K

When I reflect on the amount of sheer brilliance in the human race, I sometimes find myself overwhelmed. The talent of film-makers, authors, artists; the genius of mathematicians, philosophers and chefs. Yet, this intelligence is not distributed evenly across our species.

K must have gotten the short end of the stick.

I apologize. That wasn't very nice of me. Let me phrase it another way.

K is extremely, brutally, inconveniently honest. This, when considering his career path, translates to pure idiocy.

His motivations for becoming a secret agent escape me. As an Organisation that deals in secrets and lies, K's honesty was a weakness for us.

Perhaps he was fooled into thinking that lying is an evil (something told to children in order to discover who truly raided the cookie jar), or perhaps he was cursed to always speak the truth. Or perhaps, and this is my personal theory, he is dumb as a brick wall.

For those who think I am exaggerating, here is information that K has willingly given me: the password for his bank account, the location of his diary, the eleven secret herbs and spices in his chicken recipe, his real name, the meaning of life.

I am not sure whether to pity him or despise him, but K has evidently betrayed our Organisation. Whether intentional or not, K has been leaking our secrets.

This is low-level treason, compared to the rest of you, but it is treason nonetheless. Perhaps he is not directly a murderer, but who knows how many he has killed by revealing undercover identities or secret plans?

Not all are killers, but none among you, among us, are innocent.

Why do you not believe me?

---

I intended to write her a eulogy, but found that words failed me.

Language, my constant companion, comfort and friend. It abandons me when I try to write a final farewell to Q.

Yet I come back to it, time and again, for is there really any way to truly convey the power of emotions? A failed attempt is better than none at all. But language, poetry, art, perhaps none of it can truly express feeling in the way we intend it to. We create, and we communicate, but our true messages are so often lost in the translation between emotion, art, and audience.

So I have not written you a eulogy, Q. I have instead composed a poem, which I then encrypted and stowed away in the endless void known as the Internet. I titled this poem "Ode to a Lost Friend".

Lost, for perhaps you may be found again. Though you have left the world, traces of you are everywhere.

Every time I see someone be thrown out a window, every time I see someone trampled by a horse, I am reminded of the best times we spent together. And every time I see someone use a spork, I am reminded of the pain of your loss.

Memories of you, good and bad, live on. If only you had,

- A.M. Ham