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IN AN OFFICE, MUCH like all offices around the world, a man sat at a desk, trying to make the most vital decision of the day, what to have for lunch when a phone on his desk rang. He sat frozen, staring at the red phone with no buttons, only a single ominous flashing bulb. After three flashes, the phone began to buzz, and then vibrate. Like an incorrectly centered washing machine, it started walking across the desk toward the open-mouthed man. At the same time, his cell phone began to vibrate. With more than a slight tremble in his hand, he picked up the handset, took a deep breath, and from the deep recesses of his mind tried to remember the passphrase he had been given when he had been appointed Special Agent in Charge ten years ago. “Oh hell,” he said into the handset.
“That’s not it. Try again,” a cold, detached voice answered.
Special Agent Humberto Fuego pulled out his middle desk drawer so violently it punched him in his stomach. “Oof!”
The monotone voice continued, “Wrong yet again.”
Humberto felt underneath the drawer for the note he taped there years ago, ripped it off, and blurted out without really reading, “Penguins could fly if they really wanted to. God, what a stupid passphrase." Humberto read the entire note into the phone, forgetting he had added the last sentence as sort of fuck you to the system.
The eerie voice on the other end hissed, sending shivers up Humberto’s spine, “Correct at last. Except for that last bit. We don’t care about your editorializing. Get your team together. It’s code brown. I repeat code brown. This is what you and your select group have been training for all these years. I hope you won’t disappoint. Coordinates will be sent to your secure phone shortly. Meet me at this location tomorrow at 0700 with some preliminary data. This is it. This is not a drill.”
Humberto heard the hang-up click and stared at his phone, hoping for more information to materialize. This is it, not a drill code brown. Now, what was code brown again? That seemed rather harmless, Humberto thought to himself as he drummed his fingers on his desk. Of course, that voice from Oz appeared to have a hair up its ass about something. Maybe they heard that while all the other groups trained by late-night poker games, Alpha team actually did their training and kept abreast of world events. Humberto was all about being prepared. Well, might as well notify the troops. Humberto cleared his throat several times and then realized he had already pushed his intercom button, and his assistant Cathy heard quite a bit of phlegm over the air. “Sorry, Cathy. Cathy, alert my group that we have a code brown and tell them to drop whatever they're doing and meet in conference room C. I’ll need you to bring the Alpha binder with you.” Humberto hadn’t realized it, but he had been holding his breath while speaking to Cathy and now let out a whoosh of air which blew his neat and orderly desk of notes in disarray.
Conference room C was actually in the sub-basement where Alpha team did all their training. It was where all the teams were supposed to train, but over time, the other teams slowly lost interest and moved their preparation excercises to various locations, such as Bennigans, Hooters, and a rotation of different team members’ homes for poker tournaments. Alpha team was the only team to remain commited to the cause due to social inadequacy (no friends), free access to state of the art computer equipment, and to personal data that no one should have access to, not to mention a chance to wear cool, all black clothing. There was no reason to wear BDUs, but the majority of the team felt it was necessary to wear cool battle dress uniforms. The eight members of Alpha team fell into one or more of these categories. Humberto fell into all of them.
Humberto would’ve made a perfect spy. He could blend in anywhere as he was totally non- descript. Average height and weight. Possibly Hispanic, of Native American heritage, or maybe a Caucasian with a good tan. He had impeccably styled, short dark hair with a neat mustache that looked almost painted on, and wore round, wire-rim glasses that he polished on his shirt when he got down to business. He had a head for numbers and a body for chess.
The only thing that stopped him from a career in the spy biz was his total dislike of dirt and his borderline agoraphobia. He loved offices, the comfort of cubicles, and the buzz of fluorescent lights. He would often daydream of designing a tube of some sort that would zip him from his apartment to the office and bypass the horrible, weather filled unpredictability of the outdoors.
If Alpha team were activated, they would have to come up with scenarios and the probabilities of what would occur if the population went into overdrive or was severely under populated for unforeseen reasons. The team would then form theories how to best handle such occurrences. None of them felt these events would ever occur, but they loved statistics and problem solving, and they got to design their own outfits. (“Uniforms” for the guys. God forbid anyone call one the male members of the Alpha team uniforms an “outfit”; they would have a stroke, except for Carl who put purple piping on his outfit and had matching shoelaces in his combat boots.)
When Alpha team had all gathered in conference room C, they had the happy look of grade-school kids who have just learned class was canceled due to a last-minute school assembly. All except Cathy, that is, who looked like a pop quiz had just been announced.
“What’s up, Cathy? Why so sad?” asked Humberto
Usually, Cathy was the happiest of Humberto’s team and typically had something to say to cheer him up. Cathy was Humberto’s assistant and the go-to person for virtually everything. She was also everything Humberto wasn’t. She hated to be cooped up indoors and went outside for all her breaks and lunches. She went on extreme vacations. Spelunking all over the world, skydiving, cave diving, the more extreme, the better. Humberto preferred libraries and museums, while Cathy did all the things that he read about at the library. And like the rest of the group, numbers and statistics were another one of Cathy’s passions. Her high IQ and low tolerance of ignorance made her a perfect fit at work, but nowhere else. Due to her hobbies, she was incredibly fit and lean. She stood five foot nine and weighed 133 pounds of lean muscle. Her nervous energy made others fidget along with her. She kept her ash blonde hair short in a wave cut, which made it look as though her hair was moving even if she wasn’t which wasn’t often. She once came to work at the height of the rollerblade craze wearing a pair of hot pink roller blades and ran down the Fed Ex guy in the hallway to intercept a package. Humberto had to tell her to take them off or risk being sued.
“Code brown,” Cathy now said slowly, as if talking to someone who did not speak English as their primary language or to a very young and somewhat backward child.
“Well, it’s not like code red. Code brown's gotta be way down the list right?” Humberto replied completely missing Cathy’s tone.
“No. Code brown is the worst possible ever, it’s worse than red. Red happens, and then you brown your pants. Brown is bad.”
“Crap.”
“Exactly. Now you are getting it?”
“It’s because of this youth cream stuff, isn’t it?”
“It wasn’t so bad when it was just a cosmetic product, but now, in addition to improving one's looks, the stuff has actually slowed down the death rate. The Grim Reaper has taken a holiday. We either have to discredit the source, contaminate the product, or worst-case scenario...” Cathy gave Humberto a meaningful look.
“What? Did you just brown your uniform? You don’t mean plan TOTH? “
“If the population doesn’t correct itself naturally, then unnatural steps will have to be taken. That’s why you got the call from the red phone. Isn’t that right, Humberto?”
“Geez, what do you do, you do, listen at the keyhole?” This came out much whinier than Humberto had intended.
“You're our team leader, Humberto, man up!” snapped Cathy.
“Right. Of course. This is for real. Let’s crunch the numbers and see what we have for the worst case scenario, and then, God forgive us, start TOTH scenarios. Let’s first start with that idiot responsible. If he goes down in flames, this may all die a sweet, diet of the month death.”
“Literally or figuratively?” Carl asked, looking confused.
“Whichever works!” snapped Humberto, and began madly polishing his glasses on his shirt.
“Uh oh, Humberto just put on his big boy boots. Party is over,” sang Carl
Humberto shot Carl a look. “Like I said let’s get to work. No distractions, nothing else matters. I have to deliver some sort of game plan tomorrow at 0700.”
Everyone scattered to their work area, and screens begin popping up so Humberto could see what everyone was working as they progressed. Carl, however, went to the binder and looked up TOTH. Thinning of the Herd. “Oh, Sweet Mother of God” Carl said and made the sign of the cross.