THE BLACK FEDORA



Kyle J Jaynes walked into Far East Café, where the note had specified to go. Once Kyle saw table six, it was as though he had seen a ghost. He didn’t know why, but he got the chills as though a millipede slowly crawled down his spine. Now he thought he was walking to his death or something worse.

Kyle finally got to the table, and what was only fifteen seconds felt like an hour. The mysterious man who had sent the note was wearing an ominous black fedora, but Kyle now why he had gotten the chills down his back.

“Hello, Mr. Jayne’s. I’ve been expecting you for a while. Why have you kept me waiting?” said the man with the black fedora.

“Who are you?” asked Kyle.

“I am a friend from a long time ago, yet I doubt that you would remember me, well with you traveling through the states and all. You know it was pretty hard tracking you down Kyle. You aren’t an easy man to find. I had agents looking for you and it’s like you weren’t even born. You were a good agent ant I think that proxy 889 did a good job of erasing you from all of our files,” said the man with the black fedora.

With Kyle knowing only a little bit of information about this man, he had to ask as many questions as he could before he started talking. Kyle just didn’t know the right questions to ask. Well that does make sense, he hasn’t done this in years and this would be different now that he has to talk down an agent.

“How did you find me?” Kyle asked.

“Well first I had to track down an old friend of yours –, “

“Proxy 878–, “


“Precisely, He was a real help to us because he thought that your files would come in handy, so he asked proxy 889 to give him a paper copy. We went to proxy 878 and asked him to give us the copy. As you can tell he did, so we read your files, and we estimated where you would be,”

“How could you have predicted that I would be here? I did everything I could to randomize where I went. I did all the right algorithms, procedures, and systems that no agent could ever think of, and I jumped around the states –I didn’t even go in a straight line– I went from Georgia to Washington and across the map again and again until I—no I’m not going to talk about that,”

Disregarding Kyle’s last statement the man with the black hat said “Don’t forget, Kyle, I was an agent too and a good one at that. I couldn’t handle all of the stress and I felt like leaving also and I did algorithms to find a way out of this madness. I didn’t know where to go but I knew if I left I would have to go through everything you did and getting out would be more work than staying. I know that you had a dilemma just like that when you wanted to leave and you must have had a bad time leaving—,“

“It’s not that I chose to leave. I was forced to leave and I didn’t know what to do. I had a predicament. I had to either fake my own death or murder my family by hand and go to jail,” Kyle said tearing up.

The waitress had come to their table and gave them their drinks, and she saw Kyle and had a very confused look on her face. And Kyle knew she was familiar and he didn’t say anything because he already had to deal with the agent at the table. The waitress walked away shaking her head swiftly.

“What was that all about?” said the mysterious man.

“She must have had something go wrong in the kitchen and she didn’t want to go back. Don’t worry about it,” said Kyle.

“Well there must be something wrong, but you’re right, I shouldn’t worry about it. Now back to the matter at hand—,”

“Let’s get back to business. How –,”

“I’m sorry but I’m talking you down not vice versa. Ok I’m a good agent not a stupid one. You won’t be pulling the wool over my eyes today, and I won’t let that happen again. I won’t ever be tricked again like that,” said the mysterious man.

“Won’t let what happen again. What happened to you? Why did you bring that up?” said Kyle.

If this keeps up he will tell me everything I need to know, Kyle thought.

“Well what happened is that—wait you wanted all of this to happen didn’t you, you think I’ll spill the beans just like that well you are certainly smart. You see an opening and you strike. I see why your caliber is so high. Well I guess since I already started I can’t exactly stop. The reason I thought about leaving came about when I tried to get a high class rogue agent to come back. He ended up forcing me to join him and take over the world but my personal A.I. (artificial intelligence) chip in my brain stem reminded me of my mission and what I had to do. After that I felt like I wasn’t cut out for this job any more but my chip reminded me that all I have is the agency and that I had no home. Kyle to tell you the truth I’m a stray dog without a family. You probably don’t know what an A.I. chip is so let me explain, since you left head office (mark 08) things have changed. Many agents have done like you but only at the wrong time and they didn’t have as much experience to leave without a trace, like you,” the man with the black fedora said.