- Example -

Connection interrupted, apologies.

To continue, we look for these people, the Focuses, and try to contain them in areas where they'll do minimal damage while we get treatments for the problem.

Oh, you probably don't know that. The US Military has been working hard to create countermeasures to Improbability. There's no one thing that works 100% of the time, but there are things that do. There's an injection that, if it doesn't kill the patient, removes the Improbability from their body rapidly. It's like an innoculation, or a booster shot, basically. It's harmless to normal people, but there's a lot of danger involved with rapidly removing improbability from an exposed person.

That's how they got me out. They took a gamble with a prototype of the innoculation. It probably should have killed me. Improbably (ironically enough), it didn't, and worked perfectly, with one nasty little side effect that I discovered after a little visit to the old home - Improbability is now lethal to me over prolonged periods of exposure, without repeat innoculations. I've got a cap of about 80 hours of exposure before I need to get another shot or start suffering the effects of Improbability-gone-wrong. There's a spot on my back where my skin is missing, litterally. It won't grow back, won't scab over. I've got to wear a dressing constantly to keep it from getting infected. Doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

I miss sleeping on my back.

Back to the point at hand, though. We have countermeasures to the effects of Improbability on unexposed biological material. Which means normal civilians and unexposed soldiers are regularly getting the improved shot (No need for additional shots, unlike myself), as well as research and development's guys studying Improbability. Non-biological material is still a crapshoot at best. Sometimes, you expose a gun to Improbability, and it stays a gun. Sometimes it starts singing opera. We've got a few protective coating methods, but even then, exposed materials will usually be compromised in some way. Worst thing I ever saw was when A guy's gun didn't change, but his ammo did. When his gun jammed and he opened it up? Snakes. Impossible numbers of snakes. Poisonous ones. That was a bad day for everyone involved, snakes included.

Our current operating procedure is to quarantine a Focus and assess their threat level. We've got all kinds of ratings and so on to determine how dangerous - or not dangerous *- the Focus is. Once we assess, we usually attempt to innoculate. If it's successful, the Focus is brought to debriefing and studied for relapses before we let him/her go. If it's unsuccessful (and the Focus is still alive), we re-assess options and go from there.

There've been occasions when we've had to terminate a dangerous Focus when the innoculation fails. There have also been occasions when we've had to terminate a dangerous Focus that resisted quarantine in a violent manner. This is rare, but certainly does happen. I'm not going to lie and say that this job is all sunshine and lollypops. It isn't. Mostly **. There's hard decisions to be made, sometimes, but... well, when you've got a Focus that can spit acid from his nose in a ten-foot spray and he LIKES watching people melt, you don't have much choice.

So, that's my life, now. We track known Ex-Cons, determine if they are a focus or not, innoculate if possible, and we chase the runners and kill the crazy dangerous ones. There are plenty that resist, usually at first when they don't understand what's happening, but that's excusable. Anybody would panic if a gaggle of guys with guns burst into their apartment at three in the morning and start yelling at you to put down the peanut butter, sir, or it might spontaneously convert to nitroglycerine and kill us all***.

And there's more than a few crazy ones.

Back with more when I can, administrative duties to deal with.



* (We have a Focus (#168) that causes flowers and grass to spontaneously grow and bloom in an area around himself. We've got #168 walking around the saharah desert right now with a conservation project group. We'll see how that goes. Land undamaged by the war is at a premium, after all!)

** (Focus #91 caused drywall to turn into various confectionary treats. Terrible for structural integrity, great for morale.)

*** (Focus #272. I shit you not.)