Cross-Country Quest

It's almost time...

You are currently on your way home from work. Just a few hours ago, your boss gave you permission to go on a week-long summer vacation, unpaid of course, but still. As was previously mentioned, it is summer where you're at right now, but you won't be spending your week off staying at home to enjoy the weather.

Once you get home, you have to finish packing for your vacation, but this is no ordinary vacation: you're hitting the road for the entire duration of the week.

Starting tomorrow, you're going to start your Cross-Country Quest.

Why are you going on this quest?

To leave a series of cryptic clues for your arch-nemesis as part of your master plan.

This quest is part of your master plan: Shake your arch-nemeses off your back once and for all. You hope that by leaving home long enough, your enemies will stop stalking you at your house and at work. Thinking about it some more, you realize you may need more than a week to make sure that you have rid yourselves of them, but you'll think of some excuse for your boss.

When you do start your quest tomorrow, it is of the utmost importance that as you leave, you do NOT leave behind anything for your enemies to track you down again. No evidence, no clues, no nothing; you want to disappear.

As you near the humble apartment complex where you currently live, the sun setting behind you while you stroll on the sidewalk, you reminisce for the days when you could go about your daily life without having to watch your back at every moment, having to beware the eyes that may be watching you at any moment in time.

Before they came along and all but ruined your life, you were a simple person who never sought to hurt anyone. Oftentimes, and even at this very moment, you find yourself asking:

"Why do they target me, off all people?"

> Well that may have something to do with being one of top freelance spies.

You have spent many a sleepless night wondering that question, but as of now you still have no idea why they are so interested in you. It doesn't help that you have not had the opportunity to speak with any of them directly.

All you know is that starting nearly a year ago, they took an interest in you and started spying on you from a distance. Is it possible that they were stalking you before then and you only realized it until that fateful day 11 months ago? That is a question you don't like to think about, and it sends a shiver down your spine.

You consider yourself to be a normal, working class person, a solitary individual who prefers to stay in the background precisely because you hate getting attention from others... and that makes your current situation all the more unnerving.

One other possibility you've considered is that you've simply been mistaken for someone else, someone who they consider a threat enough to constantly monitor.

But that seems unlikely. You've probably been watching too many Alfred Hitchcock films.

There's also the matter of exactly who these spies are.

Who are the ones you refer to as "they"?