We do not get a lot of drop-in business at our company; I mean, our customers are large retailers, and there are none within one hundred miles of us. I was therefore somewhat taken aback when Ashley informed me that two men wearing black suits were here to see me. “Who are they?” I asked.

“They said that they were Special Agent Rogers and Special Agent Johnson,” she replied.

“From where?”

“They showed me some official-looking ID, but I could not make out the details.”

“OK,” I said. “Have them take a seat in the conference room and offer them some coffee.”

“We don’t make coffee in this office. We never have as long as I have been here.”

“When did you start?”

“Five years ago.”

“Oh. Offer them some water. Do we have water?”

* * *I had listened to Alex Jones on overnight radio enough times to know that an unexpected visit by men in black suits was bound to be trouble. What could they want? I had paid my taxes — I even got a refund. Surely that prank that I pulled back in the sixties could not interest those types, could it? Could our next-door neighbor, who does not like our cat, have pulled some strings?

I thought about climbing out my window and taking it on the lam, but the drop was about twenty feet, and my limbs are not as resilient as they used to be. I decided to see what they wanted. When I entered the conference room I encountered two men seated behind open briefcases. Each was impeccably coiffed and wore one of those wireless earpieces that resemble insects from an alien planet. They evidently had refused the offer of water.

I summoned up my most friendly voice and ventured: “Hi. I’m Mike. What is this about?”

The taller of the two men arose and introduced himself. “I am Special Agent Rogers, and this is Special Agent Johnson”

“No,” said the other, whose accent pegged him as a Southie. “I am Rogers on this trip. You are Johnson.”

“Right; I am Johnson.” He turned toward me. “Well, Mr. Wavada, if that is your real name, are you the owner of a cell phone with the number 860-xxx-xxxx (I am leaving out the number for reasons that will soon be obvious) that is currently under contract to Verizon Wireless?”

“I don’t know. I do have a cell phone. I keep it in my backpack. That might be the number. I wrote it down somewhere when Sue gave me the phone. Do you want me to look for it? By the way, I always wondered what the distinction was between a ‘special agent’ and a regular agent. Is it anything like ‘special eduction’ and regular education?”

S.A. Johnson narrowed his eyes for a moment as he ignored my questions. His glasses perched on the very tip of his nose. “Sir, this is a very serious matter. Our computers have combed the records of Verizon subscribers for peculiar usage patterns. Yours has been singled out as one of the most unusual of all. You have now had that phone for two years, and in that time you have made only six calls, and you have received only one.”

“Yeah, I remember that. I heard it ringing, but I did not know how to answer it. I pressed a bunch of buttons to see if I could get it to stop ringing. At some point I must have made the connection. Sue said that she could hear me swearing at it.”

S.A. Rogers took over. “And those outbound calls. They were all to the same number, 860-xxx-xxxx, a number on the same contract, and the longest one was less than two minutes. What was the nature of those calls? Did you provide instructions to your contact for the receipt of the actual communication? Did you tell them to buy a separate phone and to call you on a different number?”

“What? No, I only used the phone to call Sue when I was at a bridge tournament, and I was about to leave. I just told her that I was leaving, how long the drive would be, and then I hung up.”

“Do you really expect us to believe that you had a phone conversation with a woman that lasted less than two minutes?”

“Well, I might have accidentally pressed the End key while she was talking. I really do not like to talk on the phone.”

“What about when you go to the grocery store? Don’t you need to call her to find out what brand of paper towels you should buy or where they keep the mayonnaise?”

“The only things that I ever buy are apples, potato chips, and diet soda. And anyone will tell you that I almost never eat mayonnaise.”

“Why? Does it violate Halal?”

S.A. Johnson removed a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. “Sir, we have access to all of the activity on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and all other social media sites. There is no indication that you have ever used even one of these. The only possible conclusion that our computers could reasonably draw is that you must have something to hide. I mean, ever since the introduction of smart phones absolutely everyone uses these sites. Furthermore, we have found no record of texting of any sort. How do you explain this?”

I stopped him short with “I don’t have a smart phone.”

The two answered in chorus: “What?” Rogers was a little flat.

“Look, if it was up to me, I would not even have a phone. My wife got a new one and gave me the old one that she hated so that I could let her know when I was going to be late. I am never late. I always plan in a few minutes for unexpected contingencies, and I am very careful in my planning. I keep it only for emergencies like the time that I got rear-ended on the Mass Pike, but I usually forget to charge it. It will only hold a charge for a few hours, so most of the time it is completely useless to me.”

“Let’s be clear about this,” S.A. Johnson concluded. “When we report to Senior Assistant Deputy Director Wilcox that you were uncooperative, he will definitely not be pleased. You can expect to receive increased scrutiny from our agency, which I need not add, is essential to this nation’s security. The American people deserve no less We simply cannot afford to let anyone think that they can stay under our radar, so to speak, simply by avoiding the use of cell phones and social media. That was Osama’s plan, and you know what happened to him.”

* * *I knew that I had to do something about this. I remember having read that NSA evidently did not monitor the Internet directly; they probably used a private contractor, which was named in the article, to gather and summarize the information. By coincidence I knew someone who worked for that company. I sent him an e-mail describing my problem.

His reply said that my profile was rated as Q-7, which he indicated was very suspicious. However, he was pretty certain that he could take care of it. He would need my cat’s name as well as some cute feline photos.

I found some really good digital photos and e-mailed them to him.

The next day he sent me an e-mail with the reassuring news that my profile would be in the normal range within a week. He had used an app for his iPad called Get-a-Life to create Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts for me. The program required only a few basic facts and pictures to establish an ongoing Internet presence that would conform to established American standards. So, without any effort at all on my part my virtual self would be sending and receiving e-mails about acceptable topics, tweeting and retweeting, posting on Facebook, friending, unfriending, and liking patriotic things all over the web.

The telephone problem was equally easy to solve. I instituted a policy at work that all employees were required to use my cell phone for personal calls. I get a lot of abuse for having such a rinky-dink phone, but I prefer that to dealing with those two S.A.’s. I certainly wanted nothing to do with S.A.D.D. Wilcox.