Terra Firma

Terra was not at all at ease as she sat in the airliner. She was ill at ease because the airliner was flying, an action she was never entirely confident in, and would probably never be.

The headphones seemed out of place with the outfit she was wearing; a black dress, a distinctly modern retro looking affair reminiscent of the Hollywood greats like Monroe or Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. An old school techno song pulsed loudly, rapid tempo matching her adrenaline-ridden heartbeat. The beat thumped her senses soundly, dulling her feeling of profound yet unexplainable panic.

A touch on her arm interrupted her reverie. It was the man sitting next to her; a severe looking yet handsome gentleman in his early 30's. His face was stony yet somehow interested or perhaps worried on her behalf.

'Ma'am?"
"Hm?"
"Excuse me, Ma'am… Would you mind turning that down just a little, please? I'm sorry… It's just that I'm trying to work and all…."
"Gomen Nasai," she blurted.

The man looked at her, quite befuddled.

"Too much time in Tokyo..." she realized, noting her error.

"I'm sorry…" The man nodded, acknowledging with the presumption that she was in fact sorry and he therefore took the implied apology as sincere, which it probably was.

Terra found that more or less, she was always sorry for something or another, it seemed. Too loud of music, bumping into someone; the list was ongoing and quite depressing.

Terra considered the man as he went back to shaking his head and rifling papers in his briefcase. She was reminded, somehow, of a man she once liked. Again, she realized her error. There were a lot of ex's in her past, and it was inevitable that someone or another was bound to look like one of them just on probability. A number that large made it a statistical likelihood. Jason? Kevin? Ethan? Josh? Who was it, she asked herself. She hardly knew anymore. He had the air of a government man about him. It fueled the fire of her curiosity, building up a pressure in the boiler of her mind that finally erupted in the form of a question.

"Excuse me, did you by any chance happen to go to West Point?"

The man looked startled. His reaction meant there was some sort of a connection, she knew that much now.

"No, no I didn't."

Terra was somewhat crestfallen. What was it that Kranz had said? Kranz had said a lot and a little at the same time, but one nugget of knowledge he had shared stuck in her mind and floated up every once in a while to register as very true; People who live in the past tend to be unhappy with the present.

The man in the suit looked her over again.

"This is a very odd day for me, you know."

Terra was intrigued.

"How so?"
"I've met two West Pointers on the same day, albeit under slightly different circumstances."
"Ah," A slightly extended pause gapped her words, "What is it you do, If I may ask?"

The man shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the known response she would have to his employment. As an IRS agent, there was little left to doubt in his mind anymore that the general public reviled his agency, his position and by proxy, him. He swallowed his pride. She seemed like a pleasant enough girl. He cringed and waited for the inevitable social rejection.

"I'm with the Internal Revenue Service, investigative division. We're working on a case down in Hollywood; big name studio that pulled some fraudulent tax shelters. You know Largo Studios?"

Terra knew Largo Studios very well. "Timmy fucked up," she muttered under her breath. Her mind quickly abandoned perception of the plane, and began mulling over Tim's possible transgressions.

The agent had met her qualifications, a white boy with power, good looks and personality, and this was too good of an information session to pass up. She decided to go for it. The charm valve creaked open, unleashing an untapped reservoir of savoir faire and the essence of flirtation. He'd soon tell her anything she wanted to know.

"So tell me, how IS it being an IRS agent?"