Interpreter #12

"I burned the rice, and my soul is ice"


Scott Xino was wasting time. Nothing unusual about it, Xino liked to joke that 99.9 percent of his job was acting busy. Most times people asked about the remaining 1% , in response to which he'd be forced to uncomfortably change the subject. He'd done it just now, on the phone. This time when the guy asked about the 1%, Xino replied by ignoring the question, and starting a rumor about an old friend they both knew:

...So yeah, I guess she had been, lessee, How can I put this? He felt the missus to be showing her vagina to more people than the optimal (and agreed upon) amount of no one . She agreed with him, and left his life. Now he drinks only the cheapest, eats only fart, and cries his nights into days...

Woah. He eats what? Eats fuck?

No, it's...what the shit?

Something insane showing up on his computer straightened Xino in his chair.

What? Take it easy I didn't...

Xino cut him off:

No, no dude. Something on my desk. I'll call ya...

He blipped out of the phone convo and started clicking at his tablet screens.

***

The video was very short, and ten minutes later Xino had watched it at least 20 times. The email containing the vid came from an hyper-secure network fewer than 300 people in the entire world had been cleared to access. It was a blank subject heading with only one horrible sentence - all caps, excessive exclamation points - screaming from above the vid:

GILDGE SENT THIS TO PAIGE!!!

Sometime during the video his phone rang. He didn't have to look down at Kayla Bowman's smiling face on his phone's screen to know she'd be the one answering when he said:

KK, listen I...

The voice on the other end cut him off:

Mall in ten, and hurry! Freezing!

Click...tone...Xino watched the movie another 3 times before grabbing his coat and heading for the Washington Monument.