Steve to his friends - well, what friends he had left these days which pretty much extended to his wife, Elizabeth and their two children - stood in front of the small Long Island home. He checked the address once more before tucking his briefcase under his arm, walking up onto the stoop and knocking on the red door.
He waited nervously as the moments dragged on. Finally, he heard footsteps on the other side of the door drawing closer. Just when they were upon him, they stopped, and a tired voice called out to him from inside the house.
"Yeah, who is it," came the gravely voice, the product of decades of chain smoking that should have given him cancer ages ago.
"Omaha One," Stephen responded with the code phrase the agency heads had given him.
Slowly the door swung open revealing a man in his late fifties. His hair, which had started to gray over fifteen years ago, was now held more gray than the jet black it was years ago. The strain of the work the government had put on him shown through clearly in the deep creases that lined his handsome face.
"Come in," he offered curtly.
Hesitantly, Stephen stepped through the door and followed the older man into a sitting room. There was no television, or radio, or any type of electrical device in the room. Nor were there any pictures, or decorations. The room was furnished with a simple green couch, a recliner, and a coffee table. There wasn't even a clock, something Stephen found to be a bit bothersome, for some reason.
"You don't want to know what time it is?" he asked the old man wryly.
"No," was the simple, terse answer. Then a look of annoyance passed over the face of the home owner as he decided to give the visitor a little more. "When everything's been taken from you, and your days are filled with waiting for death to come take you, there's not a whole lot of reason to worry about time, now is there?"
Stephen took in the words of the apparently bitter hermit, and had to agree to a certain extent. He couldn't identify with that life himself, and honestly he didn't want to. Stephen didn't think he'd survive such a lonely existence.
"You don't have a family, or friends, or anything?" Stephen asked.
"I did," was the man's answer. "Once upon a time."
With those words, the older man's face took on a look of quiet contemplation. There was deep pain there, Stephen could tell, but the generation that his host belonged to didn't talk about such things, so he would let it go, for now.
Nothing was said for several minutes, until finally Stephen broke the awkward silence that had fallen over the room. "So, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Stephen Bartowski," said the younger man.
"And I'm Don Draper. Of course, I'm sure you're already aware of that seeing as you're here," was the sardonic response of the former ad man.
"Yeah, yeah I am," mumbled Stephen awkwardly.
His work with the government, and his beautiful wife and two great kids had instilled him with a confidence that he'd lacked as a young, geeky, computer nerd, but that was all being washed away by the volume of Don's commanding presence.
"Look, you're not here to be buddies or friends. You're here because you want information. Information that I have, and as soon as I give it to you, you can leave and go back to whatever it is you normally do," Don said exasperatedly.
"Right, right," Stephen said, bumbling around with the files from his briefcase. "This is where we're losing everything. The coding checks out, it fits perfectly into the pictures.."
"Wait," Don said. "You're using coding? People don't recognize numbers. Well, not everyone does. You're trying to set this up for the masses, not for only mathematically inclined individuals, right?"
Stephen nodded in answer to the question.
"Then why aren't you using pictures? Things people will recognize?" Don asked.
"We are!" Stephen defended. "We're using these pictures right here," he said, pointing to the different images on the sheet in front of him.
"Yes, that's where you're hiding the information, but it's the information itself that's the problem. You need to make it more recognizable. These need to be images inside of images, not numbers inside of images. Numbers are useless," Done explained.
Suddenly it all made since to the scientist. Of course not everyone thought like he did. Most people wouldn't be able to process the things his developed mind could process. They would need help. They would need more visual queues. They would need pictures. Instead of binary code that would spell out the intelligences, inside of the encoded images should be pictures of the actual files.
"Why didn't we think of this?" Stephen asked in a whisper.
"Because you were worried about the information, not how to make people remember it. That's where I come in. This is what I do. Well, this is what I used to do," Don said wistfully.
"And that's it? That's why I'm here?" Stephen asked.
"Unless you have any other questions, then yeah, that's why you came all the way here. Kind of pointless, if you ask me, but the government was never big on saving money anyway, so I guess it's to be expected." Don took a long draw off the cigarette he's just let, hacking out a harsh cough as he let the smoke flow free from his lungs.
"Damn," Stephen uttered. It seemed so simple. It was something that a child could have figured out. He and his team should have certainly been able to figure it out. But aside from their problems with subliminal image retention, there was one other thing that was bothering him from earlier in his conversation with the former advertising executing.
"You said that everything was taken from you. Was it…?" Stephen let his question hang in the air unfinished.
Don looked down contemplatively before speaking. "Don't trust them. That's all I'm saying. They'll do whatever they think they need to do to keep you in check. Just, for your families sake, and for your sake, don't trust them. Any of them."
Stephen walked out of the house silently, contemplating the words that had been spoken by the man with more experience dealing with the situation. Certainly his situation couldn't end up that way. The government surely couldn't be as evil and manipulative as Don had made them out to be. Draper must have made some mistakes. It had to be his fault, not the fault of the government that the older man had lost everything. And if Stephen told himself that enough, he might come to believe it. He couldn't deny, however, that he would have to be more watchful towards his superiors when it came to how he was handled. His eyes had been opened by the possibilities of what they were truly willing to do.
You guys are awesome. Peace.