Chapter 4: On Trena in a Small Town
The mob had been growing all day. They packed the streets of the small town of McConnellsville. People were moving down the only street of the town as the town’s people tried to get to the bank, and the grocery store. They had wanted to get their money from the bank, and they wanted food, and fuel cells, and the things they needed to move to the capital so they could be evacuated.
The panic had started simply. A local farmer had stopped by the bank to talk about financing his crop. He had not heard the Queen’s speech having been in the fields at the time finishing up his spring plowing. He hadn’t even turned the communicator on in the tractor enjoying the peace, if not quiet, he could only find working his land. He had gotten home after midnight and had gone to bed without turning on the communicator. Living alone there was no one to tell him about what the Queen had said. In the morning having no pressing work to be done on his farm, he decided to go to the bank. He found the bank closed; but didn’t think anything of it, he thought it might be a holiday, living alone as he did with no family, he often lost track of the calendar. He shrugged and went to the local coffee house and ordered breakfast.
“Hey is today a holiday?” He asked his waitress.
“No why?” she answered. She didn’t think the question was strange coming from him. She knew he lived alone often lost track of things like the calendar.
“Oh, I found the bank closed.” he said.
“Oh it must be because of the evacuation.” The woman said.
“What evacuation.” He asked. Several people in the restaurant started to talk at once. Finally the waitress was able to get the others to be quiet so she could tell him the story. She had just finished when someone came in off the street and asked, “Anyone else having trouble transferring funds? I just tried to pay my mortgage and the bank wouldn’t take it. Now I find the bank’s closed!”
One of the restaurant’s patron’s, who been quietly sipping coffee took his phone out of his pocket and called the bankers home. It rang and rang with no answer. The expert system didn’t pick up either. The man put the phone down and said, “You know that bastard Fred has taken all our money and gone off world!”
That was all it took. Word spread quickly that the money that they thought safe in the town bank was gone. That started a bank run. But with the electronic system shut down and no one was in the bank, it wasn’t much of a run. Someone broke a window and soon the mob was in the bank. But the vault was locked up tight, and no one could get the computers to spit out any money. The crowd was just leaving the bank when some said, “The groceries charging fifteen crowns for a loaf of bread.”
That started looting in the grocery. By the time the town’s part time constable arrived on scene with the bank’s owner both with their fishing poles, the situation was beyond redemption. The constable called for backup from the next town over. By the time the backup arrived a full fledge riot was underway in the town that was suppressed by a militia action team.
Every Last Mother's Child Page 15