Tin Universe Monthly #16

by Brian C. Williams

city. Even among the hardcore anti-beyond human groups it was a surprise.

  Most of the good feelings that in the past has been expressed towards the B.P.D. are due to their district chiefs, among them one Sergeant Luke.

  Having good leadership can pay off.

  Everyone knows Sergeant Luke. He’s an athletic man in his mid-thirties with a nice smile and an even temper until he needs to unleash on someone. What he learned growing up in the military after signing up right out of high school is what he carries with him in each and all of his days now.

  The men under Sergeant Luke’s leadership follow along with their sergeant’s attitudes, though the ones in the holding cells were getting a bit jumpy. The officers could be overheard by the prisoners whispering about trying to call in more backup and crowd control but other districts having been cut back in funding personal just as hard as they had been this had put them on their own until someone higher up makes a call to them truly being in trouble and needing help.

  Situations like this find the police stuck in the middle of a crowd that might explode and attack everyone in their path including the person they are protesting the release of and also anyone else who could get caught up in their path including fellow protesters.

  A clusterfuck stew in the brewing.

  Sergeant Luke quickly moved into the cells and ordered his men to start escorting all the other prisoners and non-uniformed personal into vans that were pulling up in the back area of the station house. This part of the station couldn’t be accessed by the street so they were able to do this without protesters knowing what was going on.

  ‘So what about me?’ Chris asked after over hearing the conversations between the sergeant and his men.

  Sergeant Luke walked up to the bars of Chris cell. He looked at him and was both angry and happy. He was a little angry that people like Chris don’t seem to understand how dangerous grandstanding can be in times like these but he was also happy that there are still people willing to stand whether its grandstanding or not.

  ‘My men will do everything we can to protect those placed under our care be them prisoner or janitor but I’m not going to bow down to mob screams. You broke the law, you’re staying right there,’ He said the last bit while knocking on the bars of Chris cell.

  ‘And nor should you change your mind unless you think some things must happen outside the law?’ Chris

  Chris sat down with his back to the bars on a long bench that stretched across the middle of the cell.

  Sergeant Luke stared at him for a minute before leaving the cellblock.

  You hear it all the time, stupid comparisons that clearly show a low level of intelligence.

  Black Friday was like a riot scene.

  That inzone celebration was like a riot scene.

  Those kids in the ball pit at McDonalds were like a riot scene.

  The only person worse than writers at this is politicians.

  We do this because most of us in America have no clue really what it’s like to be in the middle of a riot scene.

  A riot scene is like a couple million ants attacking a sugar covered piece of meat.

  The scene outside the B.P.D. district station was quickly growing out of control. The protesters had massed into a mass of people which had grown to a hundred or so gathered.

  They were assembled out front of the police station in a gather that now was near a thousand or more in strength that was also had stopped traffic by their numbers alone.

  Without even trying.

  Just a big bunch of people standing in the way of cars getting from there to here and from here to there.

  A sight to see.

  The anger in the crowed was ready to surge. They were there for different reasons. A few in disapproval of Chris Friday being arrested. Some there because they were unemployed and frustrated. The disenfranchised ready to give up. The wanted, the unwanted, and let us not forget the ones there to rage against the machine and the machine was all the things that seemed to have more power than they did.

  Which to some people, at some point in their lives, it seems like is everything not them and of their life had more power than they did.

  Just about any huge gathering of human beings can turn like an animal. It’s just reality that even a pet can bite at any moment. Humanities base instincts to seek blood can swim over them in no time flat and not always with provocation or reason. And when it does blood is all they will see, all they will smell.

  Some people shy away from crowds because there is that little bit inside them that most of us hide from that is telling them sensibly that those crowds can turn and staying away might just be a pretty good idea. It’s not crazy to think a plane might crash or you might get into a wreck going down the highway or that humans are animals and that will never get that all the way out of their DNA.

  Nor should they want it to.

  It helps with the whole survival thing.

  The early actions of an upheaval are sometimes barely noticeable… at first.

  Sergeant Luke walked back into the cellblock after checking once again on the situation unfolding outside his station. This isn’t his first time being in the middle of a brewing riot situation. He’s had his share of experiences from his time in Afghanistan with the things they were ordered to do there they often found themselves surrounded and outnumbered by moral anger.

  ‘I’m tempted to send you out there to see if you could calm them down,’ Sergeant Luke told Chris.

  Chris stood from the cell bench he was still sitting on and walked over to the bars, ‘I’d go if you asked.’

  Sergeant Luke rubbed his face in frustration, ‘Yea, but you might also add fuel to that fire.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that. They have the right to be angry but they are venting on the wrong targets,’ Chris

  Sergeant Luke sat down in a chair outside the cell, ‘But you just being there might fuel anger even if you don’t have any attention of do so.’

  ‘My father was a cop,’ Chris told him.

  ‘I know. I went over your family history. He had a really good service record from what I read,’ Sergeant Luke

  ‘I know how human cops are,’ Chris

  ‘Cops are caught in the middle of everything these days,’ Sergeant Luke

  ‘Doesn’t help that some of you are part of the problem,’ Chris

  ‘I admit that. Every time a bad cop acts we hear a bullet being carved with our names on it, but I’m talking about all the other political stirrings hovering in this country. If pot is illegal, we are the bad guys and if it’s made legal, we are the bad guys because the feds don’t think it should be. We are sent to evict people from their homes, to stand and protect chants of hate that march through towns. We are ordered to patrol rich neighborhoods more, and cops are always smack dab in the middle of every pointed speech about gun ownership and gun control,’ Sergeant Luke

  ‘A lot of people being pushed against each other as enemies who shouldn’t be. They’re cleaving us all apart equally,’ Chris

  Chris noticed Sergeant Luke staring in the direction of the door of the cell area as if he was seeing the noise of protest coming from outside. He watched him rub his badge and shied before speaking again but Chris spoke first interrupting him, ‘It’s time it stopped being us against us.’

  ‘I think the world needs laws… I think it also needs those who are willing to stand outside the law when the law is being manipulated. The world needs people like you and people like me equally. The only way any of us is going to survive all this is by finding ways of working together,’ Sergeant Luke

  Jean Hatchett was sitting at her desk going over her notes before writing her article for the networks website. This assignment keeps paying off with new things being added. The head of news even wants to have a meeting with her about a full time position. Though there isn’t much chance of her taking it because of the loyalty clauses networks make you sign now, it will feel really good to be asked to go full time with someone.
r />   It was notes she had taken were about the details she gathered on how the rioters had stormed the police station and tore it apart. She’d talked to witnesses who were outside when the riot broke and within. Cops, protesters, and innocent bystanders alike.

  She tried to get some words from the Mayor but he had been completely silent since it all went down. There’s an idea now that the Mayor might be feeling pressure to come down hard on the protesters but he is afraid and waiting to see if things will die down first before making any on the record comments.

  Alistister Whisp’s people told her to fuck off but she didn’t let that make her feel special because they were basically telling everyone to fuck off when it came to trying to get him to comment about Chris Friday.

  Her temporary desk she shared with one of the sports writers was scattered with photos taken at the carnage site after the rioters had been cleared out. A nice police photographer emailed them to her as long as she promised not to turn any of them over to the network.

  The National Guard arrived twenty minutes after the doors fell and the rioters moved in. The Mayor didn’t want to send them to the scene and kept stalling but after a call from Sergeant Luke reminding him about all the files they have misplaced about him he owes the B.P.D. a lot and a big request should never be out of bounds.

  What followed the National Guards arrival was death, injuries, and a fire that burned down the police station. Almost every newspaper and news feed is running a photo of the still smoking