Short Stories

"Further evaluation and tests" Cranmore muttered and smiled grimly to himself. Of all the ways to wind up. The idiot will never get out now. He pondered, before concluding under his breath, "No, can't think of any discharges from J.H. this year."

He swung the cruiser onto the freeway and settled onto exactly 55 miles per hour.

". No crimes were reported in the tri-city area this week," continued the irrepressibly bouncy newsreader, and Cranmore grimaced to himself. "Police are still hoping to contact an unknown woman who may have witnessed the suicide of Thomas Grant, one time mayor of New York, on Tuesday November twelfth of last year." Cranmore sighed again. It was the last case of any note at all and no one really expected the 23 to 70 year old woman to come forward. Who puts their head into a lion's jaw? Unless something happened, and soon, not only would Thomas Grant, successful former mayor of New York's last minutes go unexplained, but there would be even more pressure to lay off some cops.

" Later tonight we have Professor Georgette McGraw of Stanford University Genetic Engineering department here to tell us about newly programmable careers that have recently been artificially encoded, but for now here is the Sledgehammers latest, "Orgasm in a crisp packet", with additional lyrics by Clare Wyland, Gabrie." Cranmore switched the radio off before the disk jockey could get well into his stride on the long list of Contributing Artists.

It was going to be a quiet night. Every night for months had been a quiet night. The days hadn't been too raucous either. Cranmore was just settling down to a boring drive, almost asleep with his eyes open, when he saw something that made him catch his breath. There, by the side of the freeway, was a stopped car, hazard lights blinking and no tow trucks or paramedics had arrived yet.

Checking his rear view mirror, Cranmore slew the cruiser across several empty lanes of freeway and stopped behind the stopped car. He picked up the radio microphone, considered, and put it back in its bracket. No need to start a feeding frenzy. He shone the spotlight through the back window of the car. No occupants were visible. There could be someone lying low inside, but Cranmore felt a stirring of hope in his heart. This could be something. He unholstered his glock nine-millimeter and drew it out quickly as he slowly approached the car. Shining his torch and aiming his gun through the window made the flame of hope burn a little brighter. The car was definitely abandoned.

There was little time to loose. Cranmore looked widely around but there was nowhere he could push the abandoned car to delay discovery by another response team. He would just have to work fast.

Pausing only to smash the car's driver's side window and reaching in to turn the hazard lights off, Cranmore hurried back to his cruiser, started the motor and drove on, slower than before but faster than a man's walking speed. He turned his headlights off. He was watching both sides of the road, turning his head one way and then the other. Please God, don't let me miss him. Two hundred yards down the road, Cranmore saw a man walking under a street lamp. There still had been no traffic, what would you expect at nine PM in New York? Cranmore felt sure that the abandoned car was still undiscovered and was almost certain that he had been seen by no one else in the last half-hour. That only left the back seat.

Cranmore stopped a few yards away from the pedestrian and turned his loud speaker on just as the pedestrian spotted him. He looked wildly around to find some way of escape, but there was certainly none. He started a halfhearted jog down the road away from the cop, Cranmore upped his estimate of the man's age, that sort of escape didn't belong to a young man, this one could be fifty or more. Oh well, he was still the only game in town. Cranmore keyed his microphone and spoke with all the considerable authority that a genetically programmed disposition to police work enforced with over twenty years of specialist training could muster.

"Stop right where you are. Your car has broken down," this was an assumption, "and you are obviously in need of help. I will take you to a processing center where you will be assessed, assisted and cared for. Immediately drop to the ground and spread your arms and legs. This car has a thirty millimeter chain gun trained on you right now. Drop now sir."

With the words echoing through the black evening the flight seemed to go out of the man. He trotted to a stop and bent down, hands on knees getting his wind back. Cranmore felt vindicated in his earlier surmising. After a few moments the man lay on his stomach on the road and Cranmore rolled to within 6 feet of him. Time was very precious now. He opened the door and quickly secured the man, plastic disposable handcuffs linking his wrists, longer lengths of the same material hobbling his ankles.

