Brian Maniscalco led a happy existence as a high school senior and gaming enthusiast until he began getting certain phone calls. Strange phone calls. He initially paid them no heed and hung up without a second thought. However, he soon realized that they couldn't be written off as MCI tellers or newspaper salesmen, since his last name was never pronounced incorrectly. Interest piqued, he finally heard out the scruff-sounding stranger, who offered him a post on the top-secret government agency, the GIA. Disturbed at the prospect of being uprooted from his down-to-earth life, he refused and left the experience behind him.

Several weeks later, while attending a college fair, Maniscalco was whisked away by a pair of sunglass toting, suit-clad secret service agents into a curtained, unmarked booth in a poorly lit corner of the floor. There he was presented with a long lecture, a film generated from a decades-old slide projector, and a series of informative graphs and pie charts. A glaring lamp that hung from the ceiling by a single, naked cord shone down on the barren metallic table and pair of uncomfortable chairs; Maniscalco was already sweating, and clearly an interrogation was next. There was no need, however. Having been thoroughly convinced of the necessity of his actions, he donned a fedora hat that hung on a coat rack in the corner of the shady booth and matter-of-factly announced, "I'm in."