I sat at my desk. Crabtree sat across from me. We were waiting for the end of the day or for a warrant to get approved. The end of the day was most likely to come first. I was making a tower out of cards, which is pretty hard. Crabtree rolled dice repeatedly, making pattering noises as they fell onto a stack of paper. Once and a while, one of his dice landed on my desk, destroying my tower. The fifth time it happened, I was really annoyed. My tower never really got high enough for it to be considered a tower, but restarting wasn't very fun.

"You know, Higgins," Crabtree said, "I think that we could make a really fun game with these dice."

I looked up. "Oh, this is going to be good."

Crabtree kept talking. "You could have five or six dice and you roll them and try to get them to all be the same number. You would only be allowed to roll once per turn."

"Only once? The chances of rolling all the same numbers in one roll are small." I said.

"Well maybe three then, like baseball. Three strikes, you're out."

"What if two people roll all the same numbers? Who wins?"

"Well you could have more than one challenge. You could have to roll for only ones and then only for twos and then threes all the way up to six. And then if you roll two ones you get two points or if you roll three twos you get six points. I'm sure you get the idea now."

"George, that sounds like a boring game. People would get frustrated when they don't roll what they want. And it's all luck. You can't base a game on luck."

"I'm sure lots of people would enjoy it. Any age can play and it's easy to learn, even for idiots like you."

I laughed. "The only idiot here is you. The game is ridiculous."

"I disagree."

"I'd rather compare fingerprints for a day than play that!"

"Well you're hardly fun to hang around with. Fun people will appreciate the game."

"It'd be more fun doing surveillance on a rock. I would rather watch a rock for a day. Or comb the sewers for tiny little clues. Or copy out the dictionary."

"Higgins! You're so skeptical! You-"

"Would you two shut up?" yelled Brackenreid from his office.

We lapsed into silence.

—

The both of them sat, silently looking forward to the future. Higgins, he was thinking of the dinner he was going to have. He had splurged on quality meat for once. Crabtree was looking forward to the time where he'd be a millionaire thanks to George Crabtree's Dice Game.