What If I Told You?

Greetings Traveler,

OK, a little cheat here. This tidbit has been sitting in my drafts for years–nearly eight, actually. I would like to get more creative writing in, but it required a certain mood. By way of explanation, this is my Illuminati character from The Secret World.

What if I told you that it's all real? What if I told you an army brat from Texas could find herself in the middle of one of the biggest conspiracies on the planet? I'm just a humble history professor. I almost had my tenure. Little did I know that it was not the fancy college education and degrees from ivied halls that would be most useful in my life. Instead it was the hours on the shooting range that Daddy dragged us to from the time I was five until I departed for said ivory towers.

Daddy was a Vietnam vet. Not one of those acidhead burnouts. He assisted in the evacuation of Saigon, then made a career of it. He made sure his whole brood could fire any number of different guns. Rifles, pistols, shotguns—you name it, I've squeezed the trigger. Among my brothers and sisters, I was always the most natural shot; but since the Bees came, my aim is downright uncanny. Big Bro followed in Daddy's footsteps, got into West Point and everything. He's a Light Colonel now, I think. Daddy was slightly disappointed that I didn't go the military route myself. But there was still no room for women in the infantry when I came of age, and I didn't need to play Army a couple times a year and spend the rest behind a desk or pulling weeds. And I wasn't about to become some G.I. Jane parody.

Oh, to be sure, my current employers take plenty of advantage of my skill in libraries and literature. But on such missions, I feel more like a Tomb Raider than a scholar, like my recent trip to Salamanca. They just had to have that Loyola manuscript. Turns out the accusations were correct, but like all true Illuminati, Ignatius escaped prosecution.

Anyway, so I went from pantsuits to jeans and camo jackets, unless I need to look the part of the university professor again. KG calls me her Lone Star Belle. A real NYC bitch, that one—or maybe La La Land. I hate The City, regardless of the coast it's on.

When I first joined the Firm, I hadn't held a weapon in years. They frown on that sort of thing in Academia. I actually thought I would try the fist claws. I love Hugh Jackman—couldn't imagine anyone else as the Wolverine (Dougray who?). And that X-factor healing ain't got nothin' on the Bees. The claws aren't as easy as they look, though.

Eventually, I settled on an array of firearms. See these pistols? My great grandfather wore them. Colt M1873s. Other folks use newer pieces, but there's a certain feel to the Peacemaker, especially since they're family heirlooms. Don't you worry about the "limited capacity" of a six-shooter. I haven't used bullets since Solomon Island.

~~~~~~~~

This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

Scooter proofreads almost all my articles before I post them, for which I am very grateful. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone (unless otherwise noted). If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after publication. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.