gone_byebye | A trail of aching derrières- next time they'll be more thoughtful

The door opens onto an expanse of asphalt, steel, and glass. Nearby a sign reads:

WELCOME TO WHITE FLINT MALL
BEST PRICES IN THE DC AREA

4708 BETHESDA AVENUE
CHEVY CHASE, MD

It's a big parking lot, with the mall itself only visible off in the distance. Ray gives it the squint-eye before turning to the others. "Okay, people," he says. "This is it. Johnny says it's underground. Egon's best estimates indicate three miles down. Are we good?"

Current Music: Kick In The Ass, Moxy Fruvous

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

precocioustilda.livejournal.com

The Cuteness bides its time. It will be victorious eventually.

Meanwhile, Tilda makes note of the layout shown on the scanner. "I see. Well, let's go then. What do you suppose is worth looking at in a place like this?"

From:

k_in_black

"A place like this? Oh, they could have lots of things: Weapons they shouldn't have. Records about people they shouldn't be bothering. Files about things they'd be better off not knowing about. Why if they have things like that, Matilda, they could get themselves into no end of trouble."

"So, the way I see it, it's our job to take it all away so they won't have that problem anymore."

Men in Black: Saving Bureaucrats from Themselves, 24/7.

From:

precocioustilda.livejournal.com

She giggles. It's adorable.

"I think I like our job. If we find something that makes stuff go boom, can I keep it?"

There is bouncing again. Updownupdownupdown. The Cuteness is really pulling out all the stops in its attempt to bend K to its will.

From:

k_in_black

He's holding on. For now, anyway. K is a challenge, but Matilda is just as formidable.

K nods. "Absolutely. First we take it, then we make it go boom. It's the best kind of mission, Matilda. Clean, simple, and direct."

K may have said that as if he was addressing a potential MiB recruit, but that probably doesn't mean a thing. No.

He makes sure the Series 4 Deatomizer is secure, grips the scanner firmly in hand, and with his other hand, slips on his shades. Then he pulls something else out of a suit pocket.

"Ready?"

Wait. Could that be another pair of shades he's now offering Matilda?

From:

precocioustilda.livejournal.com

Which will happen first - Matilda's recruitment, or the victory of the Cute over K? It's quite the interesting question.

"Excellent."

She accepts the shades, raises her eyebrows briefly at K, then puts them on. The sight of Matilda in a pair of appropriately sized MIB sunglasses is quite possibly the cutest thing this underground installation has ever seen.

"Ready." A cute smile appears on her face in anticipation of getting to blow things up.

From:

k_in_black

K nods approvingly, not noticing the cute little foot that has just managed to wedge open the door of his subconscious ever so slightly.

"All right, Special Agent Matilda, let's get this mission underway."

K starts heading down the corridor, already in a 'game on' frame of mind. It's not that he expects much resistance here, but Foliage Census got the better of a Ghostbuster and eluded immediate discovery by MiB, and that's earned some grudging respect.

As they leave the other members of the team behind, the corridor goes quiet except for the flat monotone buzz of the fluorescent lighting overhead. The decor is very Beige Bureaucrat, and K isn't surprised to see a couple Thomas Kinkade knockoffs hanging on the walls.

From:

gone_byebye

As they're walking, one of the doors opens. The man who walks out is reading from a folder; he's got brown hair and he's wearing a grey suit. And he's completely, utterly, totally oblivious to his company in the hall.

He may even be humming.

From:

k_in_black

The shades are off so fast it's like they were never there. K takes a couple steps toward the man and slips into a flawless 'gull the rube' voice.

"Well, hello Sir, there you are. I hope you're having a fine day. I have to tell you, I'm glad we finally managed to find you. My young associate here and I were worried we might have gotten here too late, but I think we'll be fine if we get right down to it."

"But I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? We'd better start with the basics." K glances down at the scanner, the holographic display temporarily down so it looks like your average Blackberry.

"I know you've been through this a hundred times already, Sir, but if I could just have your name and title again?"

From:

precocioustilda.livejournal.com

Matilda looks from the man to K and back again, ejects the shades*, and waits for this to get interesting.

The Cute, meanwhile, senses an opportunity and cranks it way up. Her tiny adorable smile - laced with a hint of mischief, perhaps, but no more than is to be expected of a spirited young girl with nothing to do at the moment - shines like a veritable beacon of cuteness.

*They land in her bag unobtrusively after a very speedy flight. Hooray for quick-thinking telekinesis.

From:

gone_byebye

The poor guy doesn't stand a chance. "Uh," he says. "My name's Dave O'Connell, I'm a junior analyst in Alphonse Jannot's division- um, who is this, please?" He crouches down to get to eye level with Matilda. "I don't think I've met you before..."

From:

precocioustilda.livejournal.com

Matilda sees no reason to lie, being from another universe and all.

"I'm Matilda. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Dave." She puts out her hand to shake hands with them, smiling easily as though she greets random strangers in the halls of this place regularly.

The Cute is having a field day. It turns up the dimples a notch.

From:

k_in_black

K knew Matilda would rise to the challenge. He just wanted to see how she would do it.

Way to go, kid.

"Yes, Matilda's our latest recruit, and let me tell you something, Dave, this young lady is going places.

Blowing your facility sky-high for one thing.

"Junior analyst, right. Everything looks fine here. Now if we could just have a look at your workstation? Sorry to rush you, Dave, but we have a full docket today and time's a-wasting, if you know what I mean."

From:

gone_byebye

"Wow. So you guys followed up on that northeast sector lead after all, huh?" Dave grins and shakes hands with Matilda before looking up to K. "Sure, right this way- this is for the quarterly audit, isn't it? We're all fully compliant down here, but I know how it goes."

