Arthur Brook, on his oath, was not an opportunist, but he was often in positions that he could easily…shift…to his advantage. He also wasn’t a reporter, at least according to his colleagues, behind his back, when they thought he wasn’t listening. In fact, he always was. As a young child, his parents feared him to be autistic and took him to a psychiatrist to find out exactly what was going on.
After an extraordinarily long session, the psychiatrist carefully opened the door and promptly told them that their son wasn’t autistic, he merely listened very carefully. With one hand he ushered Arthur out, and his parents in, to discuss in detail their recent arguments.
He was never a snitch, he just simply told the truth, and people always saw it the wrong way. As he grew up, he graduated from university as a journalist, and started living life from one commission to another. Not a single big paper wanted him, and the little papers frustrated him, so Arthur travelled and learnt things. Quite often he was in the right place at the right time, fully exploiting his knack to read a veritable flashpoint when he saw one.
The Singapore article had scored him big, very big. The Weekend Australian received the article that they wanted, but hundreds of papers bought his other article, thousands bought his photos, and millions absorbed his conspiracy theories. He didn’t say much, but a subtle change of word here or there could easily show a clear picture to someone, when their mind was able to fill in the tiny details.
His wildfire success had covered all of his debts and given him a new car (second hand), and an article in The Australian’s Inquirer, and all the fame he could try to avoid, in the journalism circle.
Unfortunately, as he had a desk job now, he wasn’t allowed to run around and get his own first-hand evidence. He had to parrot whatever tripe his so-called illustrious colleagues had ripped off from another paper.
Arthur groaned and put his head in his hands.
‘Did I really have to say that to his face?’ He agonised out loud to no one in particular.
There had been a flare of emotions and a ‘professional’ ‘debate.’ Arthur mentally made sure that the quotation marks clanged into place. He always kept his sharp tongue filed and, as such, he had punctured quite a few egos. Something told him that, if he didn’t latch onto something new, he’d lose his job and then no paper would have him, or his articles.
The media was always a circus, but journalists were fed to the lions more often then the Christians, or the Family First party, whatever they preferred to be called these days.
He reasoned with himself, pulling up a few files on his computer. They were ones he had only showed himself, and they were part of his ‘unwinding time.’ Anyone would argue it was work, as his girlfriend frequently did, but it was just a big truth that he wanted to unravel. Ever since his ‘7’ for his final year journalism article, on the Griffin College incident, he had decided to keep a hand in all things military. He had never seen Australia as anything more than uninteresting in the field of modern warfare, but filming that footage at the high school had opened his eyes.
He pulled open another familiar window. It was a frozen photo, fuzzy and taken from his Griffin video, but when compared to another, there was no mistaking the resemblance. Arthur stroked his five o’clock shadow and peered at the bewildered ‘University Students’ standing in front of the rubble.
The quotation marks readily clanged into place as his mind ticked over.
He had never really said anything in the Singaporean article, but he had really emphasised how good the students were at cleaning up the mess, how efficient they were. So far the government hadn’t bit and asked him politely to keep a lid on it, but his survival instincts told him that he had ruffled a few unruffleable feathers.
That day…he sighed and gently tapped the computer screen, a steady beat on Liam’s forehead. He had, of course, recognized Liam instantly, but he was certain the feeling wasn’t mutual. Arthur did not have a malevolent intent for what he had learnt, if anything he felt as though he was a fanboy that knew absolutely nothing about his hero.
That was what fascinated him. He admired what these youths- he laughed at the term, he was barely five years their senior- what these youths had done with their lives. Obviously there were hardships, obviously. But they were alive, and Arthur could see the resilience in their eyes. No doubt a botched mission had caused the levelled those buildings to rubble.
Of course, Arthur didn’t have any proof for his speculation, and had wisely kept his mouth shut, very tightly shut. Oh, sure, there were hints and thinly veiled speculations, but they didn’t link anything together. Most people had responded in the Editorial section about how they admired ‘that Arthur Brook’s’ courage in showing the world that America’s world policing actions had gone too far.
Arthur hadn’t even mentioned America, but many bulls don’t care for the colour of the flag, and don’t even mind if it’s not flapping when they charge. Many more didn’t mind if they avoided the flag altogether and charged the man holding it.
Luckily his hate mail hadn’t escalated to anthrax in the post, and had trickled to a halt. He barely received an email a day now.
Speaking of mail…Arthur opened his client and checked. There wasn’t much, just an email from his Editor containing his article topic for the next weekend paper, something about his ‘homee loNe’ and something completely different.
He didn’t know what possessed him to do it, every part of him screamed out not to do it, but he double clicked it. ‘I know about him’ opened in a new window. The computer screen blackened, and for one blissful minute Arthur thought it was a virus and nothing out of the ordinary.
…and then a stream of text popped up. His eyes watered reading it, but his printer started, spat out one sheet, then went silent. The computer rebooted-
-and sprayed binary code over the screen in a never-ending wave. Completely shot to hell.
‘Damn.’
Tentatively he leaned over and plucked the paper from the tray. The explosion of foul language was stuck halfway up his throat, overtaken by a surge of adrenaline threatening to push up his meat pie and chips. His stomach churned with a hurricane butterfly as he snatched up his keys, quickly folding up the piece of paper and putting it into his top pocket.
‘The SYF have checked your tyres. Recommend you take them in tomorrow.’
The words raced through his head. Big story. Very big story. Lethal. Sharp spiky death story. The story of a lifetime. He rushed past confused interns and broke out into a run, fleeing the building and rushing to his little Toyota Corolla, not bothering with any stupid attempts at being subtle. He checked the driver side front wheel, and plucked a tiny black oblong, the length of an AAA battery, from its hiding spot between the hubcap and the wheel. He wiped the small amount of grease off his hands and onto his pants, knowing exactly what he was holding. He popped the cap and exhaled carefully.
A USB flash drive, and according to the tiny company writing on the side, a 1GB USB flash drive. He pocketed it and climbed into his car. Something told him that he needed to get home very quickly, or better yet, buy a laptop along the way and find a secluded coffee shop somewhere.
Still, the words raced through his head. The three letters, it’d been so many years since he had heard them uttered, all that time ago while he fumbled with his video camera in the bushes while the chopper flew overhead and the bullets flew over him. He’d sold the tape under an assumed name, and then simply referenced it for the assignment; he relished the compliments his lecturer gave him afterward, about how simply real it was.
The USB weighed in his pocket. Something told him that it was going to get so much more real.
