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!!!!!