This was bad. Undeniably bad. Catastrophically bad. How could I have been this dumb? Was it even possible to be this dumb? I mean, apparently it was, but it shouldn't be possible to be this dumb. Like dear lord, how did I misplace my coffee cup?
Now normally this wouldn't be a big deal. You misplace a disposable coffee cup and oh well, you're out a few bucks, no big deal, and then you go buy more coffee if you really need it. But this time my coffee cup didn't have coffee in it. No, no, it only had the USB drive I was supposed to secretly hand off in it. I had gone through all the trouble of ordering an extra hot coffee and requesting an extra cup to insulate it in (I had even spent time doing this at the same coffee shop for a few weeks so it didn't seem like an out of the ordinary request). After finishing my coffee, I dumped the used cup in the bathroom and kept the lid. While in the bathroom, I also slipped the USB drive into the coffee cup (there aren't cameras in bathrooms so this seemed like the safest place to do it) with some toilet paper so it wouldn't rattle around and then headed out, waving to the baristas I was getting on a first name basis with.
Then, I headed to the park where I was supposed to meet up with my contact. And then...gah, what did I do? Here I was on the park bench by the stupid swan sculpture waiting to do the drop off and I didn't have my coffee cup. What did I do with it between the bathroom and here? This was the problem of developing a routine. Sure, having a routine makes it seem like your behaviors aren't out of the ordinary (like with the double coffee cup), but it also means that your brain can switch to autopilot when you don't want it to. I had been doing this whole routine of the meetup for weeks so that I wouldn't seem out of place to anyone.
Okay, think. After the coffee shop, I walked down Park Avenue and stopped to buy a newspaper. Could I have left it there? No, because I remember the guy at the stand telling me to be careful with my coffee as I walked away.
Then I passed by the homeless woman who was always near the newspaper stand and I gave her my change from buying the newspaper. Could she have taken it? No, I remember her looking at the cup and telling me it was a nice coffee shop that I'd gotten it from, that the people there gave her a sandwich every now and then.
Okay then I remember that I was a bit too ahead of schedule so I stopped to window shop in a toy store. A little kid and his mom came out and he smiled at me, so I bent down to say hello. Did I put the coffee cup down then? No, his mom did almost snarl at me because I didn't. She was afraid I'd spill hot coffee on her son, but little did she know that there was no hot liquid in the cup, just top secret files.
After that, I wandered into the park. I did a brief survey of the area by taking a panorama shot (really people these days are far more suspicious of you looking around than of you taking pictures of literally all of your surroundings). Maybe I set the coffee cup down to do the shot? Opening my phone up, I could see a hint of the lid in the shot so no, I had decided to keep holding it while I did the shot.
Where could this coffee cup be? What could I have done with it?
I quickly checked the trash can near the bench, maybe some how I had been possessed to throw it away.
Shit. I had made it to the bench with the coffee cup. I had set it down on the armrest of the bench before updating my Instagram to show I was there (this was better than direct communication as cameras and everything else would've put me at the park anyways, but this kept who I was meeting in the loop without directly tying them to me). Someone must have grabbed it then.
Swiftly, I called my boss at the CIA to tell her we had a problem.
(Prompt by me)
Photo by Macgyver
Now normally this wouldn't be a big deal. You misplace a disposable coffee cup and oh well, you're out a few bucks, no big deal, and then you go buy more coffee if you really need it. But this time my coffee cup didn't have coffee in it. No, no, it only had the USB drive I was supposed to secretly hand off in it. I had gone through all the trouble of ordering an extra hot coffee and requesting an extra cup to insulate it in (I had even spent time doing this at the same coffee shop for a few weeks so it didn't seem like an out of the ordinary request). After finishing my coffee, I dumped the used cup in the bathroom and kept the lid. While in the bathroom, I also slipped the USB drive into the coffee cup (there aren't cameras in bathrooms so this seemed like the safest place to do it) with some toilet paper so it wouldn't rattle around and then headed out, waving to the baristas I was getting on a first name basis with.
Then, I headed to the park where I was supposed to meet up with my contact. And then...gah, what did I do? Here I was on the park bench by the stupid swan sculpture waiting to do the drop off and I didn't have my coffee cup. What did I do with it between the bathroom and here? This was the problem of developing a routine. Sure, having a routine makes it seem like your behaviors aren't out of the ordinary (like with the double coffee cup), but it also means that your brain can switch to autopilot when you don't want it to. I had been doing this whole routine of the meetup for weeks so that I wouldn't seem out of place to anyone.
Okay, think. After the coffee shop, I walked down Park Avenue and stopped to buy a newspaper. Could I have left it there? No, because I remember the guy at the stand telling me to be careful with my coffee as I walked away.
Then I passed by the homeless woman who was always near the newspaper stand and I gave her my change from buying the newspaper. Could she have taken it? No, I remember her looking at the cup and telling me it was a nice coffee shop that I'd gotten it from, that the people there gave her a sandwich every now and then.
Okay then I remember that I was a bit too ahead of schedule so I stopped to window shop in a toy store. A little kid and his mom came out and he smiled at me, so I bent down to say hello. Did I put the coffee cup down then? No, his mom did almost snarl at me because I didn't. She was afraid I'd spill hot coffee on her son, but little did she know that there was no hot liquid in the cup, just top secret files.
After that, I wandered into the park. I did a brief survey of the area by taking a panorama shot (really people these days are far more suspicious of you looking around than of you taking pictures of literally all of your surroundings). Maybe I set the coffee cup down to do the shot? Opening my phone up, I could see a hint of the lid in the shot so no, I had decided to keep holding it while I did the shot.
Where could this coffee cup be? What could I have done with it?
I quickly checked the trash can near the bench, maybe some how I had been possessed to throw it away.
Shit. I had made it to the bench with the coffee cup. I had set it down on the armrest of the bench before updating my Instagram to show I was there (this was better than direct communication as cameras and everything else would've put me at the park anyways, but this kept who I was meeting in the loop without directly tying them to me). Someone must have grabbed it then.
Swiftly, I called my boss at the CIA to tell her we had a problem.
(Prompt by me)
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