{"id":1353,"date":"2022-09-22T19:33:58","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T19:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1353"},"modified":"2022-09-23T10:15:55","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T10:15:55","slug":"men-talking-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/men-talking-babies\/1353\/","title":{"rendered":"Men Talking Babies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A blur of trees framed his crumpled reflection. Pete turned away from the window as the coach stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJamie!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey Pete.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Jamie buffeted along the aisle and crab-walked a lanky frame into seats 4A and B in front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA bit iffy at one point. Paypal not going through, Visa card not in the usual place. Found it here.\u201d  With a jagged inhalation he patted his back pocket. \u201cHadn’t eaten in 10 hours; must have put it back after Pret.  Real fuck of a journey altogether. Still, made it in the end.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jamie passed a paper tissue over his dewing brow and dripping end of nose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Pete ignored the implicit proffer of further details of the Hadean journey, shut his laptop and looked up at Jamie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, why\u2019ve they called you<\/em><\/strong> in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMohan was pulled. Wife in labour. 2 months early. He just texted; she’s in Delivery right now\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat’s the current count?\u201d Pete, mouth half open, adopted an enquiring-as-if-interested face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust the one, Rohit. This next one’s a girl.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey didn’t summon Georgie Boy then?\u201d George had been the most senior operative and team leader of Analytics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou didn’t know?  Retired last February. Threw one helluva party after Covid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMissed it; invitation on the mat when I got back from the Arctic Cruise\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lies; the invitation and the Arctic, both lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I\u2019m ranked lower than Jamie, why was I summoned before him. What can I do, he can\u2019t, – not Facial Recognition Remodelling, not Deep Fake CCTV? We all do those. Fake text-to-speech audio and lip sync video?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pete undid the upper button on his T-shirt and with a finger flick turned on the camera mic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jamie prided his skill reading body language. That tell-tale mannerism of Pete fiddling with his T-shirt buttons indicated he was gearing up. Well, he too could play the revenge game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were all there. Even Big- Chief Forrester and his sidekick Sheila the Poisoned Dwarf. Man, how they partied! Forrester left with Fi and the Dwarf had to be carried out and put in a taxi.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indiscretion in an operative was an intolerable misjudgement, revealing nicknames the nadir of treachery… and a potential breach of corporate security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cooling now.\u201d Pete re-buttoned his T-shirt, opened his laptop’s e-mail, selected Comms; Agent Monitoring and pressed SEND after adding as the video’s title < FYI Shallow Reality Not Deep Fake><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Georgie Boy (retired), Me, Jamie. That’s the order. So, my promotion next?<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pete was still mid-story. \u201cGot home 5 am. The wife was livid. Whole team nursing hangovers the next day.  Talking of wives, how are you and Deirdre going?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDebbie\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDebbie, yeah. Still just the two kids?\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, James and Ellie. It was their 3rd<\/sup> birthday last Saturday: clowns, balloons, you know the whole caboodle. Actually, number 3 on the way, Debbie’s 6 months gone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAny preference?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon’t really mind, boys or girls\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A blur of trees framed his crumpled reflection. Pete turned away from the window as the coach stopped. \u201cJamie!\u201d \u201cHey Pete.\u201d  Jamie buffeted along the aisle and crab-walked a lanky frame into seats 4A and B in front. \u201cA bit iffy at one point. Paypal not going through, Visa card not in the usual place. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[597,667],"tags":[20,276,671],"class_list":["post-1353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-597","category-sept-2022-the-end","tag-his","tag-jamie","tag-pete"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-lP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1353"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1360,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353\/revisions\/1360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}