My boss's breath smelled like burnt coffee. It's a wonder his teeth were so white because he always had some veggie gunk up in there. When he told me the mission, he spit when he talked too. He never noticed or cared to police himself up when I wiped his spit off my face.

We were in that dusty storage closet that we turned into our work space. They never gave us a proper office or equipment. If your position isn't on the books. If your team's purpose doesn't officially exist. Then of course they can't fund you. Plus, they know that we aren't the types who complain. They know that we just solve problems. It was certain we'd beg, borrow, or steal shit until we had a pretty sweet setup.

My boss had that crazy look in his eyes. Like when Cruela De Vil jumps her big car out the ditch. Swirling red madness.

He said, "I don't care how you do it. Just get it done. Do you realize what will happen if every country is allowed to have nuclear weapons?"

Getting into a foreign country's top secret nuclear facility was not possible. That's why they asked me to figure out how to do it.

My problem. I don't have a limit on my imagination. Yes, it's a problem. No, I'm not bragging. It's a type of thing people develop when they have a childhood filled with situations where they need to leave their body and take a break from the trauma. We're not going to get back into that, even though, its a subject that always colors my thoughts and demands to be representing in my every fucking thought.

So, get into a foreign country's top secret nuclear facility? I asked my boss, "why?"

He didn't know the reason we needed to get in there so he said some shit about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He thought that I needed to know the motivation, like abstract kind of shit. I always wondered why they put him in charge of me, until I realized that great teams are made up of people with diverse talents, that he was good at shit that I wasn't good at. Like getting what he wanted, always, and never apologizing or letting someone get him down when his motivations were so obviously self serving.

The fluorescent lights in our office flickered so bad that they gave me headaches. My boss commandeered the only computer that I had managed to acquire and get connected to the classified network. He never liked when I was out of his sight for too long because he assumed that I was like him and would use freedom to figure out how to use the mission funds to take vacations. It was all a part of the game, though.

The organization we worked for was so fucking smart. They knew that I did my best work when I had a boss who I had to work around.

For the next six months, I had doctor's appointments and paperwork that always had me out of the office. I was actually at the library collecting the materials I needed to get'er done.

The idea came from my ex-wife. Not really from her, but from watching her. She was a professor and she had to publish to keep her job. It was serious shit. She explained to me that every professor in the whole world had this hanging over their head. Every subject.

I figured even the big bad countries had scientists who were under pressure to publish. I was right.

So, here is what I did. Yes, I am bragging about this shit on an open forum for anyone to read it. Because... Why? Because I never got a promotion for my work. Because I every time I needed someone to do some paperwork for me, they dropped the ball because they were busy taking care of themselves instead of taking care of my shit. And yeah, in the government, this type of statement is not a fucked up statement. In my organization, some people were operators, collectors, and analysts. Other people were commanders, managers, and secretaries. I was in the former group. The latter group was supposed to take care of the bureaucratic shit for the former group. For the same reason that they knew they could get the best work out of me by putting me under self serving people, they also knew that meant I wasn't going to get my promotions and into the right schools. But that was also a part of their plan, because a guy like me is not the type of person who should get promoted and be in charge of stuff. Because I don't believe in limits to the imagination and that shit means I don't calculate mission risk very well. And now that I'm out, I've got like nothing to show for my service. Especially since my ex-wife and ex-stepson threw away all of my earthly possessions before that marriage arrangement was officially over.

Anyways. So here is how I got into the foreign country's top secret nuclear facility. I found all the physics, engineering, and applied mathematics type publications coming out a big bad country. I used a technique called scientometrics and assumed a relationship between scientists when they co-authored a paper. Then I drew a social network map based off the relationships. Then I did some network calculations like degree, degree centrality, and closeness centrality to show the hierarchy in their program. Then I did a basic search for folks who published in subjects related to nuclear science. Then I teased out the communities of people who were doing nuclear science. Now I had the people and their social structure. Next, I looked at each publication, this shit took some fucking time, but it was fun solving the problem so I pretty much worked until my eyes bled every night. Looking at the publications, I figured out what equipment was required to do the experiments. Next I figured out how a normal lab in a friendly country set up that type of experiment. That was Google available. Ha! Then I started to play around with CAD and figuring out how a lab would be put together to do all the experiments and use all the equipment that was being used in these publications. Then I had good guy scientists look at my work to validate the setups.

This took three fucking years. It sounds simple now. But yeah, three years of my life. Working 16 hours a day, 6 days a week. Three fucking years. But at the end. I had working blueprints for the big bad country's top secret nuclear facilities. I didn't even need to go inside or do any spy type shit to do it. Just a computer. A library card. And imagination.

When I turned in my completed project, no one cared. No awards ceremony. They didn't even renew my contract! Those mother fuckers. Always playing me. Always a game to get the next trick out me. They know that my pathology, what drives me more than the desire to solve problems, I am terrified of living under the bridge again. Terrified of losing the connections that I made when I came into service. They think they can still contact me and give me something bigger, more dangerous, and get me to sign up, strap in, and ship out to the shit. They think I'd do anything to get the next contract. Just to get back on the team where I can see my brothers again and talk openly about the fucking crazy fucking mind fucking shit that we've done to ensure everyone gets their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.