The planetarium was almost empty. The small
crowds of the morning had been gone for a while and now only two couples and a
sleeping guy were beneath the dome, not really witnessing the lightshow that
had been made to teach people about stars, planets and all other astronomical
bodies. However, there were two other people in the room. They were there only
for a couple of minutes but enough for one of them to look at the massive Milky
Way for quite a while.
His name was non important. His service badge
had the number 954. The number was always assigned randomly, with no real
meaning. It was just a way for people to know something and, at the same time,
not knowing a single truth about the person they were in front of. He would
wear his badge everywhere when on duty and, on secret missions like these, he
would have it somewhere on him to pull out fast or throw away in an instant,
anything to live a bit longer in order to survive, step by step.
He had arrived too early at the meeting but he
had done so because it would have been too obvious if they had met on the
street or even in front of the planetarium. And if they had entered at the same
exact time, people would have noticed something else going on. So he just got
there earlier, his hotel being pretty close to that place, and had witnessed
most of the lightshow without a sound interrupting the narration, except maybe
the snore of the sleeping guy on a back row.
The agent sat down and waited. As he did that,
he remembered his childhood, when he asked several times for stickers that
lighted up in the dark in order to decorate his room. His mother tried to buy
him some but she gave up after a couple of outings. Besides, his dad was
against it the moment he knew of the kid’s request. The man declined to buy his
son anything, especially not when he was doing so poorly at school. 954 had to
repeat that grade the following year.
Stars were just things that had fascinated him
for a long time and they were also one of the things he had given up during
childhood. When he looked back at those days, he felt that maybe he hadn’t
really lived as a kid. His parents had always been so different and he was
trapped often in his discussions. It was especially hurtful when they blamed
him for things they hadn’t done in life, as he had been born very early in
their relationship. He eventually learned that they had married only because of
him. One of his grandparents told him, as if it was nothing.
The exchange went fast. Agent XDE had come a
long way for the information and she really didn’t feel like staying more than
needed in that dreadful city. It was a very strange thing but she had been born
in a city and hated every single urban landscape she had ever seen. This was
because the only good memories she had had taken place far from those places,
in nature, where animals lived and everything had a really nice feel of freedom
and excitement about it. It felt true.
She had landed her job just as she had come
out of college. She was a very brilliant student, who had been fortunate enough
to go to a very private and respected high school. She had done so many things
to earn people’s respect that it wasn’t a surprise when the government started
offering her jobs. Most of those jobs involved working on offices and she hated
the idea of being in a closed environment. It was her that proposed them to
work as an agent and they gladly complied.
Her training was done faster than most
recruits and she was sent to her first mission at the same age other girls are
trying to fit in college and find what their passion in life is. She didn’t
want their life and was successful in using everything she had in life in order
to progress faster than others and always be ahead, no matter the costs. She
had learned to be self-reliant and didn’t care at all about other people. Spies
exist to prevent evil to destroy common people but she didn’t care at all.
The adrenaline of her job was what kept her
going; from the moment she stepped in her first mission. She never had an issue
when asked if she could separate completely from her family. She even did it
before they asked her. XDE was assigned
as her code and it was a series of letters she had chosen for herself and
submitted them to her bosses. She didn’t care about receiving a “no” for an
answer and that was because she knew people were afraid of her. She liked that.
No one ever knew what her code name meant but
that was of little importance in the long run. The most important thing she had
to offer was her skills: she was fast, effective, silent and with an excellent
eye to predict how a scenario would play out. She would play all the possible
outcomes in her head and then try to move everything in order for her to get
favored. She was a very good manipulator, which explained how she entered the
museum without being seen and then out again, in a few minutes. She was one of
the best spies the world had ever seen.
The transaction was as follows: agent 954 was
seating on the front row, very close to the projector. The couples were on the
middle rows and the sleeping man on the back row. Agent XDE did not enter
through the main door but through the one used by maintenance crew and all
other people that worked in the planetarium and in the adjacent museum. She did
it silently and had previous knowledge the door was always covered in darkness
during one of those lightshows.
When 954 noticed her, he immediately knew who
she was. It wasn’t because she was obvious, but it was something about the way
she walked or the way she looked at him from the dark, for only a second. He
just knew that what he had to do was stand up and walk towards her side of the
dome room. Darkness would help the deal get done faster and so it was. When he
was very close to her, already covered by darkness, she grabbed his hand in a
grip, almost as he wanted to crush it.
Instead, she passed him a very small tube with
whatever his bosses had told him to collect. The woman didn’t say a word. He
just knew he had to pretend that he had decided to leave the show and she just
disappeared through the same door she had used when entering. The woman almost
flew away of the scene like a cat or some kind of incredibly silent creature.
In a matter of minutes, she was already grabbing her only suitcase and hopping
into a car for the airport.
Meanwhile, he walked slowly through the
planetarium’s exposition halls, watching the beautiful dioramas of how Humanity
would colonize Mars and other celestial bodies in the Solar System. He just
knew running away wasn’t the best way to do what he had to do. He had to play
it cool. So he walked slowly towards the cafeteria and then bought some coffee
there. He had in a table by a garden and then left walking as if nothing had
happened, towards his hotel.
The show ended inside the planetarium. The
couples left after realizing the lights were on. They didn’t say a word, just
walked to the exit in silence, as if they knew they had desecrated a place that
was not meant for horny younger people.
But the sleeping man remained there for a
little more. After all, he hadn’t really been sleeping at all. He had just seen
a very interesting exchange happened and he was well aware that many people
would pay a lot of money for the information that was now in his power.
