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AlphaD Side Story #2: Saturday Unclassified
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Transcript
AlphaD Side Story #2: Saturday Unclassified
The sun rose quietly over 4019 North Randolph Street in Arlington, Virginia, dappling the quiet neighborhood with light that filtered through budding trees. The cherry blossoms out front had nearly finished blooming, their petals now scattered like confetti across the sidewalk and driveway. Birds chirped with careless optimism—a jarring contrast to the cold corridors of federal architecture Dan spent most of his week navigating.
Inside the brick Colonial-style home, Dan stood barefoot in his kitchen, watching the espresso drip slowly into his favorite mug: a heavy, white ceramic one with no logo, no design, just solid and unremarkable—like him, at first glance. He wore a soft navy hoodie and gray sweatpants, the kind of clothes he never touched Monday through Friday.
The house was quiet. Dan had lived here long enough to know every groan of the old floorboards and which windows liked to rattle during a storm. His home wasn’t lavish, but it was layered with comfort—handmade wood furniture, heavy books, and art that meant something, even if it meant nothing to anyone else.
He took his coffee to the back porch and sat in a weathered Adirondack chair that looked out over the sloping yard, its grass clean-cut and subtly patchy, like someone who cared just enough. The neighbor’s dog barked once—Dan gave a small nod in return. They had an understanding. No small talk before 9.
This was Saturday, and for Dan, that meant one thing above all: routine.
He began with a workout in his basement. Nothing showy—just a squat rack, a pull-up bar, and a weighted vest. He moved through his reps like clockwork, earbuds in but no music playing, just white noise. The repetition grounded him. It was a way to burn off the residue from the week—the classified meetings, the deliberately vague briefings, the endless calculations that always stopped just short of real-world answers.
At Strategic Innovation Directorate—S.I.D to the few who spoke of it aloud—his work straddled the blurred line between science fiction and statecraft. He’d been there for nearly a year, long enough to see beneath the shiny veil of innovation into the far stranger machinery beneath. Black budget prototypes, cognitive interface models, a room no one entered without a biometric override and a silence clause that was technically considered a verbal encryption.
But today, there were no retinal scans. No men in slim black suits saying too little with too much intensity.
Just Dan, and the house, and the weekend.
After the workout came the walk. He preferred the loop up through Donaldson Run, where the trail dipped low and followed the stream, the water cold and glassy this time of year. A ball cap pulled low kept him anonymous enough. Arlington was the kind of town where you could see a former NSA cryptologist jogging next to a part-time yoga teacher and never guess who had more confirmed redacted pages in their life story.
Dan returned home mid-morning and made eggs—three, scrambled with spinach and feta, with toast on the side. He ate standing at the counter, eyes flicking occasionally to a notebook resting open beside him. A few lines of ink from the night before waited for him. Not poetry, exactly. Not journaling. Just… fragments.
He closed the book.
By noon, he was reading—a copy of “NÜÜB Co. Ezine #7”, spine cracked, pages dog-eared. Not because he didn’t know how it ended, but because he liked remembering. Simpler times helped him process what couldn’t be said in the reports. It helped him decode the moments where reality felt like fiction but wasn’t.
At two, he took a break and walked into the garage. Under a gray tarp sat his project—a 1972 Harley Davidson FXR Evolution, half-restored. He tightened a few bolts, wiped dust from the gas tank, and nodded. He wasn’t in a rush. Everything in his professional life was urgent. The bike could wait.
Later, as the afternoon stretched thin, Dan made a call—his brother. They talked about their mom, about a nephew’s science fair project, about the weather. Nothing important. Everything important.
By dusk, the lights in the neighborhood came on one by one. Dan cooked dinner—salmon, roasted potatoes, and asparagus with lemon. He opened a bottle he’d picked up at a small shop near Courthouse. Nothing too heavy. Just enough to mark the end of the day.
He ate on the back porch again, watching as the light left the sky.
At 9:42 PM, his secure device buzzed once from the den. He didn’t rush to it. It would still be there in ten minutes.
He stood in the yard for a while, glass in hand, listening to the gentle whisper of wind through the trees. The kind of silence that felt earned.
Dan didn’t live a dramatic life—at least, not visibly.
But in the quiet rhythms of 4019 North Randolph Street, a man who helped steer the bleeding edge of national security was practicing something far rarer than innovation.
He was being still.
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