Personas of Interest [Original Fiction for The Ultimate Psy-Op - Conspiracy Writing Contest III]

"Basically, the goal is to make Hillary lose," said the anonymous man sitting across the table from me.

I exchanged glances with my boss before speaking up.

"And let Trump win?" I asked, looking at the minister. He cleaned his throat and eyed me. My boss gently kicked my boot under the conference table.

"Yes. It might seem like an impossibility to you today, but there are reasons unbeknown to you for our country's need for him to win," he replied.

I took a deep breath and eyed my boss again. She looked calm, but cautious as always. I've been known to ask the wrong people the wrongest questions, and we did not want a diplomatic incident like last time. I looked over to the anonymous man who was watching me carefully.

I mentally smirked at the irony in a government agency hiring two women to run a psyops propaganda operation on social media. Especially considering my past encounters with the minister in my role as journalist. 

There was a good reason I refused to go back to the capital to cover the discussions in ministerial committees. In fact, having to cover anything political was one of the reasons I left journalism and found myself managing content marketing and social media campaigns to measure and alter consumer sentiments instead.

"We were considering a bidirectional approach," the anonymous man said. "Promote positive sentiments toward Trump, and negative ones toward Hillary."

Just treat them as products, I reminded myself. Same as you treat any product when you need to gather data about it and change the perceptions of masses. With the ministry behind this project, I knew I would have access to information and networks I never could otherwise. And the pay was damn nice. But was it worth twisting American democracy? Helping my government"fix" an election? Not only that, but my actions could contribute putting to a sexist buffoon on top of the world.

Just products, I kept repeating in my head.

"I suggest we use personas to start an aggressive conversations within the following," I said with confidence that surprised even me. "One of the best ways to hurt Hillary would be to present her followers as whiny and unreasonable, but loud enough to make Trump supporters seem like the rational ones," I heard myself say, suddenly aware of an urgent need to pee. I should not have had so much water every time my mouth went dry going through all the security on the way from my office to the underground conference room.

The minister smiled and leaned back in his chair. He nodded at the anonymous man, then turned back at me.

"This is exactly the kind of creative spirit that is so hard to find in the halls of government agencies," he said with a smile and got up. "The agent will fill you in on the rest of the details and assign you codenames for the operation."

He hurried out of the room, and my need to urinate was becoming really uncomfortable.

When I finally reached the bathroom, I was clutching at the sealed little envelope handed to me by the anonymous agent. The instructions were to open it in private, peek at the codename and memorize it. Then, the note was to be torn and flushed. Once I was finally relieved, I opened the envelope and peeked in.

techslut

That's all it said. Who would ever take me seriously with such a codename? But perhaps that was the point. Or maybe it was just a stab at what was left of my morals, having whored out my skills to meddle with foreign elections for a fat paycheck.

I tore the note and flushed it with a sigh. Just products, techslut, I tried to convince myself.

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Notes: 

Haven't written any short stories in a while, but this competition just clicked in my head and I decided to contribute my entry. If you've actually read this far, here's a little bonus: while most of the facts in this little scenario are made up, 3 facts are true. See if you can spot them and tell me in the comments.

Image via Pixabay

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