My senior year in college I was invited out for drinks by a professor, which was awkward enough in itself until I realized that the friend he brought with him was a CIA recruiter. There was nothing clandestine about it. They were looking for analysts, he told me, people who were good at "connecting the dots."

In another reality, I might have followed that career path. And in that Bizarro World, thirty years later, I might now be one of our nation's top intelligence officials.

Scary.