All In A Days Work

There you are, playing Blackjack in a posh Monte Carlo casino. Cuban cigar in one hand, stack of thousand dollar chips in the other. You are exchanging looks with woman in a white satin evening gown and a man in a neatly pressed tuxedo with a patch over one eye. Knowing that while you sit here either of these people could be working on a plot to sell secret government documents to the highest bidder or overthrow the world’s turnip industry and leave the hearty stew business a smoldering wreckage for many years to come. You are a spy.

It wasn’t always like this though; no you used to just be a regular person. You never decided to be a spy, you were selected. You see, no one volunteers to be a covert agent, they’re just picked. There is no application process. Clearly this would do little good.

Somewhere somehow, someone looks at you and says, this person looks really sneaky. I believe I could mold them into a disguise loving, bullet dodging, gadget craving spy!

Once someone decides that you’ve got what it takes to become an agent you still have a lot of work ahead of you. In order to become who you are, you had to go though years of extensive training. You had to be the best at everything. No one wants a mediocre spy. You should be the best card player, the best drinker, the best puncher. You equally excel at flying jet airplanes, riding motorcycles, and piloting boats while engaged in a fist fight and hurtling biting personal comments at your spy foes. A spy who can not belittle their enemy while defending themselves will be bounced out the program faster than you can say "fake passport".

In addition to vehicular navigation 101, judo sessions and your next biting retort lessons; you also have to learn how to use your spy gadgets. When you become a spy you will have to know how to use a variety of improbable devices. Anything from decoder rings, camera tripods that assemble into guns and secret clothing compartments that store acid toothpaste or radio pencil transmitters. First off you need to know how to use them, so you don’t inadvertently brush your gleaming white spy teeth with glass eating acid toothpaste. This always makes for a bad mission.

Secondly though you need to have a hoard of excuses up your sleeve. It’s not just a matter of understanding how to identify acid toothpaste from your Colgate but also good way to wriggle out of a tight spot when you're caught using it.

“Why were you on the outside of the building around the twenty-second floor smearing toothpaste on my office window?”

“Ah, yes. Well you see I'm on the night cleaning crew...”

If you make it through your training, you will be the elite of the elite. Then the real work begins. Now you’re a secret agent. It’s your job to do whatever the home office tells you. Mostly this will involve having to insert yourself into the local political machine and direct the world, as required by your government, all the while maintaining your cover. Better keep your weekends free from now on.

So it seems you’re off to the Malaysian capital to thwart a plan hatched by a villainous mastermind to harvest refined plutonium from the moons of Jupiter. {Sigh} All in a days work.