From: deirdre@x-philes.com   
      
   Never-Present   
   Deirdre (deirdre@x-philes.com)   
      
   Rating: G | Category: V | Spoilers: None   
   Summary: The view from behind a desk.   
   Archive: Archive freely; this story is released into the public   
   domain.   
   Author's Note: Thanks to Kristenk2 for the title.   
      
   From behind this desk, I have seen many things.   
      
   A good assistant sees all, yet few see her. She fades into the   
   background, no more memorable than any welcoming smile and soft offer   
   of coffee or water. I am not the one they are here to see; even to   
   the paranoid minds who plot the course of history, science and   
   politics, I am unimportant.   
      
   That is my value to my boss.   
      
   For years, I have scheduled his meetings--tracked those written in   
   ink on the desktop calendar, as well as those for which no record can   
   exist. I have seen and read many documents which have crossed my   
   desk, then filed those that remained and forgotten those that did not.   
      
   I have smiled at his visitors and not-visitors, watched with   
   downcast eyes as people exited who had never entered, and ignored the   
   smoke that escaped through an opened door in this non-smoking   
   building.  I have patiently listened and not-listened to the   
   mumblings of soft conversation, the rise and fall of intense   
   conversation, and the clear sharpness of angry conversation.   
      
   I have provided him with soft advice on topics I know nothing about,   
   on conversations I have never heard. He has listened and pretended   
   that he did not hear. He knows his job as well as I know mine.   
      
   I know more than anyone--even him--suspects that I do. That is my   
   job: to fade into the background; to be ever-present and never-   
   present; to know all, yet know nothing. To quietly process what   
   occurs and file away the results, whether in cabinets or in memory.   
   To politely smile at those who ignore my presence, and rejoice in   
   their dismissal.   
      
   For if they did not dismiss me, if they considered me with a   
   suspicious eye, then would be my ultimate failure.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)