Secret Agent Retirement

It is three hours, 27 minutes and eight seconds to secret agent retirement. It has been a long, hard road and I am glad to be out of here. I will miss nothing about Headquarters since the soundproof office barriers are still non functional and I doubt they will miss me, since I sit on the way to the bathroom and am easily ignored. The world continues to spin in my absence and there is yet another crisis to deal with – some wild fires in California that are testing Schwarzenegger’s acting skills to the max. I suspect The Secret Agency will fair fine without their best undercover spy yet to date.

I no longer have to be in disguise and I no longer have to take the ineptness of government.

On the flip side, I’ve also officially finished medical school, which is a scary thought in and of itself. I will actually have to work for a living now.

As I make my way back west, I reflect on this strange journey. At least I’ve managed to fix those Ruby Red Slippers.

So, for the last time, this is Agent 69, Top Secret Dodo, saying over and out.

Top Top Secret Agent Dodo

The ultimate crowning glory to any secret agent's career is to be acknowledged by none other than the Top Top Secret Agent herself, Julie Gerberding. So I get invited one day to a reception, feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, thinking that this is my big moment to put my name on the map.

Several things went wrong that day. First, Agent 69 was in perpetual disguise as a medical student. If my cubicle wasn't on the way to the bathroom, nobody would know of my existence. So as people make their way to go pee, they look into my cubicle and sometimes I say hi, as I scurry to change the window on my computer to display an excel spreadsheet with numbers, a file I have chosen to name "Dummy". In keeping with my disguise, I had worn a pair of slacks with a T-shirt. The disguise was complete with a hoody to ward off indoor chill. With a ponytail riding high on my head, I could very easily pass off for a fourteen-year-old, which is also part of the disguise. How was I even going to make a dent in the map?

Second, in all my excitement, I had expended all my energy into this Dummy project that I forgot about the Secret Agent engagement. At 4:15, I was still busy, inputting data, when the Secret Agent Alarm goes off. Secret Agent engagement was at 5 and I hadn't gone out of disguise yet, let alone have a single ironed shirt in my closet! At 4:30, I make it back and whip on a pair of slacks and a shirt that is wrinkle proof (made especially for secret agents that also doubles up as a bullet-proof vest) and headed to meet Top Top Secret Agent.

I arrive with 2 minutes to spare and immediately noticed the large table filled with yummy goodies in the middle of the reception hall. As is my custom, I make a beeline for the food, wondering why no one has attacked the spinach dip or the fancy cheeses. Having been deprived of lunch due to the extreme work load, I was famished! As I helped myself to the green, stinky cheese, I got plenty of weird stares from the room chock full of PhDieties and MDieties. With a mouthful of celery sticks, I smile at them. Then, this burly man with glasses goes up to the microphone and says:

"Everyone, Dr Gerberding is running a little late, so why don't you help yourselves to the food."

And like a pack of hyenas, the whole obedient, well trained bunch of government pets descend on me and the food table like there was no tomorrow. As I scamper from underneath all of them, I said to myself that at least I got first dibs at the stinky cheese.

As conversations crescendo and people buzz about how important their jobs are, I remember speaking to another medical student secret agent in disguise, whose role is somehow defined as something more important than mine just because he gets the privilege of spending an entire year at Headquarters shuffling papers and doing internet research, about how pointless some of this 'research' was, taking for example the surveillance they were doing on Lyme disease in New York, which became a reportable disease in 1997, just like pertussis is reportable.

