Writing Prompt: NSA
Prompt: A friend of yours from NSA calls. She says that just for an hour she will let you listen to the conversations of any two people in the world. Whose conversations do you listen to and what do they say?
It is a Friday night. Out protagonist is standing in her flat, having just realised she missed lunch and is staring around her as if expecting for the food to jump out from behind the furniture, where it’s clearly hiding.
She is just about to launch a full investigation into the missing macaroni when the phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Hey, how you doin’?
“Who’s this?”
“Jessica.”
“Jessica who?
“Your friend Jessica.”
“I don’t have a friend called Jessica.”
“Come ooon, it’s Jessie.” Silence. “Jessie from the NSA.”
The silence gets uncomfortable.
“You know. Messy Jessie.”
“Jessie-from-3rd-grade?”
“Yeah!”
“Jessie-didn’t-invite-me-to-her-birthday-and-told-people-I–was-weird Jessie?”
“Well, you were a little wei-”
“Jessie-haven’t-talked-to-her-in-20yrs, Jessie?”
“..18 yrs if you wanna be exact about it.”
“How d’you get my number, Jessie?”
“I work in NSA.”
The confused and highly irritable recipient of this call stops and wonders to herself why she hasn’t hung up yet. She doesn’t owe the NSA any money, as far as she knows, though she wouldn’t be surprised with how the economy is doing these days... I mean, have you heard about the.. deficit and you know... China and like..cow farts or something? Whatever, the point is Jessica’s a stupid name and She (our protagonist) is still bitter about that birthday. And more importantly about missing the cake.
“Are you about to ask me to save the world?” She asks.
“Why?”
Shrugs: “Dunno, I've just always wanted to do that.”
“Yeah, no, listen. I’m at work and I’ve got this thing here, like a” Jessie-with-the-stupid-name hesitates, “like a surveillance device. It lets me like find people and listen to them and stuff, it’s pretty cool...”
“That sounds illegal.”
“Well, it’s not! I mean, I haven’t seen the paperwork but my boss said it’s fine. Old people can’t lie, right?”
“Naturally,” the call recipient (let’s call her Samosa) says, trying not to think of birthday cake.
“Anyway, so I have it to use for like an hour but I couldn’t decide who I should listen to. Thought you might have some ideas.”
“Ok,” Samosa intones distracted, whilst rummaging through her fridge (“I’m sure I had frosting in a tub here somewhere”)
“So. d’you wanna help me?”
“Help you what?”
“Help me pick someone.”
“For what?” Samosa dips her finger experimentally in a container of Taramasalata. Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.
“TO LISTEN TO!”
“What? Oh yeah, spy stuff, all creepy like, I’m with you.”
“So, who would you pick?”
“Why’d you pick me?”
“What do you mean?” Jessie-the-creeper-from-NSA says super innocently totally not knowing what you mean, uhm excuse me pls.
“Why did you call me for this creepy assignment?”
Hello, it’s me, the Silence from earlier rejoining the conversation. I brought crickets this time.
“You not made any friends since the 3rd grade?” Samosa says as she licks her finger, closing the fridge door with a swing of her bum.
“N-no, it’s just...”
“What, they hate you?” Samosa tries not sound too hopeful.
“No.” Shame trickles into that syllable, as palpable as the twist of lemon in a can of Pepsi Max.
“What then, creeper?”
“They … probably wouldn’t let me.”
“What?”
“You know, invasion of privacy etcetc. They’d try and talk me out of it.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Samosa, who is very smart indeed and is just having a quick mental rundown of all questionable decisions she‘s made in her life, nods: “Sure, that tracks.”
“Right, so who do we start with?”
“I dunno, Brad Pitt?”
“Eh,” Jessica-with-the-morally-righteous-friends shrugs. “There’s like five channels on tv following him around already.”
“Impressive. You’d think they’d run out of angles after 4.”
“What about an ex-boyfriend?”
“Whose?”
“Yours?” Jessie suggests.
“I don’t have any ex boyfriends.”
“... seriously?”
“Yeh, I’m still dating all of them. Some don’t know about it, but whatever. No relationship’s perfect.”
“Oh, only some don’t know about it?”
“Yeah, the others are happy keeping it a part-time gig. I make shifts, it’s all good. Very efficient.”
“Uhm. Ok. That’s … sane.”
