I have been tailing this person for some time now. Last month, the Syndicate issued an order to track a new target. As low ranking members of the organization, we aren’t usually told very much about the reason why they need to approach targets. Sometimes, they need to get rid of someone. Sometimes, they kidnap the target and leverage her for blackmailing.

Whatever the reason is, I’ve only ever executed orders without asking any question. Contractors, like me, only do what is rational and what can help me to fulfill my contract. So when the cat came to explain the next mission, I accepted the orders with neither sadness nor hapiness. Tailing people and collecting information is what I do.

The target is a young man who has been living on his own in a small flat for a year. According to my research and observations, he seems to be the lonely type. After watching him day and night, I hardly noticed any movement, be it to go visit some friends or to receive friends at home. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, he pays his rent on time each month, tries to buy local organic food at the market but end up buying industrial products. At first, I was wondering why I was told to stalk this person as he seemed to be a normal student. I learned later on that I was asked to get information on this person because the organization had identified him as a potential talent for our team.

We usely set our mark on lonely people, it generally makes the kidnapping easier because there would be less people trying to get in touch with the person, what’s more its helps us cover the tracks in case the target fights back during the process. However, I gradually learnt after years of trailing people that most of us live lonely lives. People spend most of their times on their own, then we try to fool others about being happy and living the time of our lives (at least this is my case and I tend to think that everybody is just like me). We claim to be social creatures who need to interact with each other at work and in our private lives. But after following targets for months that were assigned to me by the Syndicate, I came to the conclusion that people truly live in loneliness.

I don’t exactly remember when I began stalking people, I guess this was something that became a habit way back in the days. I would set my target to be someone picked up at random on the street. I would then follow that person to the place he went. I followed people going to the park, meet up with friends or on their own. I followed them going to the grocery store to buy some stuff. At first, it happened that the person found out about me trailing them. But after some time, I learnt the tricks to appear as natural as anyone out there.

One of my favourite spots might be the subway. There is an extensive sample of the population to study. Plus, it is really easy to get near these people and peep on their phone screens, following to the place they go without being suspected. Thus I tried to get information out of curiosity on people I used to see everyday in the public transportation when commuting to work. There was this 40-year-old guy that would always ride on the exact same train every day in the morning, he would be sitting on the exact same seat, reading the exact same newspaper at the exact same page. There was also this young student commuting to college every morning, she would review her lessons in the train, I guess that she wasn’t lucky enough to be put up in the campus near the university. I remember seeing her laugh with her classmates one morning going to school and crying while coming back from school with the same classmates. These memories have left me with a profound impression. Finally, there was that one last person who was always taking the same train every morning with these people, this is the only person whose life remains unknown to me. She will be the next target on my list.

As time went by, I gradually became addicted to creeping on people’s personal lives because it offered more reality that what my own life could provide to me. I would only feel alive by experiencing life through what my other-selves were living. I enjoyed being happy with them when good things were happening to them, I would feel sad they were suffering painful distresses. Somehow, I could say that what caused me to look for emotions when following their lives was because I was truly lonely. In a sense, I believe they all did too and I hope that my presence has eased their loneliness as well.

Over time, I gradually became good at guessing what people were going to do, but I also gradually became bored with common profiles. Hence I developped a certain taste towards unusual ones, those that make you curious because you have no idea who they are just by looking at them. This is exactly while I was out there on the street by the subway station in search of a special someone to stalk, that I found this weird cat. It did something that I thought impossible. Fastforward a few minutes, I came back home, shady people were waiting for me and said to me they had a job for me. I had been expecting them and was wondering when they would approach me, knowing that they had been watching me for a few days. I offered them a cup of tea.

• Tailing
• Everyday Life
• Job
• Social Interaction