The Lament of Rowland Caldwell Delay2
I could have been FBI. But I had to be something different, something trendier, something cutting edge. Uncle Lou Erskine, who was FBI, warned me, but I didn't listen. I had to be GSA.
Everybody knows what FBI special agents do, even the flakey ones like Fox (a waste of talent) but nobody knows what GS agents do, and we're forbidden to tell them. My relatives think I sit at a desk. They have no idea I spend my days running down these lost-soul mutants who look normal enough, but aren't! Just when you get close enough to capture them, WHAM! One of them might throw a bolt of electricity at you or their eyes might turn orange and they'll growl! Sometimes I feel like a zookeeper chasing escaped exhibits.
Most of them believe that some bizarre PhD named Adam Kane is their savior, and will send them safely off into something called the Underground. Once we have them captured, and they start running their mouths about how horrible we are for rounding them up because they're "different", they usually start blathering on about this Adam.
We straighten them out immediately. Boy, are they ever surprised when we tell them Adam used to work at Genomex and probably is the reason why they are as messed up as they are, and if he gets his hands on them, he'll probably perform one of his perverted "treatments" to "fix" their DNA. He makes the women take off most of their clothes for these "treatments", too. Then we ask them if they've ever heard from any of their friends who went into this Underground of Adam's. No one ever has.
This part isn't such bad work. We only pod up the ones who are crazy, raving fools, or who are medically so far gone no one has a treatment for them yet.
The bad part is reporting on what we've done. My boss is a humorless creep who is odder and odder looking than any of these mutants. He has white hair! White hair! Nobody thinks it's really his. The texture and length tends to change suddenly. You can't see his eyes well behind those tinted lenses, but he doesn't miss a thing.
I have to walk around all day with something in my ear so he can tell me anytime he catches me make a mistake! We all do. He's always watching and listening. He even eavesdrops on our lunches! On nice days, a bunch of us eat out by the lake, and we found out the hard way that the picnic tables are wired!
Then there are the clothes. Okay, it could be worse. The women have to wear outfits that make them look like a fashion show from an eastern European country in the middle of the Cold War, mannish bland clothes fit for members of the proletariat. Really ugly, unflattering stuff. Any day now, I expect the female GS agents to mutiny over their "look".
Mr Humorless Creepy makes all of the GSA guys shop out of the same catalogue! That's why we all look alike, even if our faces are very different. It's not true that we wear each other's clothes like a bunch of teenage-girls, it's just that there aren't that many styles of raincoats in that catalogue.
Some of my fellow agents are mutants themselves. Most of them are okay. I guess mutants are like any other group of people that way. But some of them, like that harridan-in-training Michelle Bigelow, are just insufferable. "I've got powers and YOU don't." What an attitude. The mutants like this are impossible to work with. Only Mr Humorless Creepy was sorry see her go, and that's only because he had cooked up some scheme to infiltrate her into Adam's rumored Zen Hole in the Ground. I was so happy the day Bigelow slipped her leash I got a bunch of the guys together after work and we went out and partied! Bigelow was so full of herself we all hated her.
Lately a new guy has been involved in our work. Dr Ken Harrison. We cannot decide if he's an MD or a PhD botanist. He doesn't seem sure himself. He's really slimy, He grows dozens of carnivorous plants in his office windows, and he talks to them. We think they have names. Could I make that up?
There's a rumor among the GS guys on the overnight watch that Mr Humorless Creepy has a girlfriend! I think they're messing with our minds on that one. Who would put up with that?
Got to go, slap on the boring, dull raincoat, and pack some weapons. There's a report of Adam and his super-powered freaks at a noisy club. Adam's about thirty years older than anyone else there, so he sticks out and gets noticed. We probably won't catch them; we never come close, but every time there's a report, off we go. I think Adam does this to taunt Mr Humorless Creepy, and to ruin his evenings.