A Quick Chat...

fiction

The message had been set to expire within hours not days. She guessed you either saw it or you didn't and that was just the way of things.

Nobody had been referred to by name, or even common nicknames. She had been added to the group chat as "leftovers" which could have been seen as a real insult, except it was something that tied her to the person who set it all up. They had a discussion one time when they were in college about how some foods are just better as leftovers. It was one of those conversations that happen at 1 AM and seem sort of deep while you are having them but only because you are 19 and everything seems kind of deep. Or because everything at 1 AM takes on larger significance.

But it had been one conversation over 30 years ago and he was taking a chance on her remembering it at all. But that was the brilliance of his naming choices. They were small, insignificant things to the outside eye, but they had obviously meant something more to the person he was contacting. She would have loved to have had the stories behind, "Odor Eaters", "Gravy Boat", and any of the others ones. "Roses" seemed to her that it would be a mutual friend of theirs. She remembered the rose covered wallpaper in her grandmother's house. They had all crashed there on a road trip between their junior and senior years.

She wouldn't ask, of course.

The message itself had been one that might or might not mean anything. "If you want to know where I am just look to the Western Skies. I'll be flying solo this time." Almost a quote from Wicked, but not quite. Close enough that someone reading it might think that he just got it wrong. But he wouldn't have gotten it wrong if he meant it to just be a quote from Wicked. He would have sent a clip of Idina or Cynthia singing it. So there was more to it than just a "Hey, we all loved this musical!" moment.

Nobody in the group chat took it to the police either. Which, of course, if your first thought was to tell the police, or if any of your thoughts were to tell the police you wouldn't have been in the chat in the first place. But she was always struck by that in news stories. The people that had been contacted before it happened. The ones that either the police tracked down, or who came forward. "They sent this message but I had no idea what they meant." And the message ends up being something like, "I've strapped a bomb to my chest and packed on twenty pounds of ammo for the AR14 I'm bringing to the mall." What? You didn't know what that meant? Get out of here with that bullshit.

Though even if his message had been that blunt, would any of them had said anything?

The first drone attack came at midnight the day they all got the message. That's how the media started reporting them. Drone attacks. Which she guessed in a way they were. Information was a direct attack now. The messages were brief. Small. Still hundreds of drones used to spell them all out. Names. Dates. Crimes. Nothing that the public wouldn't know, or might know at least, but things that had been covered up. Things the media pretended never happened.

There were five drone attacks in all. Then they arrested the lone wolf perp. The crazed lunatic that was putting his paranoid delusions in the air. Of course the whole time they were dragging him out of his house he was protesting his innocence. He hadn't done anything. But of course that's what he would say.

She watched him on the news. Eyes darting around. Scared. Shaking.

She wondered if the FBI would be knocking on her door. It had been a long time but they had gone to college together. He was the son of a senator. Used to brag all of the time about his connections in DC. How he could get away with anything. And he had. Gotten away with everything. She didn't think he'd get away with this, though. The evidence against him was pretty solid. And once they searched his computers and found what she assumed would be pretty awful stuff about some pretty important people, she imagined he'd be disappeared along with so many others.

She wondered how she felt about that. If she felt anything at all about it.

She wondered how the others felt about it. But of course the group chat had already expired and there was no way to ask. Not that any of them would answer a question like that.

Knowledge was always power. Information was always valuable. Even now. Maybe more so now. He'd make sure nobody forgot completely.

She'd keep watching the skies.

The senator's son hadn't eaten a leftover a day in his life.