Barking up the Wrong Tree - An Object "Fanfiction"

Chapter 1 - It's All Downhill From Here

A light rain was falling that day. Tree was watching it through the window from the second floor of his office. There hadn't been any crimes so far this morning. There also hadn't been any crimes yesterday, or the day before that. In fact, the phone hadn't rung in a whopping three months, fourteen days, and seven minutes, and that was only because Pen wanted to go see a concert. (Tree had refused the offer.) And so, the phone, having not rung for the past three months, fourteen days, and eight minutes, had been gathered quite a layer of dust around it. This layer of dust would be disturbed in around fourteen minutes, but, of course, Tree was unaware of this fact.

Tree had been a private eye since the Host War ended and Mergerville was founded. Initially, he was very busy, since public unrest was high and chaos lingered around the streets. But soon, after a police force had been established, the number of cases slowly dropped, until three months, fourteen days, and nine minutes ago, when it essentially became zero. Luckily, Tree had made enough money in those early days to purchase his own two-story building, where he both lived and (up until three months, fourteen days, and ten minutes ago) worked.

There was a knock on the door. That was rather unexpected, as the last time that had happened was... well, a while ago.

"Come in," called Tree from his desk, as the turned away from the window. The door opened. Remote, his assistant and good friend, was standing there. Her face looked incredibly and completely neutral.

"Tree, Golf Ball just visited," Remote vocalized neutrally. "She said something about a device that predicts the future and how something was going to happen in..." Remote glances at the clock above the window that Tree had recently turned away from. "At this point, it would be in precisely eleven minutes."

Tree looked at her, slightly confused and slightly more suspicious. "What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure. Golf Ball left immediately after saying it," Remote replied in a neutral manner. The clock ticked forward one more minute.

"Hopefully she's right. Nothing interesting has happened in the past three months, fourteen days, and twelve minutes. But who's counting?" Tree didn't actually want anything to happen. He was perfectly happy with the life he had been living for the past three months, fourteen days, and now thirteen minutes; plain, uneventful, monotonous, and several other synonyms for boring.

"Also, I was wondering if..." Remote said with a neutral inflection. "Uhm..." At this point, Remote was sweating neutrally. The sheer amount of neutralness she said the following sentence with is so great that it is unable to be quantified in a reasonable amount of digits using the base-10 system. "Coiny is throwing a party this evening. Will you, uh, go with me?"

This is new, Tree thought. Not only had it been three months, fourteen days, and fourteen minutes since anyone had asked him to do something, but Remote had also never seemed interested in that way. He hadn't been either, and still wasn't, but since he had nothing better to do, he responded with an equally neutral "Sure."

"Cool and good," said Remote in a tone that was so neutral that it was almost painful. She then left the room, leaving Tree sitting at his desk beside the phone which was covered in dust which would be disturbed in six minutes. He watched as the clock ticked forward so that the hour hand was about thirty-thirty sixtieths past the four and the minute hand was about three fifths past the six, indicating that there were only five more minutes until the aforementioned occurrence would occur.

Five minutes later, the phone rang, disturbing the layer of dust that had settled on it.

Tree picked up the phone and answered it.

"Tree! Help! Apple's been... MURDERED!" 

At this point, it had been zero minutes since something interesting had happened.