Watch Yourself(Joseth Moore) Synopsis: Mary is a busy, mid-level manager but with plans for the medical field as a career. Exercise, eat right, no smoking…
She even has one of those smart watches to gauge her health. Trying to save a few bucks, Mary ordered hers via second-hand online. Whose vitals is that watch tracking?

Colorado Springs, Colorado. Present Day…
“Oh, come on!” Mary was just finishing up going through one of the self-checkout kiosks at one of the local grocery stores when one of her crewmembers from the restaurant called her.
“Davie, this better not be a sick-call –”
“My Grandma Sharice died…”
Guilt…
“I’m, I’m sorry for your loss, Davie…I know you two were close. Didn’t you just see her in Chicago recently?” By this time, the thirty-something restaurateur had bagged up her small groceries and was walking out of the store.
“Yeah…stroke…”
Mary sighed heavily over her phone. By this time, she was hopping into her small SUV. “Hate to sound like an attention-hog in this conversation, but that reminds me I need to do a better job of watching my blood pressure! You’d think with me being a medical student I’d have more discipline than I do!”
“Oh, yeah, how’s that new health-watch doing for you,” the young voice asked, sounding a tad more upbeat.
A guffaw from Mary as she was now navigating the parking lot and was about to join the metal river of cars on one of Colorado Springs’ busiest streets. “It’s not that new…I got this baby on sale during one of those Savings Day Deals online!”
“Used, I’m assuming?”
“Oh, yeah…I made sure to get the highest quality—hey, it’s my health, right? And even then, I saved about fifty percent! It kind of bothered me at first that I was wearing something that someone else wore before me. You know me, bro; I stick to the box stores! But it’s working great!”
An uncomfortable silence in the short conversation. “Ok, Davie,” Mary said, deliberately resuming her somber tone to fit the original discussion, “I’ll call around and see who can replace you today. Wait…how much time do you think you need off?”
Apparently, the teenager was with family. Mary could hear lots of soft talking and ambient noises behind Davie on the phone. Someone must have told the inexperienced youth what to say in response to Mary’s question. “I don’t know; probably three days…”
“Done! You take as much time as you need, Davie.”
“Thanks, Mary.”
And the call ended.

Hours Later…
Boxables restaurant was one of those trendy boutique establishments one finds in the more Hipster or Creative-types parts of any given major city. In the case of Boxables, just off North Nevada Avenue, downtown, it was segueing to the night crowd and Mary’s managerial replacement, Annette, finally showed up within the bustling restaurant.
“About damn time, Girl!” Mary quipped with her work-friend, who was power-walking to the back of the small kitchen that was connected to the office and refrigeration area.
“You just jealous, B, because I have a man that takes some of my time!” Annette flashed a playful smile while she clocked in at a kiosk.
“Jack’s working for Davie this evening,” Mary said in her business-tone as she boxed up some online orders at one of the counters. There were several staff running around the restaurant like it was a war ship under attack!
“Yeah, he text me earlier to give me a heads up…do I need to run to the bank to deposit before they close?”
“Nope; got that done for you!” By this time, Mary was finishing up her shift with those few e-orders and began to clean the work area.
“Thanks, Mary…Man, this night’s going to suck! Speaking of which, you have any plans for your one-day weekend?”
Mary playfully tossed the sanitized towel she was cleaning with at Annette! They both laughed.
“Well, since we’re still not back from our Winter break at my college, I thought I’d do a getaway!”
Annette’s head snapped over to Mary’s direction. “Oh, yeah? Where to?”
“Pike area! You know, I still haven’t been there since I moved from New Jersey!”
Out of excitement for her friend, Annette touched Mary on one of her shoulders. “Oh, you’ll love it out there, Mary! It’s not even that far ---”
Mary’s watch pinged…
Mary’s new smartwatch was defaulted where it did not chime very often, especially since its main function was as a health tracker. So, the ping grabbed Mary’s attention.
Just as well. Annette had to rush back into the melee while Mary swung her left wrist up to read what info her new watch was displaying. It was about three minutes later when Annette had to run to the back area of the restaurant, only to find Mary swiping through her watch with a frowning countenance as she did so!
“Everything OK, there, Chef Boyardee,” Annette put to her friend while grabbing some dishes for an order.
At first, Mary didn’t respond. She simply kept her attention on the sleek, digital watch-tracker. “This is literally impossible…”
All joking was gone at this moment. Dinner rush or not, Annette placed the dishes down and gave her full attention to Mary!
“Damn thing says I’m on my menstrual cycle!”
Annette flinched out of surprise, then laughed and resumed assembling a dish-order she had begun. “Well, at least you bought a beautiful watch to, oh, I don’t know…tell time! Mary, I hope you still have your receipt, because you definitely need to return that watch! How long has it been since you had your hysterectomy?”
Mary’s eyes shifted to Annette, her head still in the direction of the watch. “Six years, now!”
“I’m sorry you wasted your money, Kiddo…” And Annette was back out in the fracas of fellow employees and customers.