"You really don't need to bother officer," said the man, "I live only two miles from here. I can walk home, no problem. Damn car just stopped going. I can have it picked up tonight, I know that I shouldn't leave it there. My family is expecting me. Please let me go."

"You are requested by law to accept any assistance a police officer offers you sir," Cranmore said as he helped the man to his feet. "You have the right and obligation to consult an attorney. You are obliged to advise me immediately of any further assistance you require. If you do not fully advise me of your needs you become subject to psychological assistance. Do you understand your right and obligations? Watch your head" Cranmore concluded as he opened the back door of the cruiser and deposited the man as carefully as he could in the back seat.

Like an electric switch had been thrown, Cranmore's radio came alive.

"Delta five-eight. This is Delta five-zero. We show you with an occupant. What is the situation? Do you require assistance?"

Cranmore took a moment to stare levelly at his assist.

"I assure you," he said, "If you make a sound I will make absolutely sure that you spend the rest of your sorry life in hospital. Do you understand me?" The little man looked terrified and almost nodded his head off.

"Delta five-zero, Delta five-eight. There was a goat dead in the middle of the free way constituting a dangerous obstacle. I have bagged it and am taking it to Jersey CDC for appraisal."

The pause from the dispatcher spoke volumes. "Goat bagged and en route to processing. Proceed." Cranmore really didn't expect the dispatcher to ask any questions. He also knew that no inquiry would ever be made to the Jersey region Center of Disease Control to confirm his story, and if by some outrageous trick of bad luck any questions ever came from any corner, he knew that the Jersey CDC records would be made to show the arrival of the required goat. It's a hard world, these days. He slid behind the wheel and looked into the rear view mirror. God no, back two hundred yards down the road, a paramedic vehicle with spinning lights was parked beside the abandoned car. Cranmore, leaving the lights off slowly slid away from the curb and the light above him and gained speed down the road. Maybe they hadn't seen him. Yeah right, maybe they were blind accordion players as well.

"Where are you going to take me?" asked the man

Cranmore ignored him.

"I have a family," the man offered, not a little fear in his voice, "My name is Wyle. Wyle Kernot. I .I I teach school. English and History. My wife and kids are waiting for me. People rely on me. Please don't take me to the processing center. Can't you just drop me here, now?"

"The law is the law Mr. Kernot." Was all that Cranmore offered in return. He looked in the mirror again and noticed that the paramedics hadn't moved. He would be around a bend in the road in just a few seconds, there was still a chance the medical system wouldn't get Kernot.

Kernot was stilled by his fear, was quiet for several seconds before desperation forced him to talk again. The words came out in a high, reedy voice. Probably not what he sounded like in school.

"Y y y you aren't taking me to any processing center are you?" He asked. "What you told that person on the radio, you are taking me somewhere else. My kids. my kidsmy son is a policeman. He is eight years old. He is already doing his introductory Client Relations with Required Force. He got an "A" last week. We, my wife and I, we bought the best Sherlock genes we could afford. We borrowed money. He got Sherlock primus-two on a Zinoviev matrix. His sistermy my my daughter, she is a middle manager, financial," he tried to force a laugh, "she is just six. She did really well in her Amortization test just last Thursday. They need me to look after them. Please tell me what is going to happen to me." The man was almost in tears.

They were around the bend. The ambulance was out of sight. Cranmore debated in himself, and decided it would be less conspicuous to any casual observer if he turned the lights on. He did so.

"Your son's a cop." It could have been a question. "Sherlock/Zenoviev. Smart and tough. Must have cost you a bomb."

Kernot may have smelled some hope. "That's right. We are still making payments. It's worth it of course."

Cranmore interrupted. "Then you hope there is a job when he graduates, right?"

