I'm a replacement.

I don't think too much about it, however: when your dog dies, you get a new one. Though perhaps you can't upgrade the model and because you hold sentimentality for the old one, it's less of a replacement than a substitution. I don't mind that euphemism.

I hear a lot of stories about this faction. The specificity is irrelevant, I think, because it gets warped like hot plastic as it passes from mouth to mouth. Make something into a myth, I guess, and further delude the horrors already present in the current. We tend to possess some fleeting hope of a benevolent God peering down at us through gauzy tulle and feathered clouds, that the righteous will always be shepherded to safety and washed ashore in the sand, and the wrongdoers of earth are permitted to wreck a controlled amount of havoc if not just to teach the rest of us to be on our good behavior. Each individual treats themselves like the protagonist, that the forces of fate churn and turn like clockwork against him, his moral compass indefinitely fixated on the path of true enlightenment and purpose: if he fails his quest, anyways, he's a martyr. A win-win situation. By this logic, I could do anything, and justify that it was the right thing to do.

My purpose isn't definite, though. I don't have time to think of that. Let myself get absorbed in some stale gobs of philosophical muck—that's hardly worth the scum on my shoes. Take each second as an active pursuit towards an attainable goal, and then, after completed, develop a new one: I'll make my own purpose, carve it out of ivory and marble. I won't let anything else sway me.

That's what happened to him, though: empathy settled like liquid gold in his guts and steadily cooled until it was too heavy to bear. Great pain and suffering, his moral compass shattering like a heel to a locket—I can't really say I'm excited, but I'm certainly looking forward to reading about Will Graham's analyses, to find out the science and psychology to a man who claimed anything with little more than some great desire for magic miracles and a fanciful imagination. That didn't work out too well: with nothing to ground himself on, he just rotted away and never even knew his feet were leaving the floor.

Pathos is the ugly cousin of logos. Tattlecrime's favorite Graham quote was, "I just interpret the evidence," but the lapse in definitions leads me to think otherwise: paraphrased, he means "I just make up stuff based on what I think."

Plan B, I guess.

The door opens, my steepled fingers and off-focus gaze fixated on the wall facing me is lulled back into the sharpened, vivid world of reality. I don't indulge in day dreams, but I'd be exhausted if I allowed myself to criticize every little thing I came across. There he is, a grim-faced man with the chiseled features of a toad-mouthed Carthaginian general, pock-marked like a medieval king: I wasn't expecting more, but I can't exactly place what brand of disappointment begins to drip into my guts as he sees me, nods, and says with half-hearted pleasantry, "come in."

And I do so, my feet dragging across the floor, a sigh clotting in my throat as my back cracks and I card fingers into my hair and brush it away from my eyes. Modest office, modest chair, a modestly-dressed man: I'm underwhelmed, if anything.

"I'm glad you made it," he states, pleasant enough, and it doesn't come close to breaking the ice. I settle down, and I manage to smile, at least out of courtesy. My teeth feel like a horse's.

"It was no problem," I state, "and I was surprised that you'd request me. I didn't have the slightest clue that my sphere of influence, per se, extended so far off what I considered the edge of the Earth."

He still looks like a toad. I can't tell if he's annoyed or he doesn't understand my convoluted, badly-worded comment: either way, he nods carefully, acknowledging that he heard me but he's weary that I'm not going to be up to par to Will Graham, moody and distasteful, an emotional wreck of an adult. Maybe I should start shaking, sweating, licking my lips and rubbing my neck like I'm certain a swarm of mosquitos is after my blood. "You have incredible credentials, you know," he reminds me, "and I know for a fact that you graduated at the top of your class. Valedictorian, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many years ago?"

"One, sir."

"Been out in the field yet?"

"Not often, sorry."

Then he nods, mulling over his decision (or at least giving the appearance of it, because I know for a fact that he wouldn't do something as stupid as call me over to give me an interview and waste his time with nothing more than an attempt instead of the beginning of an action), before he exhales, looking intent, lacing fingers together as he places his hands on the desk and aligns himself rigidly. Professional. Curt. Reminding me that I'm no Will Graham, that I'm the second choice, that I'm going to have to work twice as hard and perform twice as well because I'm not his friend, not the way he was. That's fine. Whatever. "I'm certain you've heard of the cases we've been working on, both past and present. The level of…" he pauses, as if I'm a frail piece of spun sugar like Will Graham was, that the wrong word is going to crush me like a snail's shell. "The grotesque and macabre nature of the cases we deal with often require incredibly emotionally strong agents, those who possess keen stability and a grounded worldview. The goal is to not get involved, because involvement and injection into the situation causes…" his voice slithers to a stop, and he steps up his game, refusing to show any cracks in the sturdy foundation of his ethos. A shabby brick building slathered with some paint. "It causes great distress and often is emotionally overwhelming."

"I understand, sir. I've already had several evaluations and have been determined as incredibly emotionally stable. I have no history with any mental illness or trouble." I wish he'd cut to the chase, but I see him painting a portrait of my offer to ensure I vividly understand that, after he casts the line and I plummet into this garbage, it's my responsibility not to get too weighted down so the line snaps. Keep my head above the water. Don't end up like Will Graham 2.0.

"That's reassuring," he reminds me, and there's a lilt of sincerity in his tone, "that's very reassuring. Mr. Thakore, correct?"

"Yes, sir, Ameya Thakore." The name plummets from his lips like a lead ball, and I feel my jaw tighten with the way he pronounces it. Tha-core. I make as much effort as I can, obnoxious accent like a wannabe troubadour, to say Tha-koh-reh.

"Well, Mr. Thakore," he sighs, as if he's resigned, that there is really nothing else to turn to or discuss and he'd rather have me far away as to never develop emotional attachment to another expendable lab rat ever, ever, ever again, and he stands, offers me his hand, curtly shakes mine and shows me the door. "I'd like you to consult on a case." The look of bewilderment must be grotesquely apparent on my face, because he gives a halfhearted look of sarcastic imitation. "Now. Nothing engaging, just taking a look at some evidence." I agree, I nod, he tells me to follow him and I grab the jacket off the back of my chair and hoist it over my arm as I trail behind him down a hall.

You never really consider schisms between separate eras in your life, when you finally stop seeing anything interesting in playing outside, when you realize that you're a teenager not in physical age but in fucked-up mental mindset, when you go through your early-quarter-life-crisis and panic because you're going to die sooner than you thought. At this point, walking down the halls, arms folded across my chest and my eyes trained on the lumbering back of a man who looks like a bump on a log, I didn't consider this much more than work, what I got myself into.

I doubt I regret anything I do in my life. I don't have time for that.