“You wanna call someone from school?” Samosa goes casually, as she sits herself in front of the tv and starts looking for one of those Brad Pitt channels.
“You think?”
“Well you called me, you clearly have some unresolved issues.”
Jessica-with-the-unresolved-issues decides to side-step this ghastly insinuation and says with some forced enthusiasm:
“Yeah, I guess that could be fun. Check up on someone we’ve not seen in forever, that would be cool.”
“Do they not give you Facebook in the NSA?” Samosa mumbles. In her experince most people use their free time to re-enact their tweets and dreamcast movies based on their lives, so she seems unenthused by the prospect of spying on them. We did not foresee this when we started this narrative. Let’s move swiftly past the awkwardness.
“What about... Jenna Carraldi?” suggests Jessie-from-20yrs-ago.
“Who?”
“Complained about everything, refused to eat lunch... said you made her sick on purpose when you shared your glutenous dessert with her.“
“Jenna Canovan. She’d dead.”
“She’s what?!”
“Yeah, she moved to Tuscany to wear short dresses and pick berries or something.”
“And?”
“And spends half her time staring pensively into the distance. She’s like a cheap Monica Bellucci remake.”
“So she’s not dead?”
“She’s as good as,” Samosa mumbles. ”No one’s watching that movie.”
At this point Samosa is starting to sound a little distracted – she's only found two of the Brad Pitt channels so far. The 1st is actually dedicated to tracking all women who may or may not have made eye-contact with him through the years. The 2nd one just shows 24/7 re-runs of Fight Club. I am Jack’s disappointment.
“Alright, not her. How about Bobby Harris?”
“He’s got meditative yoga tonight, you won’t get anything.”
“What? You kept in touch with him?”
“Yeah, he’s part-time partner #3 – I get him Tuesdays and Sundays.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope, ran into him last May at the playground around the corner.”
“Ew, what’s a grown ass man doing on a playground?”
“He was there with his kids.”
“Wh- excuse me? And you’re dating him?”
“Tuesdays and Sundays.”
Jessica-from-technically-18yrs-ago needs a second to decide if she heard right. You know like, what the actual hell kind of thing.
“Is he married?”
“Divorced.”
“Because of you?”
“Nah, he told his wife he was gay like two months before we ran into each other.”
“But … you’re a girl.”
“Yah.”
“So... is he lying about being gay?”
“Why?”
“Because... gay men like men,” she says suddenly unsure if that’s true.
“I think that’s racist.”
Brad Pitt channel number 3 is showing workouts designed to give you Tyler Durden’s abbs. Samosa is disappointed to discover none of these exercises involve inhaling birthday cake of any kind. Sigh.
“Fine. Who do you wanna pick?”
Samosa, whose brain is like a scimitar cutting through you-can't-believe-it's-not-butter, says:
“Alex Hruska.”
“Hm. She’s gone back to the Czech Republic I think.”
“So. You tellin’ me you can’t find her?”
“Of course I can, but she’d be speaking Czech.”
“I know.”
“... I don’t speak Czech.”
“Neither do I.” Samosa is struggling to understand what Jessica-with-the-stupid-name's point is.
“How will we know what she’s saying?”
“I don’t get what people what people are talking about most of the time” Samosa says unconcerned. “At least listening to Czech’s funny.”
“Uhm...”
“Hey, Jessica.”
“What?”
“What’s channel number 5?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Brad Pitt channels. I just found number 4 – looks like a phone camera pointed at his house.”
“No no, that’s Nicolas Cage’s house. But he sometimes comes out on the lawn and does an impression of Brad Pitt in Snatch. It’s pretty great.”
“Jessica, you’ve just made me the happiest woman on earth.”
“Glad I could help, weirdo.”
“Ran outta channels though – what was 5?”
“Oh, it’s like regular HBO but every actor’s face has been CGI-ed to look like Brad Pitt.”
“Shit, how do I get that?”
“Special NSA clearance, sorry.”
“Damn, you got all the toys.”
“Hey, Sammy?”
“What’s up?”
Pause.
“My hour’s up,” Jessie-with-all-the-toys says.
“Your magic eavesdropping hour?”
“Yeah.”
They stay quiet for a second. Samosa is holding the remote control and staring at static as the silence stretches on.
"So what now?”
“Ehm. Wanna go get some cake or something?”
Samosa grins.
“Now we’re talkin’.”