From PRX.

I'm Kurt Anderson, and this is the Studio 360 podcast.

I've got a Christmas story for you.

There'll be no stockings hung or mistletoe or talking snowmen in this Christmas story.

Instead, it involves high-tech surveillance and melting polar ice caps, but I guarantee it's in the spirit.

I wrote this story for an anthology edited by the great fiction writer Neil Gaiman, and then, with the help of the great radio maker and studio 360 alumnus Jonathan Mitchell, we turned it into this radio drama. It's called Human Intelligence. I hope you enjoy it.

He found it painful to lie,

which was unfortunate for someone who had spent most of his life as a spy.

In recent years, for fun, he had sometimes told strangers, children, as well as their childlike parents, who he

really was. I'm a spy. I'm here in a long-term intelligence gathering operation, but it's super

top secret, so, you know, if you don't mind, I really, that's all I can say about it.

In America, in the 21st century, who was going to be anything but amused by a charming,

well-groomed old gentleman, making a fantastic remark or two?

I'm officially stationed thousands of miles away, but I've been on assignment in Chicago practically

forever.

He had looked like an old man even when he was younger.

He had grown a full beard to conceal the purple crosshatching of surgical scars on his

chin and upper neck.

Now that he was genuinely elderly, it pleased him that appearance and reality had come into

sink.

He looked old, and, by any standard, he was old. One less lie to live.

As for his mission, he doubted that anyone at headquarters was any longer aware of him or his mission,

...