Lyme disease, named for Lyme, Connecticut, is something one catches from a tick. It's a bacteria that infects the tick and subsequently infects humans as the tick takes a blood meal, supplied by the human, the accidental food source, the primary being deer, but the tick doesn't care. Just as long as it gets to live, it is not picky if its food source is a deer, a human or a dog. If you have warm blood, you're the meal d'jour. Since 1997, the incidence of this disease has increased. No duh, right? If you make it mandatory to report Lyme's, then you wonder why the incidence has gone up but instead of saying: the incidence has gone up because people had to report it, they say that the incidence has gone up because there is more Lyme disease and this is becoming a public health nightmare. Breed fear and panic, the best way to get people to do something. And here is where I come in. After all this surveillance, in which we are so convinced that more and more people are getting Lyme's and the entire thing will get out of control in the year 2020, what are we going to do about it? Why have we spent, oh, 6 million tax payer dollars on Lyme surveillance? It's not like we are going to kill off all the ticks in New York and the surrounding area. Oh, they say, we can warn people to wear Deet and don on protective clothing to prevent tick bites and avoid tick infested areas especially in the months of May to August. Couldn't we have done that without spending 6 million dollars on something we know exists in that corner of the world since the beginning of time? And exactly how many people die from Lyme disease and its complications? Something like 0.0000000001%. These are the very same people who say we are spending too much on superfluous things such as fighting wars on other people's turf. Lyme's surveillance is very much similar to Asthma surveillance and combating air pollution. Compare this with surveillance and research on some superbug like Ebola, whose kill rate is 100%, and then you can appreciate that some things just demand more attention and funding. If I was the government and I had only $100 to spend, I would give 100% of it to someone studying Ebola rather than someone studying asthma or air pollution or Lyme disease. But because the federal government is not communist and cannot shut the whiners up, everyone has something important they want to study and they will cry like a little baby in the middle of the living room floor if the Parent doesn't give them what they want. Julie Gerberding's mission is to concentrate money on things that demand more attention. To this end, the asthma/Lyme's/Air pollution/people studying why people choose to overdose on prescription medications people are not very fond of her. To them, she has ruined science and the credibility of the CDC because she chose to run it like UPS.

On the back drop of this conversation, I meet Top Top Secret Agent. She walks in with her pink blazer and heads directly for me, extends her hand and says:

"Hello."

My celery is still stuck in between my teeth but I introduce myself.

"Hi Dr Gerberding, my name is Agent 69." A big smile is planted across my face. Gerberding smiles back and pauses, as if waiting for something miraculous to plop out of my mouth.
"You have to tell me which division you work for."
"Oh," I say. "Air pollution and respiratory health."

I see her smile begin to fade a little at the corner.
No, no! But really, I wish I was assigned to the Special Pathogens Branch because Ebola, Ebola is my friend!

But all that came out was my Center affiliation, National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH), of which my branch is a part.

"Ah," Top Top Secret Agent says. "There will be a meeting in Congress about Climate Change next week."
"Ah," I say back and because I don't really believe that Al Gore had won the Nobel Prize for his work on Climate Change, a topic I have great skepticism for, I reserve my skepticism for when it won't get me into trouble.

I am sure that in my attempts at making it onto the map, I had promptly ungracefully fallen right off and by the time Julie Gerberding boards her corporate jet for Angola, Africa, Agent 69 would be but a small spec of dust on her fancy pink blazer that she has just brushed off.

Spies Like Me

Out of absolute pure boredom one day, I decided to send out feelers to see if there were any other spies like me. I couldn't possibly be the only Top Secret Dodo*.

My intelligence sources tell me that a new batch of secret agents were recently dispatched to their posts out in Cube Land, where they have sworn to loose life and limb for the Secret Agent cause. Time for a secret agent rendezvous.

We meet in disguise at a local bar. I pretend I am a medical student and they pretend they are veterinary students, sent out to fight and defeat the Pox virus. Already, they sound more secret agent-ly then me and my assignment to end world asthma and curb air pollution, two seemingly pointless causes. Pox virus, at least, has a face.

We do the secret agent handshake, ruffle our hair, sit down over stale ale, tap beer and crown royal with seven-up, my sissy drink of choice, and begin to exchange tales. Turns out that they shuffle paper intensely as well and do a lot of internet research.

Male Secret Agent had recently been called out to the field in Colorado, where he was sent to investigate an outbreak.

"What happened there?" I asked, just feeling for clues to gauge whether or not I should send out an SOS and evacuate family there.
"Crypto outbreak," he replied.

He meant Cryptosporidia, a protozoan, as opposed to Cryptococcus, a fungus. Both are equally nasty and potentially fatal if you have no natural body defense. The protozoan causes diarrhea. Male Secret Agent was sent as a warm body, someone who would do the leg work of cold calling residents of the Colorado community to see if they would participate in government research. If anyone has had the pleasure of being solicited by an insurance plan or to purchase a new, state-of-the-art love seat, you would know that such calls are a pain in the rear and would do anything or say anything to get the person to never call again. Fortunately, government research is exempt from those "no call lists", but not quite exempt from the say-anything-and-do-anything-to-get-the-person-never-to-call-again bit. So, naturally, for every 1 caller that Male Secret Agent persuades to participate, he has to make something like 400 phone calls.

Crypto can be acquired several ways. Most normal people get it from drinking contaminated water or not washing hands. Clusters of cases can happen at day care centers as well as nursing homes. It has been a rising trend to acquire this parasite sexually.