Next Day. Old Colorado City neighborhood…
Before Mary went on her getaway to Pikes Peak, she wanted to see if a nearby, tech fixer upper in her barrio was able to repair her smartwatch. Or, at least, tell her if it was even worth keeping. The tracker was perhaps a year old, but it definitely should not have been giving wildly incorrect data like what Mary had read the night before!
Digital Garage was one of those old school, local repair shops; just with a bit of a tech shine to it. Fernando, the owner, only had a couple of employees. The business had been around for about ten years, so Fernando was doing something right! And it was the main reason Mary decided to try to save a few dollars by going there.
Of course, it was not lost on Mary that she tried saving money by purchasing her health tracker online during a special deals day.
Given it was post-Winter holidays season, Digital Garage was not as busy as usual, so Fernando was able to take a look at Mary’s watch the same day she walked in.
While Mary was sitting with her smartphone in the small business’ tiny lobby, Fernando worked on her health tracker. First, he inspected the hardware portion—ensuring that there were no major bumps or openings for water to seep into the watch from rain, doing dishes, or sweat. The watch checked out fine there. Fernando then moved to the software side of things.
He used a code from one of his repair devices to connect to Mary’s watch and was able to glean key, detailed data about the smartwatch’s usage history…
“Mary,” the middle-aged, soft-spoken man called out to her from behind the store’s counter, “mind coming back here so I can show you something?”
Definitely old school!
“Yeah, sure, Fernando…” Mary then disengaged her phone, placed it into one of her pockets, and went behind the store’s counter and to where the owner was.
“Must be serious, I’m guessing,” she said while looking at the monitor to Fernando’s diagnostic device that was wirelessly connected to her smartwatch. The tracker had been placed atop a simple cloth material while Fernando’s tablet and other tools were splayed around her watch.
“Mmm, I’d say interesting…”
Mary gave a curious look at Fernando. He obliged. “As you can guess, this is one of my diagnostic tools. They’re able to let me see devices’ feature diagnostics—the displays on your watch, swiping options…
“But these diagnostics also let me see a device’s usage history!” Fernando pointed one of his thick fingers at series of codes and narratives. “Someone seriously augmented your health watch, Mary! It’s as if the manufacturer or the previous owner of the watch installed some advanced microchip or super-app!”
“Why do you say that? It’s just a tracker…how advanced could a person augment it?”
Fernando’s eyes looked off as he thought on how to illustrate his point. “You have a glorified watch that basically has a tool that doctors and nurses use to check your vital telemetry—if you were in a doctor’s office or a hospital, right?”
“Correct. Plus, calendars, messaging, and a bunch of other stuff…”
Fernando was nodding at Mary’s point. “Someone jacked up your watch so that it not only monitors your vitals, Mary, but other people’s vitals around you!”
Even Fernando’s two employees, a young woman and a male about the age of Fernando, turned and looked in their direction after hearing that!
“What,” Mary exclaimed. “That’s crazy! Is that even legal?”
This time, Fernando glanced at both of his employees; not sure himself of the answer. “My friend, I think you may have to do an online search for that one. My specialty is the mechanics of tech. And that’s what my diagnostic tool is showing me right now.”
He pointed back at the tablet as a reminder and for Mary to witness for herself.
Mary flinched with understanding. Fernando looked at her for explanation. Mary seemed embarrassed.
“One of my co-workers, yesterday…I, I think my watch registered her monthly cycle!”
An understanding look from Fernando. “That is exactly what I suspect this watch has the ability to do…boy, talk about Ghost in the Machine, huh?”
Mary gestured an agreement with a partial smile.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Fernando said while he started to disconnect his diagnostic tablet from her watch with the punch of a few keys on his device, “you bought it online; do you know who the seller was? Could be a clue…”
She hadn’t thought of that! “I’ll find out right after I pay you, Fernando.”
Indeed, it was a few minutes later that Mary went inside her parked car and did exactly what Fernando suggested!
Mary always kept files of her online purchases, via a cloud service operator. It was very similar to email, that way she didn’t have to download all her business files on a detachable-drive or on her devices’ hardware and take up memory-space while doing so!
Using her phone, Mary found the file that had her transaction for the tracker watch. She clicked on the file and saw all the information she needed to contact the seller of her watch.
Obviously, in contemporary times, most people leave emails, a number to text or message, social media-contacts…anything but a phone number! So, Mary decided to email the seller of her tracker.
The seller’s name was Zhencha. Mary did a quick translation online. It was Chinese for “Scout.”