Behind the door is probably the biggest cubicle farm anybody, and I mean anybody, has ever seen. Dave starts wending his way through the passages, past the fellow zooming a red stapler around through midair, between the empty cube ("that's Bogdanov's place- he's out sick today") and the cube with the young Indian man in it who gives the impression of not having slept in the past seventy four hours, and then turns sharply to the right. "Not much farther," he says.

From:

precocioustilda.livejournal.com

Matilda does her best to look cute and professional at the same time, with mixed success. As she follows, she checks her bag to make sure that none of her explosives are showing.

From:

k_in_black

K's seen many things in his exceptional life, but few more horrifying than a cubicle farm this big. Even when he squints, he can't tell whether that's a wall in the distance or just a blurred, office-gray horizon.

O'Connell isn't slowing down, so the Man in Black passes the time by glancing in cube after cube, only missing a step when he sees a young guy in glasses, munching popcorn from an 'Encom' bowl as he types out code. The sign on his cube wall, "Klaatu Barada Nikto," is a nice touch.

"Hey, Alan?" a voice calls from another cube. "Think I could have some of your popcorn?"

"Yeah, sure."

Notcing K looking at the screen, Alan looks up. "Can I help you?"

"I don't know, slick," K shakes his head. "Your program's name isn't selling me. 'Tron.' Too generic. You need to have something distinctive. Like 'Velcro' or 'Frisbee.' Something that'll stand out."

Alan glares. "I like 'Tron.'"

"Oh, hey," K puts up his hands. "Just a suggestion, don't mind me." And the next moment, it's as if he was never there.

Except for Alan sitting back in his chair, staring at the screen and thinking, "Frisbee. A frisbee. Yeah, that's a good idea...."

From:

gone_byebye

O'Connell glances over his shoulder and waves an arm in K's direction. "This way!" he calls. "Here's my station."

He's got one with slightly higher , towards the outer edge of the farm. His work area is neat- painfully, horribly neat- and his computer has three monitors, one of which turns out on closer inspection to be a flat-screen television. "All the passwords I use conform to TIMM standards, which are naturally twenty times stricter than the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley act," he says cheerfully. "Did you want to see what happens on an unauthorized file access?"

From:

k_in_black

"Got it in one, Dave, that's exactly what we'd like to see."

K steps behind Dave while he says that, as if to get a better look at the screen while the tech types. But in fact, the Man in Black is slipping on his shades--after giving Matilda a meaningful glance to do the same.

Hmm, K seems to be drawing some kind of silvery pen out of his suit too.

"Now if you could just show my associate here what you're doing..."

From:

precocioustilda.livejournal.com

Tilda catches the look, and on go the sunglasses. She looks over at the computer screen quite interestedly - even if their purpose here has nothing to do with finding out what Dave is showing them, it's still New Knowledge, and therefore worth looking at.

[ooc: Sorry for the incredibly late reply - my internet went kerplooey and hasn't been up again until five minutes ago.]

From:

gone_byebye

"Oh, sure!" says O'Connell. "Okay, it's like this. We have to have passwords here at least eight characters long, preferably sixteen, with at least one number and one letter involved. We've got biometric scanners, of course, but those're reserved for security on specific files and parts of the file system. I'm just going to type in the wrong password so you can see what happens when someone tries."

He glances curiously over at the pen. "Hey, what's up with the sunglasses?"

From:

k_in_black

K gestures for Dave to stop talking, and in a hushed voice says, "Multi-band, RF-compatible, 10G camcorders."

K leans forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Brand-new prototypes. Could be the next big thing. But you never saw them, follow me? You wouldn't believe how hard Matilda and I had to argue with the R&D execs just to let you see them."

K straightens up again and claps Dave on the shoulder. "But when they realized we were talking about you, we got the green light right away. I'm telling you, Dave, you've got big changes coming."

Real, real soon.

"Now, I think you were going to explain biometric scanners to Matilda here...?"

From:

precocioustilda.livejournal.com

Matilda perks up. "Yes. You were. And a demonstration of what happens on unauthorized file access, too." She may be small, but she has a good phrase memory.

A thought crosses her mind, and she glances at the top sheet of paper on one of the neat piles adorning Dave's workspace. It flutters. With a triumphant smirk, she returns her attention to the task at hand.

From:

gone_byebye

O'Connell smiles. "Seriously? I thought for sure after I had to hand off the Stantz investigation they'd kick my can to the curb. Used to have an office, before this... Anyway. It kicks me out with the wrong password, but if I type in the right one immediately, we're good. I can't show you three fakes in a row, because three fakes in a row and my account gets locked- division policy. If you could pass me that little white box over there, the one with the grey panel in it? That's a thumbprint scanner."

From:

precocioustilda.livejournal.com

She almost summons the white box with her eye-power - an astute observer might notice it tipping up a bit - but decides that would be imprudent and leans over to pick it up instead.

"Here you are," she says cheerfully, handing the box to Dave with an adorable smile.

From:

k_in_black

As Dave turns back to the screen, K points behind his back at the sheet of paper Matilda TK'd, then gives her a smile and a thumbs up.

Dave is never going to forget this day. Well, not until he forgets everything, anyway.

"So, Dave," K continues, "We've gone over some of the system safe-guards. How about when everything goes right?" K punches a couple more buttons on his scanner, "We'll just move on to the next section here.... Now, let's say you needed access to those critical files you were talking about?"

From:

gone_byebye

"Well, I have access to most of the sector investigation files anyway," O'Connell says modestly. "So we'll just pull up- hmm- let's see. How about some of the stuff we've been digging up out West? The Bishop case?"

He presses his thumb against the scanner as he clicks on one of the icons.