{"id":16666,"date":"2017-10-10T21:57:48","date_gmt":"2017-10-10T21:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/?p=16666"},"modified":"2017-10-11T21:59:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T21:59:32","slug":"life-island-times-red-death-chapter-six","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/life-island-times-red-death-chapter-six\/","title":{"rendered":"Life &#038; Island Times: RED DEATH   Chapter Six"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/101017-1LIT.jpg\" alt=\"101017-1LIT\" width=\"600\" height=\"351\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16667\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/101017-1LIT.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/101017-1LIT-300x176.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/101017-1LIT-480x281.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Marlow headed off to face &#8220;Cluster Twin&#8221; Aenid. Of course, no one in Naval Intelligence ever called her that to her face.  No one dared.  Still, the name fit, and no one ever thought of her as anything else. Marlow had run afoul of Aenid before as an Ensign watch stander in Hawaii over the secure phone, and he still winced at the memories. The last time, three watches of work product on his watch team&#8217;s part had been quietly absorbed into an article of hers &#8212;  unacknowledged. This time, Marlow softly said to himself &#8220;Eff that!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As it turned out, there was very little for either of them to do.  The division head\u2019s bullet points looked an awful lot like a final draft.  Marlow&#8217;s two-dozen words on \u201cRed Death\u201d had turned into a paragraph overgrown with technical jibber jabber utterly burying the key bottom line.   Only an advance degreed engineer might have guessed that the \u201cRed Death\u201d represented a soon-to-be-operational strategic forces game changer in Asia and across the rest of the world.  Cluster Twin looked beaten and visibly sagged, but she let it stand.<\/p>\n<p>Her manifest defeated pose emboldened Marlow.  \u201cI think we could strengthen the piece if we highlighted the fact the \u2018Red Death\u2019 is a game changer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aenid perked up like a shark who had just smelled blood.  \u201cI believe the boss&#8217;s instincts about emphasizing the technical aspects are sound.  As a senior GS-14, I consider myself the lead author on this, but I will grudgingly let you also be listed.  Marlow, when you\u2019ve worked in this place longer, you\u2019ll learn that management is usually right about these things.\u201d  Aenid obviously wanted to get into the GM-15 management game badly &#8212; she was already practicing  on him.   Marlow as a Fleet Lt &#8212;  a very junior GS-11 equivalent &#8212; struck his colors and sailed off down the corridor.<\/p>\n<p>Back in front of his large screen, Marlow waited for the FACETIME-like electronic coordination comment meetings to begin.  He didn\u2019t expect much of anything.  The single page was now so unintelligible and dense that no one in Suitland let alone the world outside of Naval Intelligence would understand it.   He was filled with a sense of career doom.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2017 My Isle Seat<br \/>\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marlow headed off to face &#8220;Cluster Twin&#8221; Aenid. Of course, no one in Naval Intelligence ever called her that to her face. No one dared. Still, the name fit, and no one ever thought of her as anything else. Marlow had run afoul of Aenid before as an Ensign watch stander in Hawaii over the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-island-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16668,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16666\/revisions\/16668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}