I look up at the sky. Just another desert sunset. A faded white contrail from the last patrol disperses overhead looking a bit out of place among the magentas, golds and blues. The cool desert winds start picking up and the temperature drops rapidly. I slip on the leather bomber jacket Tech7 gave me for my birthday last year and zip it up to the top. The lambswool feels good and I have feel no pangs of guilt that I need the calves' skins more than they now do.

The sand kicks up and one feels the light assault the wind and sand wage against one's face. I have just finished reading a tedious number of confidential reports that had been Fedex-ed to me from Langley. As I walk across the airfield, the sand makes quiet crunching sounds as it twists between the rapidly cooling asphalt and the leather soles of my shoes.

The Marauder awaits me underneath a sand colored tarp. I remove the tarp only to find its jet black finish dulled by a thin layer of dust which forms in just a matter of hours. The finger pad entry saves fumbling with keys. A quick depression of my thumb and the door unlocks and swings open. With a quick depression of my index finger the trunk releases and swings gently into the air. I set the tarp and my portfolio into the recessed trunk, close the trunk lid and slide behind the wheel.

The ignition now starts with the touch of a finger. I asked what would happen were the power to go out or merely interrupted and was assured by the gadget-folks that the identification system functioned independently of the conventional electrical system and had "plenty of redundancy". After a ten minute drive down endless, featureless roads which are not roads and must remain invisible to satellites, I arrive at the perimeter and show my ID badge to the gateguard who retracts a gate on a very low profile fence.

All the news and information I process as I drive. The National Security Council reports, the State Department's political and diplomatic updates, the after action assessments and the deployment and movement of covert forces throughout the world. It's much like some constantly evolving chess game, and each piece must be informed of the position of their comrades and the positions their opponent has assumed. The board changes daily and the movement never ends.

The sky is darker now and the golds and orange hues have all turned to shades of purple, in another fifteen minutes darkness will settle over the desert and the predators will come out.

Nothing changes and everything changes...just like the rapidly changing sky.

SDAI-Tech1