Foreign Nationals of Unusual Importance

by Dave Bryant

Briefing

“Mister Cookie Pusher. Come in.” Permanent Undersecretary Pin Stripes sat back in her high-backed button-tufted chair and pinned me with a gimlet eye. I edged into the generously proportioned and well-appointed office, caught between the euphoria lingering after my commissioning ceremony and an incipient case of nerves.

“Shut the door. Have a seat,” she instructed. Mechanically I obeyed, ending up on a fine but not overly comfortable visitor’s chair in front of a desk only slightly smaller than an aircraft carrier.

I endured her visual inspection, feeling as if she was examining every cell in my body, until she snorted and left off. “Don’t look so nervous, boy. You haven’t done anything—yet—to deserve getting burned to cinders, so relax.”

Easier said than done; Pin Stripes was a large woman with a large reputation. I wasn’t sure of her exact age, but I knew she was old enough to be my mother. As I understood it she’d started in the same position I was and had come up through the ranks to reach the title she held now, as high as any career FSO could rise. I’d heard a few awed whispered anecdotes of her tough-minded and hard-shelled methods of dealing with hot spots, war zones, misogynist dictators, and everything else a difficult and troubled world had thrown her way. A single baby diplomat wouldn’t even be a decent workout for a personality like that. Being ushered into her august presence had come as a surprise, and not an entirely pleasant one; normally initial briefings for new assignments were handled at a lower level.

“Bet you’re wondering why you’re here and not in a conference room somewhere,” she observed knowingly.

“Yes, ma’am.” It seemed best to limit my response to the minimum courtesy allowed.

“You drew the short straw, that’s why. And here it is.” She lifted a file jacket lying on her blotter and leaned forward to extend it toward me. Perforce I took it and turned it right-side up so I could look it over.

“‘Eloptic Machine’,” I read aloud. “That’s . . . rather colorful. More so than usual, I would think.”

Another snort endorsed my conclusions. “Someone didn’t follow procedure. Probably thought they were being clever. Sounds like it came off the list, but it didn’t. Don’t bother protesting. I already did. Came from the top, I’d say.”

“I see.” I did indeed. A newly assigned code name is supposed to be the first item on a master list of randomly generated word pairs, which then is struck from that list—the goal being to prevent shrewd guesses about the code-named program or operation by unfriendly (or even friendly) interested parties.

“You’re cleared for the whole compartment. I’ll warn you, it’s bigger than you think. Right now there are at least half a dozen sub-compartments. Could be more before too long, from the sound of it.” She pointed at the jacket I held. “That’s just the précis for the whole ball of wax.”

“Should I . . .”

“No, just read it here. I’ll wait.” She waved at the keyboard and other jackets littering the desk. Yes, she certainly had plenty of ways to occupy her time.

I pulled the stack of paper from the jacket and started reading.

 
“This is all verified?” I asked some while later in a shaken tone. The jacket and its papers lay half-forgotten in my hands.

“Course it is, or it wouldn’t be there.” The sharp tone chided me for my fatuity, but a sigh softened it. “Guess I can’t blame you. Does sound like something out of a storybook.”

“‘Interview and thereafter monitor a resident foreign national of unusual importance’,” I quoted my assignment offer from memory as I thumbed through the jacket’s contents again. “That would be this . . . Sunset Shimmer, I presume?”

“Got it in one.”

“Unusual doesn’t begin to describe this.” I replaced the stack in its jacket and put the whole package gingerly on the edge of the desk. “On the other hand, it certainly is both outside the usual and greater than the usual.” Just in time I bit my tongue on a sardonic comment about the writer’s half-witty play on words. For all I knew it had originated in this very office.

“You’re a sharp one.”

“As you say, ma’am.”

“You’ll go far, Mister Cook. If you don’t hang first.” But a gleam of amusement and maybe even respect lurked in the narrowed eyes. “The rest of it is in Secure Docs. Your pass will get you down there. Come back here when you’re finished.”

 
I signed out a batch of jackets at the counter in Secure Documents and took them directly to a small windowless office assigned to me—one of dozens opening off a maze of bare narrow corridors within the section—and read, or sometimes viewed or listened to, reams of material. When lunchtime rolled around, I signed everything back in, finished or not. After a hurried meal of indifferent quality in the canteen on the building’s mezzanine level, I returned my nose to the grindstone.

The more I learned, the more fantastic it all sounded, like something out of an adventure movie for teens. Still, for all the minutiae, there were gaping holes, often covered with a thin tissue of guesswork or nothing at all—at one point some wag even wrote “here be dragons”. By the time I finished, it was clear why someone was being sent to find out more; the situation seemed to be developing in several directions at once, and not slowly. The last jacket consisted of disconnected bits and pieces, recent additions not yet categorized and redistributed to appropriate sub-compartments.

After I turned that in, I returned to the cubby and sat, a little dazed. Part of my reaction was a sort of mental indigestion after absorbing so much information, but the rest was a mix of sheer wonder and honest fear. The vast potential for both good and ill that rested on such a tiny fulcrum was breathtaking; the recent affair dubbed the “Battle of the Bands” illustrated that clearly enough. I leaned my elbows on the cheap laminate desktop and rubbed my face with both hands. This called for a mature and experienced handler, not a thirtyish first-timer who wasn’t even a parent, let alone a parent of teens. Why in the world did they pick me to deal with it?

