poly_chromatic | 19∙00∙00 ☇ audio.

I know what I'm doing. [Though his tone would indicate otherwise. But it's not the kind of tone that might suggest he's prone to doing something stupid either.]

Haven't touched a drop since I got back.

No shit? You got will power for something at least. And cut the crap about knowing what you're doing, if that's fuckin' true you'd be without an arm already.

[Spoken casually and plainly like he's discussing the quality of the foam on his recently arrived beer.]

[Raymond doesn't respond at first, neither visibly nor verbally, until he leans back in his seat.]

Are you trying to tell me something? [His tone is flat, neutral, almost disinterested.]

Maybe. Are you lookin' for something you actually wanna here?

[Convoluted questions for a convoluted man.]

[Again, there's a pause before he answers.]

Try me.

[Well then. Orange rubs the corners of his mouth and fidgets like he's trying to prepare for what Raymond's more or less challenged him to do.]

You wanna believe cutting that thing off is gonna make it go away. You know sometimes when we go back we go back exactly the same way we left.

[Pointing at Raymond who knows this bit from experience.]

But you're gonna cut it out anyway because while you're here not having it there's better than waking up every fucking morning with a reminder of what you gotta go back to.

[Again. There's no visible reaction on Raymond's part, except for a slight, almost imperceptible twitch and press of his lips before he takes a slow, deep breath.]

You know me better than I thought you did.

It's kind of my job.

[He sips his delicious beer. Of course the part Freddy doesn't know is why now. He hasn't seen the count, doesn't really connect it to its context within the timekeeper's own world. It's hard to understand when you haven't had to live with it for your whole life.]

[Raymond takes another drink from his own. After he sets the bottle back down, he draws his left arm up, forearm parallel to himself, and stares down, as though he can see the glowing digits through the dark cloth. He doesn't need to, honestly; he's stared at it long enough that his mind's eye can fill in the blanks.]

What do you have to go back to? [If he ever left the City.]

Probably bein' shot in the belly. Fuckin' dyin'.

[Orange says it simply like he's long stopped trying to fight it. A part of him has accepted it, another part says it's bullshit and it won't happen because he and White won't let it happen. Denial can be a heck of a strong force this way.]

[The fingers of his left hand curl into a slight fist before he can think not to. He purses his lips again, swallows, and looks up at Orange again.]

Nothing to look forward to, then.

Kinda depends on how you look at it but no it sure doesn't sound like much does it.

[Orange shrugs and sips his beer. A serious downplay of that outcome is inevitable. It's better than crying over it, he's already done that anyway.]

[Raymond nods, keeping his head bowed a bit longer than usual.]

How do you deal with it?

If I could tell you I'd be rolling in gold selling my technique to motherfuckin' everybody.

[Freddy shakes his head, smokes out for another cigarette to light up.]

[He keeps his gaze down for the moment, taking a deep inhale through his nose. He's loosed his fingers from the fist by now, but his hand is still tense.]

You know I was on the force for...for fifty years.

Yeah? And?

[This is going somewhere, he knows it, can tell there's something bubbling under the surface of Raymond Leon by how his posture, his tone, and his eyes try to contain it.]

[His eyes flicker back up to Orange, but nothing else particularly changes about his demeanor.]

So that's fifty years of doing the world's most thankless job, where your chance of survival isn't just determined by who's trying to kill you on what day but also how quickly you burn through your daily pay — of doing it not just because it's the only way out of an even worse situation, but because it's necessary to keep your society from falling apart at the seams.

That's fifty years of protecting that society from the people who would undermine it, who would try to destroy it, fifty years lived just one day to the next... Fifty years of my life that I've given up for this.

[He looks back down to his arm, hand having clenched back into that fist, and stares for a moment before tugging off the cloth, exposing the time on his clock — 0000∙00∙0∙00∙00∙02 — and pushing it away from himself.]

And look where it's gotten me.

[He's listening and taking it in but Orange can't help thinking Raymond sounds like one of the old timers. Guys who have been on the job for their whole lives to a point where it is their life, a lifestyle they can't do without. They'd rather work than retire, they'd rather die than not police. All the while they'll complain about thankless job while scraping scum off the sidewalk. It's not an uncommmon sentiment, officer or timekeeper alike. He doesn't interrupt Raymond, not until he looks down at that flash of skin to the number two.]

..........What the fuck happened?

[Orange doesn't have a full understanding of how his world works but he doesn't need it to know Raymond Leon can't believe the shitty hand he was just dealt. He's not bleeding out all over the place but he's fucking dying too.]

I was careless.

[That's the simplest part of it. But it's hardly what burns him the most.]

There are only two ends to being a timekeeper: you quit, or you die. It's always the toughest thing for the new kids to swallow. [Except for those like him, of course, those who had come from the ghetto, where the chance of dying from day to day was even likelier.] The only way to stay on top, to do your job well, is to stop worrying about your mortality. Whatever seconds you spend minding your clock gives your perp all the more time to make a clean getaway.

