Dreams of the Quill

“Jason! Long time no see!”

“Hey, Frog.” The speaker, Jason, pulled the van door closed behind him and sat down on one of the folding chairs scattered about. Slouching back in it, his eyes wandered between the giant monitor on the ceiling and the man who had addressed him. Frog, as Jason had called him, a burly, pleasant-looking man, sat before a laptop, his hands idle, his eyes traveling back and forth across the LED monitor at a breakneck pace. He was so immersed in his work that Jason could hardly believe he’d notice him come in.

“Life treating you well?”

“Hardly,” Jason replied, thoughtlessly rubbing his aching wrists.

“You haven’t been around much, lately.”

“Yeah. Great experience and all, but interning’s interning, and I can’t afford to live if I’m not working.”

“I hear ya.”

“So what, you’ll actually show up once in a while if I call you hired?” came a woman’s voice on a speaker.

“I-Inspector!” Jason yelped. “I… well, um… but I don’t know, I’m not really cut out to be a fed…”

“Don’t downplay your own abilities, Jason!” yelled the burly man, without so much as glancing away from his laptop screen. “Think of how the Jazz must have felt before winning that game on the seventh! BUT THEY STILL WON!”

“Damn straight they still won,” replied Jason. “They believed in themselves, and they rocked.”

“Make like them, Jason. Believe in yourself, and rock. Inspector?”

“Yes?” Their superior’s voice was markedly unamused.

“Jason said, when he started interning for us, that hiring should wait until our unit was ‘ready for him to join it.’ But, as Jason will now inform you—”

“The unit will never be ready for me!” exclaimed Jason, pumping one fist in the air needlessly. The intercom system was sound only. “And I’m more than ready for it!”

“Yes, yes,” the inspector replied with a sigh. “Alright, Jason, you’re hired. We’ll get you your official code name, and have you sign the papers, and all that, later. And… P.T.H.?”

“Yes, Inspector?” responded the man Jason had called Frog, this time looking up from his computer and turning to face the speaker in the corner.

“Try not to say such puerile things in the future. We’re a proper government institution, and that means we have to act proper and respectable. Our work isn’t that intense right now, no, but this city’s safety rests in our hands. Entrusting cities to toddlers is not something even Chertoff’s gut would do. Jason? Don’t be like this … dork.”