One elbow slipped, and I jerked upright again. I looked down at the remaining sheaf sitting on the desk, CVs and recognition photos scooted willy-nilly across the smooth melamine surface. A golden face wearing a shy but hopeful grin and surrounded by waves of bright red and yellow hair gazed back from one of the eight-by-ten glossies, the collar of an open leather jacket just visible at the bottom of the frame. A cyan arm and hand reached into the side of the shot and behind the head, index and second fingers extended together, rather than apart as one might expect for “bunny ears” or mock antennae. After a moment I recognized the gesture as representing a unicorn horn—an alicorn, a wisp of university memory insisted—instead. I couldn’t help a bemused smile.

Unbidden a fragment of lyric, part of the audio material I’d encountered, rolled through my mind.
 

I may not know what the future holds

But hear me when I say

That my past does not define me

’Cause my past is not today
 

I stood and gathered the papers and photos, then jogged them and put them back in their jacket.

 
Pin Stripes looked up, beckoned me in, and pointed at the door. After entering and closing the door, I settled into the same guest chair I’d occupied previously, rested the CV jacket on my lap, folded both hands on it, and returned her searching gaze calmly.

“Made up your mind?” she asked after several seconds. “Last chance to bow out.” She didn’t bother to point out that, if I did, my career was over before it started.

“Yes I have.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll do it.”

Author's Note:

Pin Stripes has been in the back of my mind for a while now. The general outlines of her personality and appearance were fairly well established, but I wasn’t sure what position she held until I started wrestling with this chapter. (That took some doing and several false starts, but I managed to figure it out in the end.) She and Rose Brass would rub each other the wrong way on first sighting—they’re far too similar for it to be otherwise. The biggest difference between them is that Rose is far more compassionate and easygoing.
   A jacket, by the way, is just a file folder with sides. It’s more secure (and a trifle more expensive) than a simple folder, better protecting the contents from prying eyes and reducing the chance of them spilling out, but less convenient, since the contents must be pulled completely out of the jacket for viewing.
   Chronological order: pre-contact 1 (overall 1)

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

"Eloptic"? ... Ah. Well, I learned a new word today.

...at one point some wag even wrote “here be dragons”.

For some reason, it was on a photo of a puppy.

Huh. They had Sunset bugged during the rooftop musical number? That or she added it to the Rainbooms' repertoire.

Great showcase of why Cook was chosen for this one. He may feel in over his head, but he has a combination of duty and mental flexibility that will see him through these exceedingly unusual diplomatic incidents.

[Dave Bryant]

8201182
I vaguely remembered the term “Hieronymus machine”, but try to avoid real-world names, both for people (given MLP naming conventions) and for other entities or objects. That left me with the phrase I ended up using.

I hadn’t thought of “here be dragons” scrawled on (or maybe typed under) an image of Spike. It works for me!

My assumption is that any song not otherwise impossible to fit is part of the Rainbooms’ repertoire. The chapter books establish that a surprising number of the songs in the featurettes are supposed to be Rainbooms songs—or other in-universe songs.
I put “My Past Is Not Today” on the playlist for the music festival covered in Lectern’s, but that’s much later in the year. At the time Cook is reading, it’s soon enough after the Battle of the Bands that no more recent intelligence has gone through the pipeline to Secure Docs. That was a pity, because I’d have preferred to use “Right There in Front of Me” or “Hope Shines Eternal”, either of which would have been a closer fit to Cook’s decision.

I always love your comments! You do an excellent job of divining precisely what I’m trying to do or to get at in my writing.

[livinthelife]

8201478
Ah, Hieronymus. He did come up with an entertainingly unusual bit of quackery, didn't he?

[Dave Bryant]

8226345
It is pretty bizarre—and entertaining! Perhaps even weirder was the way John Campbell took up the banner so enthusiastically, but then Campbell is a profoundly ambivalent figure, given his fundamental influence over the entire genré of science fiction during its rise to prominence.

[EchoWing]

For some reason, Pin Stripe brings to mind a more benevolent version of DC Comics' Amanda Waller.

[Dave Bryant]

8334654
I’m not familiar with that character, so I couldn’t say! But Pin Stripes is a pretty stock character in some ways, so I’m prepared to grant the similarity. One inspiration for her is the character called Control in Person of Interest.

[EchoWing]

8334689
Ah, I'm familiar with Control too. I can safely say that Pin Stripes comes across as far more benevolent than her, too, which is a good thing. I want government officials to do their jobs, but I also want them to think for themselves, and Pin Stripes doesn't strike me as the sort to follow in her inspiration's footsteps.

[Dave Bryant]

8334761
Never fear, we’re not done with her yet. Further deponent sayeth not.

[eventyraren]

You know I think you shod have called the operation the "Equestrian Girls", and later had that minister mistakenly call it the "Equestria girls" that wold explain the name of the movies.
I know this is not Canon but it is as good of an explanation fore the name as any.
grate story by the way. somehow I have always liked stories where an ordinary person somehow gets dragged in to an extra ordinary event, even if he is just the side kick or something I think I identified with him more than the hero.