#1049

Pasco knocked, listened for the soft hum of the door unlocking, and entered the office.

Like most all offices in the bureau, of anyone who was anyone to remember, it was an imposing wood paneled room. There were more bookcases than books, the large, cryptic seal of the bureau, and an wood desk that was big enough to sleep on. All of that faded into the background compared to view that the office had. Instead of the wall to the right being wood, it was full glass panels that looked out over the atrium of the Special Containment division. The purple trees looked so bright from that angle.

“Lovely, isn’t it?”

Pasco spun to face Chief Carrasco with an embarrassed blush that he tried to tamp down. She was a slight woman with large brown eyes and hair the color of dry straw. She would be unassuming if it weren’t for the fact that she was who she was. Pasco wondered how often she had used that to her advantage out in the field. She had been one of the best, after all.

There was a slight whir of servos from her vicinity as she came to stand next to him. “The trees can be very distracting, if you look at them too long. I used to wonder if that was an actual feature of theirs. In the wild—well, in the wild of the reality they’re from—there are these sloth like creatures that live in the trees. They drop from above on unsuspecting prey and sever the spinal cord before slowly pulling it back up into the trees. They devour it over a few weeks. The prey is a live to start.”

“Oh.” Pasco said, because what did you say to that? What did you say when it was said in a way where you know that the person who said it had lived it. He wondered who she had lost on that trip. And then he wondered several more things, one of which slipped past his filters. “A symbiotic relation then? The trees draw the prey in and then, what, are fertilized by the… leftovers and the excrement?”

“I did used to wonder,” she agreed, words almost wistful before she turned sharply. “But no, turns out that people are just fascinated by purple trees, and just about everyone in this place needs to get out and touch some damn grass.”

Pasco did his best to turn his snort of surprised amusement into a cough.

“You can laugh, Argall. If you don’t laugh, you’ll go mad,” Chief Carrasco said. She braced herself on the arms of one of the leather chairs set close to the window before letting herself drop in it. “And take a seat.”

“Yes ma’am,” Pasco mumbled and hurried over to the other chair. There was a small sidetable between them with a half finished four dimensional chess game on it. He tilted his head as one of the black pieces moved. He used to love chess, back when it was just playing it against his grandfather and the other elders in the park.

“I’m pretty sure that I’m playing against future me at the moment,” Chief Carrasco said with a wry smile. “She’s kicking my ass.”

This time, Pasco let the little laugh out. “Well, at least you know you’ll get better.”

“Ha, good way to look at it, Argall. I better hope it is me then and not the next sod to have this office. But I should have years left, even if there’s only about half of me left,” she said and knocked on her left left leg with her gloved left hand. The noise was a decidedly hollow clang.

Pasco sat in the pause until it got awkward enough to make him speak. “Not that, I mean, what I think doesn’t mean much, but I’d think so. Everyone knows about your time as a Trapper. Well, I mean, the non redacted bits, of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed with all the gravity of a person who knew better. Nothing stayed completely redacted for long inside the bureau. “Does all your knowledge give you any idea of why you’re here, Agent Argall?”

“No ma’am,” Pasco said honestly. “Not a clue.”

She hummed and looked back out over the purple trees. “That doesn’t surprise me. Most people’s biggest blind spot is themselves, you know? We like to think that we’re self aware, but we’re really not. It’s easier to lie to ourselves about ourselves than face who we are. Everyone want’s to be clever or good or at least right. But right doesn’t matter as much as being alive, not in the end. Some people never learn that before the end comes. You, though, I think you’ve got good instincts somewhere in there. You just need to stop listening to what you’re trying to tell yourself and listen to what’s actually happening.”

Pasco blinked. That wasn’t what most people said about him. He’d been kicked from the army (he was in it for the scholarship money) to the bureau as fast as they could get rid of him. He’d barely lasted an time in the mail room (not tha the much wanted too). And now it felt like the NO section was happy to get rid of him too…

Or was that just him lying to himself?

He wasn’t always good at seeing the good.

He looked over at the purple trees. “This is about the snek, isn’t it? Er, sorry, ma’am, I mean NO-M-2863.”