"The Agency" part 1

Who: A blonde woman
Where: A universe beyond this universe
When: Quarter past forever
In a lavish office, surrounded by rustic wooden television sets that
seemed to be from the 1940's, a blonde woman sat at her desk. Her
face was set in a constant scowl as she tried to understand the
extremely thick and dusty book in front of her.
The book was labelled "An entire history of Universe L-388, dimension
zero". It looked like a mammoth read, and it would have been even
easier if the timeline didn't keep changing.
She slammed the book shut in frustration and rubbed her eyes. She
spun the globe in front of her and imagined all the tiny people
screaming in panic.
Her office had little bits and pieces from all different centuries,
but not enough to create clutter. Several globes lay on her desk,
including one she picked up occasionally and squeezed when she was
feeling stressed. Now was one of those times.
A cheeky face peered over the divider between her desk and the
next. "Hullo." it said. The owner of the face walked around and
perched himself on the edge of her desk. He was wearing the same
uniform everyone in the office had to wear, it was the colour of
dying suns, with a tie to match.
"Having problems blondie?" He asked. Then introduced himself
as 'Barrie'. The blonde woman had often wondered what omnipotent
trans-dimentional beings would be called, and she never had even
contemplated the name 'Barrie'.
He held out a hand for her to shake, which she took cautiously.
Barrie was clearly one of those people who liked to boast about
things he had done, so it didn't take him long to begin talking about
his various successes.
"My longest is seven billion years, what's yours?" he asked.
The blonde woman bit her lip. "Well I've only just started." She said.
"Oh that doesn't make any difference here." Barry scoffed. "Time
isn't the same here. In fact I start a week next tuesday."
The blonde woman smiled weakly and said "One."
"One billion, that's not bad eh?" He said. "You'll be pro in no time."
"No. Not one billion, I mean ...one ... year."
"Oh." Barry's face dropped. He seemed to find it difficult to say
anything after that.
"But I'm new." The blonde woman said.
"Yes of course." Said Barrie, unconvinced. "But a cute girl like you
won't take long to get far in this business." he said with a wink.
"What's that supposed to mean?!" The girl shot back angrily, then
realised her outburst had been louder than she had intended. She kept
her voice down in case her bosses were listening.
Barry just grinned. "So what do I call you?" he said, leaning even
further over her desk. "I can't just call you 'blondie' can I?"
She hated that name he'd given her, but she couldn't blame him as so
far she'd not even told him her real name. She didn't even want to
tell anyone her real name. It wasn't as if she was keeping any great
secret, but right now she preferred to keep everyone at arms length.
"Oh come on, don't keep me in suspense!" He said. "If you won't tell
me your real name, at least give me something I can call you. A
nickname, or abbreviation, or something."
She began to think, think of anything that would shut him up and make
him go away. She had so much work to do and just wanted him off her
desk.
"Annie." She said after a few moments thought, and congratulated
herself on inventing a shortening of her name that didn't sound too
bad.
"Annie." the man parroted. "Well then Annie. I hope your day is going
well?"
Her face scrunched up again. "Not really." Then cursed herself for
saying anything, now she'd have to explain to him what was wrong.
"Oh?" Barry said, leaning forward in the most obvious attempt to play
the sympathising co-worker she'd ever seen.
She sighed. "My universe..." she started.
"L-388?"
"Yes. Dimension zero. Well, it's complicated. There's this man, he's
like some cliché cowboy. He's not really important, but he keeps
making these stupid decisions that just...ruin the universe."
"Ruin?"
"Yes! Ruin!"
"Universes don't have to be squeaky clean you know." Barry said,
matter of factly. He gestured around the grand office. "Do you think
we'd have all this if we made squeaky clean universes?"
"Well... no. But..."
"Just remember..." Said Barry, picking up the globe from her desk and
causing various cataclysmic disasters on the world it
represented. "...They're this small. They're tiny. And we're this
big!" With his ego sufficiently swollen, he threw the globe at Annie.
She caught it in both hands and cringed at the thought of the poor
little people.
Annie placed it carefully back on it's stand and continued her work.
<To be continued>