[Not that there wasn't more to it than that. Raymond is old enough that he's seen more to just about everything in his little world. But that is not his primary concern — not now, nor has it ever been.]

I've cut it close before. I've cut it close every day. But the one day I finally slip up for good...

[His nails are digging into his palm by now, and he swallows again.]

Will Salas, Sylvia Weis. Two kids who kept giving me the slip, trying to overturn the whole system, trying to undo everything I've given my life to protect... Only when I finally had those two cornered...

[They were almost out of time themselves, he remembers. But it was still quite a bit more time than himself, and it was still enough for them to possibly survive — to keep giving him the slip even after his certain death.]

[All of this sounds foreign to Freddy who doesn't live paycheck to paycheck, not just because of his line of work but also because of the time he lives in. It's not the 60s of his parents, not the 70s of his childhood, but the cusp of a booming era turning into the last decade of the millenia. Coming from a city where he survived days of rioting, fires, smoke, the money is the least of his worries. He knows very well there are some who think it's ridiculous how he lives unmarried, in an apartment, still in the heart of Los Angeles, where all the opportunities he's opened up for himself could be cast away by a perp taking a crack at his head. But that's what makes him a cop, he does it because he believes it works.]

You feel like you got cheated.

[Orange finally speaks, leaning forward with both elbows on the table, cigarette hand hovering nearby for the occasional puff. He doesn't know these two, Will Salas and Sylvia Weis, but it doesn't matter. Who they are doesn't matter, it's what they did, what they were trying to achieve in a matter of who knows how long compared to Raymond Leon's life of dedication.]

You got cheated out of the only thing you're really good at, now you wanna do whatever it takes cause you don't think this works anymore.

[A wave of his smoke at the arm. He's not calling Raymond a traitor to the cause per se, what's that college term he can hear in the back of his mind...paradigm shift?]

[At first, Raymond's brow lifts. Then he laughs.]

I wasn't cheated. [But there's no humor in it.] I lost. I made a mistake — one mistake in fifty years of service, and that makes everything I've worked for meaningless.

[Fifty years of his life, all gone to waste for a single mistake.

Not that he fully believes that, much less that it's entirely his own fault. But believing that his work had any meaning to it, even if it might now be put to waste, is all he has left to cling to. He's not ready to give it up yet, if he ever will be.]

It doesn't matter what I want to do. There's nothing I can do, not in two seconds. There's not enough time to do a goddamn thing but... [He stops, swallows again — harder this time, because he can't yet bring himself to actually say it.] There's not enough time.

If you weren't cheated out of something you really really honest to fucking god believed in you wouldn't be this pissed off. Don't give me that crap about making one mistake out of fifty fucking years. Who the fuck in training told you every day you get to go home it's because you didn't fuck up?

[His own tone is still cool but serious, not so much Mister Orange. More like Officer Newendyke.]

Some fellas are lucky and some fellas ain't. [Thank Christ Pink isn't here to hear that.] Sometimes your partner has your back, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes a fucking two bit cocksucking asshole saw you before you saw him. Bam. You're dead. Sure as hell wasn't your fault but hey you signed up for this you're gonna keep doing it anyway. [He waves the smoke at his own head.] If all that doesn't run through your head every day you put your kit on, your job was meaningless way before you got tagged.

[Okay that's enough of that rant. He puts his cigarette out because the rest of it, when it comes down to it is true. Two seconds from death, all of that shit takes a backseat to fucking dying.] You think cutting that off here is gonna keep it off when you go back? What if it taking out kills you on the spot? It's like...a part of you, right?

[Back to just Freddy Newendyke, trying to help the guy figure out his options.]

[Once again, Raymond refrains from immediately responding. Part of him is still dead certain that Orange doesn't know what he's talking about, that he's still fresh compared to him, and perhaps that shows in the quiet restraint of his current demeanor; that part is strong enough that he wouldn't hesitate to voice that much if this were anyone but Orange, but then again, he wouldn't have said this much in the first place had this been anyone but Orange.

Besides that, there's a small piece of doubt in him that's steadily growing, and perhaps that shows through as well. But he still doesn't want to even consider it, not yet.

So he's going to answer his question first, before acknowledging anything else.]

That's not how it works. [He says it while shaking his head and reaching for his beer again.] The time that keeps you alive is in your whole body; the clock just measures it. I've seen... [He pauses, takes a drink, rephrases.] Sometimes people get the idea that cutting it out or chopping the whole arm off will put a stop to it. But all that does is keep them from knowing how much time they have... It keeps them from being able to see it coming.

[He pauses again, then downs the rest of the bottle.]

So it doesn't matter. Whatever I do here isn't going to do a damn thing to change what happens when I go back.

19∙00∙00 ☇ audio.

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