Since this is a zoonotic (thing animals give to humans) parasite that invade farm animals like cattle, goats and turkeys, these outbreaks are also of concern to the veterinarians. I am told that most human disease are ones that humans give to humans, although in the back country of places like West Virginia, it's anyone's guess how they acquire crypto.

So, Male Secret Agent's task was to survey people. He tells of his 401st phone call where he finally persuades grandma to participate in research. After making sure that she hasn't had diarrhea, he had to ask a series of questions that begin something like this:

"Are you sexually active?" Yes, or sometimes he gets I wish or Are you asking me out, honey?
The next question was: "Do you practice rimming or anal sex?"

And then he has to go ahead and explain to grandma what 'rimming' is with a straight face. I just about died laughing.

He also had to solicit participants in the age group of 5-11 years. This is what he typically says after he introduces himself:

"Are there children in the household between the ages of 5-11 years?" Sometimes he gets real cordial answers. Other times, he would have his ears cussed out in several different ways and in several different languages, all calling him variations of "pervert" and "child molester".

He still has many more calls to make now that he is back at headquarters. So far, they've recruited like 180 people. My math is not too good but I can imagine that he has had to call a shit load of people, talk to several hundred grandmas about rimming and anal sex, to get those 180. I tell Male Secret Agent that I do not envy him. He was about to recruit me to join him in the land of crypto. I am extremely happy in asthma land, I say.

I offered to lend him those Ruby Reds once they get fixed and promised to meet up again for the second secret agent conference.


* I forgot to give credit where credit is due and thank StarSahota for coining this one.

The Secret Agent Dark Hole

Life back at headquarters is settling into routine. Everyday, I fill my coffee mug, get into the secret agent bat mobile, roll it into the office, take the secret agent entrance where a door opens on retinal scanning, get shoved into a tube which scuttles me into my cube, equipped with sound-proof barrier that is currently defective and, as a result, I hear every intimate conversation that happens in Cube Land. This is part of my secret agent training.

First order of business: check email. Sometimes this takes the whole morning. When someone walks past my cube, I shuffle papers intensely. Everyone in Cube Land thinks I am hard at work.

At about 11:30 am, I go for a coffee/bathroom break. At noon, I am back and I google search important things to do with government business. One time, it was Atlanta tepas restaurants. At around 12:15, I go for lunch. Sometimes, it is not until 2, oh 2:30-ish that I make it back.

When I get back, I shuffle more papers. Very busy.

At 3, I pause for another coffee/bathroom break.

Back in my cube. Google research moviefone.

At 4:30, I get ready to pack up to be out by 5.

Tomorrow, it starts all over again. Ruby Reds are still malfunctioning.

The next morning, I get an email from PhD Barbara. There is a report that needed to be edited for public viewing. It is a speech she has to give about the bunch of morons that have died in West Virginia. I am reading this report and for a PhD, she has stupendously bad grammar. Then I came across this sentence: "Due to the overwhelming amounts of evidence of unnecessary deaths, CDC was invited...."

I must have read that sentence like 10 times. All the CDC language I have read so far never mentions "overwhelming" and "unnecessary". In fact, all CDC language is down right boring, with no intonation or personal overtones. I compose my edits. In my head, I am tortuously searching for words to tell her that she is an idiot without telling her that she is an idiot, for this is also CDC language. Every sentence written in email, every sentence written in reports, most sentences spoken in secret agent land has double meaning.

So I start: I don't know if the word 'unnecessary' could not be replaced with 'unintentional'..... So far so good.
...with the intention of keeping the meaning of your sentence....
Not bad.
...without adding...
Okay.
...a judgment....modality to your point.

Oh my god, I've officially crossed over to the dark side. I have become a CDC cyborg.
Before I hit "send", I read and re-read this sentence, painfully, over and over. Should I not send it and let her get her ass ripped apart by someone other than the Bachelor's in English Literature? Should I send it and risk my ass getting ripped apart? Decisions, decisions.

I agonized and then hit "send". Ah hell, either way, I'm fucked.

She replies with the defensive barriers I know her to have with her at all times. She got it from this source and that source and la de da.

Now I'm pretty sure I'm fucked.

And before it was time to go home, I get an email from PhD Barbara's supervisor. Holy crap, I'm fucked.

This is what he says: "CDC language, best exemplified by MMWR, is objective and cold. Usually it sounds like it could be generated by a clever machine. It's supposed to demonstrate that we are free of bias. So I'd say that the expectation is that we never use words like "overwhelming" or "unnecessary" except in editorials."

WHHOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEE! I'm not fucked, she's fucked!!!!!