groovygamers.com

After talking with Dave Sylvia calls Jack Donaldson.  The phone rings several times before it's answered, "Hello?"

"Hello, Jack?  It's Sylvia.  Sorry.  Am I interrupting something?"

"Just trying to figure out the entertainment center.  What's up?"

Long pause.  Sylvia, who's come to think of Jack in terms of his relationship to Mitzi and Carolyn and therefore kind of a family figure, gives him some sass.  "Okay.  You know those round, shiny things?  Those are DVD's.  There's like sound and moving picture on them.  I don't want you to be afraid or anything when it starts up, but push the button marked 'eject' on the DVD player. . . ."

"Wow!, sound and pictures?  In my day we got one or the other, not both.  And we had to walk up hill to get that."  He chuckles some, "Okay smart-alec, to what do I owe the pleasure of your charm and abuse?"

Sylvia cringes a little.  She's not sure how this is going to go over.  "Do you know anything about breaking and entering?"

"Probably more then a law-abiding guy ought to, what do you need to know?"

"How do you disable a security system?"  And because that's too broad a question, she specifies.  "Probably standard suburban home specs.  We're going to assume second-floor entry and that at least one occupant will be home and sleeping."

"If you can, get the model number for the system.  There are plenty of places on the internet with specs.  Then you figure out how to disable it.  If you plan to enter the room of the target, not likely a motion sensor, but probably window sensors.  Again, check the internet for instructions on bypassing them."

Long pause.  Now for the even more incriminating question.  "What do you know about interrogation?"

"Lots.  I've been interrogated plenty of times.  Fear is the thing you want to tap into.  Some fear, once you have them scared you're more likely to talk.  It may not be scared for themselves, maybe they're afriad you'll do something to someone else.  It's not like in the movies where they beat the truth out of people, that almost never works except for people of little character, and if they have that little character you can probably buy what you want from them easier.  The key elements are to know your subject, the more the better.  If you know a secret, something they'd rather not have get out, then you cab try and use that as your wedge."

There is a pause, "Of course the best form of interrogation is usually sex.  It's been the preferred method of soft interrogstion for a long time, but I'm not encouraging you to have sex.  Maybe you can use your powers to present a situation in which the subject might be willing to talk."

"Like what?" Sylvia asks, trying to imagine Logan Darklighter's vulnerabilities.  Former geek, now school president, turned down a date with Lucy. . . .  He was looking for an older woman, wasn't he?

"This sort of goes back to the know your target thing.  Is he a closet homosexual, does he have a fetish, is he driven mad by a particular girl, or guy.  Find out what makes the target tick, and then use your powers to exploit those weaknesses."

She takes a breath, thinking.  This could set their plan back a few weeks.  "Okay.  So . . . what do you know about surveillance?  Especially in a high school where everyone's at least laid eyes once or twice on everyone else?"

"Ah, that's tricky.  If you can get other people to do it for you, that's good.  Also if you think you can bug the target, that's always good.  Listen in on them, get some info that way.  School is a regimented place, and people being somewhere they normally aren't draws attention, so following someone could be tough, but it's high school so they may not notice.  I'm trying to mix espionage experience and apply it to ahigh school, so I'm not sure how much of it will fit."

Sylvia smiles into the phone.  "So what do you know about electronic surveillance?  Our gadget guy transferred."

"Find another one.  As a matter of fact, start cultivating your connections now.  The more contacts you have now the better off you'll be in the future.  I know what the tech guys I work with tewll me, and then I forget it the next second."

"Find another one?"  Jack must have misunderstood.  MIT is farther east.  She sighs.  "Yeah, okay.  I'll see what I can do about that."

She feels uncertain suddenly.  "What's the difference between a hero and a villain?"

"Ask a hundred people, get a hundred answers.  That's a personal question that only you can answer.  The fact that you're asking it, means you have doubts about something.  Heroes will sometimes have to do some not so nice things to save the day, that's something that will never change.  It's the reason there is a struggle between good and evil."

Alone in her room with the phone, Sylvia doesn't have to keep the evidence of her troubled thoughts off her face.  "What's the worst thing you've ever done?"

There is a long pause.  "That's not something we should talk about over the phone, if at all."  Jack raises his voice "THERE MIGHT BE PEOPLE LISTENING, UNCLE SAM."  He lowers his voice again, "If you want to talk, to unload, I can listen.  I can't promise the best advice, but I can certainly listen."

Whoa.  Jack is nuts.  Sylvia files that away for future reference.  "It's just--I've been doing some reading.  Ethics, metaphysics, psychology, that kind of thing.  Like, if you commit a crime, you should expect the police to come after you and put you away.  But what if it goes beyond crime?  What if it's more like war?  Should you expect mercy?  Do you deserve mercy?  At what point is it okay to break the law to address a crime?  How bad can you be before you go over to the dark side?  At what point should you stop?"

Questions.  She's got nothing but questions for Jack tonight.

"If you're breaking the law, you should expect to get in trouble.  You have to decide if what you're doing is worth the trouble.  They have a saying, 'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime'  It applies to heroes too.  If you do something criminal you should expect to get arrested and charged.  If you don't, then the system obviously considers what you did acceptable to the end result.  The legal system is supposed to be there to protect everyone equally, but it can't.  It's there to fix things when no other recourse is available.  Well, it can't do that either.  That's where we come in.  We are proactive, we take the fight to the enemy.  We might not be aware of who the enemy is until after they've already committed a crime, but from then on we're on them.  We break and enter, steal documents, illegally wire tap, commit assault, and sometimes worse.  A friend once told me it's all an elaborate math problem.  If what we do is less than what we keep from happening then good equals true.  That is unless you're a Paragon, in which case you never do wrong and you let the bad guys walk away if you can't get them the legal way."

"Unless you're a what?"  She must have missed this bit of jargon in session.

"A Paragon.  Think Boy Scout, to the bone, and you have an idea of what a Paragon is."

"The way you say it, it sounds like a brand name.  You mean, like, Paragon(TM) or just like, 'That guy, he's such a paragon'?"

"Well, it's from an old comic book that was popular when I was a kid.  It's like Klenex, it's a term that's common usage.  Well, common usage for old guys I guess."

The urge to sass Jack kicks in again.  She wants to say something like "Wow, they had color printing back then?" but holds her tongue.  Instead she says, "I'm no Paragon.  I'm thinking you can only afford to be a Paragon if you're faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive, you know?  You'd have to have the strength to back up your moral uprightness."  She hears a grim note in her own voice.  "We're going to have to fight a little dirty, or we're always going to be getting the crap kicked out of us by people who are less determined to be good guys."

"Welcome to the wonderful world of modern day super heroes."

"Pictures and sound huh?"

"All that and microwave popcorn," Sylvia says.  Then she can no longer restrain herself.  "You know the microwave?  No metal.  Push button.  Make hot?"

"Sweet-heart, I remember when they were called Radar Ranges."

"Radar," she almost blurts.  "You mean you weren't afraid Uncle Sam was tracking you through your kitchen appliances?"  But that's the soft part.

The loud part goes, "Well, thanks, Jack.  You've been a big help."  She feels a pang of worry.  "You won't get in trouble if we do, will you?"

Jack raises his voice as well, "I have plausible deniability.  Thanks for the call strange woman that I've never talked to before in my life."

"Good night, Jack," she says, and hangs up.  Surveillance.  She thinks about surveillance for the rest of the night.