Brain Twister

In nineteen-fourteen, it was enemy aliens.In nineteen-thirty, it was Wobblies.In nineteen-fifty-seven, it was fellow-travelers.And, in nineteen seventy-one, Kenneth J. Malone rolled wearily out of bed wondering what the hell it was going to be now.One thing, he told himself, was absolutely certain: it was going to be terrible. It always was.He managed to stand up, although he was swaying slightly when he walked across the room to the mirror for his usual morning look at himself. He didn't much like staring at his own face, first thing in the morning, but then, he told himself, it was part of the toughening- up process every FBI agent had to go through. You had to learn to stand up and take it when things got rough, he reminded himself. He blinked and looked into the mirror.His image blinked back.He tried a smile. It looked pretty horrible, he thought-but, then, the mirror had a slight ripple in it, and the ripple distorted everything. Malone's face looked as if it had been gently patted with a waffle-iron.And, of course, it was still early morning, and that meant he was having a little difficulty in focusing his eyes.