One week later…
Mary was in the process of boxing up some online orders at Boxables. For that particular day there was a large order of boxed-meals for an anniversary of a local business. And that was on top of Boxables’ regular busy foot traffic, other online orders, and platform-orders for deliveries!
It was a very bad time to get a phone call…
Mary’s gave the slightest of a ping, but she knew exactly what it was! Fortunately, she was in the back area where the dry goods and miscellaneous storage were.
She looked at the number on her phone. It was an international number! Mary thought for a few seconds and remembered the situation with the watch tracker that she bought some weeks ago. Before answering the call, Mary scanned the back area of the restaurant—making sure no one else was there to witness a manager doing what so many teenagers at various jobsites were scolded for doing!
“Yes…?” She whispered, her eyes yet scanning toward the entry section of the dry storage room.
“Ms. da Silva…?” Male voice; Chinese accent…this had to be Zhencha!
“This is she…I am at work, but if this is Zhencha I have a few seconds –”
“Oh, please; just call me by the English version –”
“Ok, Scout.”
A pause. “Very good, Ms. da Silva! Alright, I know you don’t have a lot of time…I read your email, and you are correct about your tracker watch, Ms. da Silva.”
Mary was surprised at Scout’s directness! “Ok…So, you want to tell me why you sold me a tracker that scans the vital signs of unwitting fellow citizens, Scout?”
Another pause… “Ms. da Silva, do you remember the height of the Covid pandemic?”
She was starting to get impatient. She had to get back to the kitchen! “Of course…something like three thousand people died every day in the US alone! What does this have to do with my watch?”
“Remember all the contact tracing we had to do…?”
Jesus…
Suddenly, all those box-orders didn’t seem so important anymore! “Oh, my god…are you saying I might have Covid? Or…or one of those new –”
A gentle laugh on the other side of the connection. “No, Ms. da Silva…I mean, that is not what our project is about. It was just an example –”
“ ‘Our,’ Scout?”
There was that pause again.
“Ms. da Silva, do you really think humanity got through the Covid pandemic by simply wearing flimsy facemasks and sitting around our homes while our respective federal governments paid us to stay there?”
This time, it was Mary that paused… “Well, some of us were smart enough to get the vaccines!”
“Yes…some of us. And as you know, not everyone was, shall we say, inclined to get vaccinated, were they? And of course, Ms. da Silva, it wasn’t just the Corona virus…Monkey Pox, our old nemeses Smallpox and Polio have had a bit of a comeback in the US in the past few years! Like I said, I know you’re pressed for time… Let’s face it, Ms. da Silva, the World Health Organization and federal governments throughout the world really dropped the ball on some of these diseases, wouldn’t you say?”
“Let me guess; this is where you and whoever this Our-organization comes in?”
“You know, Ms. da Silva, I’ve always loved that aphorism: You have to make them want it…”
She could tell Zhencha deliberately left that sentence open-ended. “The health-watches…that’s how your organization is keeping track of various diseases, isn’t it?” Mary thought a bit more, lunch rush be damned! “But I’m guessing it’s not limited to smart watches, is it?”
Finally, there were calls for Mary from the kitchen and the restaurant lounge!
“I better let you go, Ms. da Silva,” Zhencha’s soft voice said with a twinge of regret.
“Wait! What is the name of your organization, Scout?”
That pause again. “You already know it…in fact, you all do! I’m just one agent, Ms. da Silva. We’re all over the world; keeping humanity safe from itself and we’re branded the Boogeyman for it.”
Mary frowned to herself for Scout’s words, but she had to hurry to the front. “Well, this citizen thanks you, Zhencha! I know the majority of citizens all over the world won’t agree with me on that, but I get it.”
“Why, you’re quite welcomed! Oh, and Ms. da Silva…watch your back.”

fin

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