"Well, yes. There isn't much action these days, everyone knows that, but that's because you are all doing such a wonderful job. If there was no police, then it would be the twentieth century all over againprobably you are undermanned, well that's what we thought, what with all the lawyers making more and more and more crimes all the time"

"You don't know what you're talking about," Cranmore said calmly. "There's a hundred cops for every case that comes up. The lawyers are working for themselves, not us. The crimes they create are immediately and automatically detectable and District Attorneys invariably do arrests. We're stuck with assists, like you."

The talk may have calmed Kernot down a little. Something of the logician in his genes was surfacing through his deliberately programmed fear.

"But you aren't taking me to any processing center. What is going to happen to me?" Cranmore knew that a little preparation now would simplify and quicken the programming.

"What kind of money do you make at school Mr. Kernot?" Cranmore asked. Logic was a big part of his genetic programming too, had to be, and a reasoned approach was the most likely way he could prepare his assist. "How much fun do you have at school?"

"I love my job," Kernot instantly answered, as he was fated to do, "I really make a difference. I have Statesmen, Journalists as well as Teachers in my classes, one of my students is junior senator of Wyoming already and she is only thirty-seven. Money doesn't come into it."

"You know you love your job because you are psychiatrically and genetically programmed to do so, don't you Mr. Kernot? You know that you don't care about money because of your programming too, don't you?"

"I just don't see how that matters," Kernot answered with predictable didacticism, "The bottom line is that I can't imagine doing anything else that would give me so much satisfaction."

"Exactly, Mr. Kernot," Cranmore answered, "you can't imagine. Well, there is a great big world out there that you are prevented from imagining. We are going to change that tonight."

Kernot blanched, but he also nodded. He expected that this was his fate from the moment he saw the police car. Now that it was out in the open he seemed to accept it, but the fear was right behind his eyes, as Cranmore could see in the rear vision mirror.

"You are taking me to a trick cyclist," he said, almost in a whisper.

"Yes, an underground psychiatrist/geneticist. You will have a chance to do some good in your life Mr. Kernot. You will stop being a robotic obeyer of your conditioning and liberated to follow any base impulse that you want. You will create jobs for boys like your son. You can be a stand-over man, a terrorist, a serial killer, a drug runner, a hit man. You will have all the money you can't imagine and women, high times and more excitement that you can get in any other field of work."

Kernot was openly weeping now, "Why me? Why don't you have yourself reprogrammed if it's so badly needed?"

"Because, Mr. Kernot," Cranmore answered, "I love my job. I love being a cop. I need scum like you are going to be to hunt down and arrest and sometimes shoot down in the street. Not too quickly though, we normally take five or even ten years to get the big fish. Police work is sometimes very slow. In short, Mr. Kernot," Cranmore concluded, "Because I don't want to be reprogrammed."

"But neither do I." Kernot cried in despair and panic.

"I don't care, Mr. Kernot," Cranmore answered, "And in a few hours you won't want anything else."

Kernot fell silent and Cranmore figured that he'd done enough. The cruiser slipped through the night - at exactly fifty-five miles per hour - and Kernot looked out the window at the stars for the last time, he knew, as the Kernot he was used to.
© Matthew Oswald 2/1/2000

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Gordon's life was not going well. His eyes had opened on the tree outside the French windows of his bedroom. Samantha, who knew about these things, had told him that it was a Liquid Amber. Samantha was gone now, along with Maya, their daughter and Apricot, their dog. Some people, Gordon knew, had already arrived at work. There was still work, lovers, daughters and dogs in some people's lives. These were the feelings that Gordon's waking mind encountered, first thing on Tuesday the seventeenth of January.

"Above that field, there is only me and then the end of the universe." She thought. She didn't know that she always thought that when flying. She expanded the thought. There is the soil, full of bugs, then burrowing mindless things, bringing nitrogen to the soil in helpful little packets of shit which itself was teeming with all sorts of critters. Then the grass. Then maybe right now there is a field mouse right under the aeroplane walking on the grass. Then there may be butterflies, small birds, then there is me. Above me, only the air. And then space, and a universe so rarefied that by just moving in a random direction away from the earth, there is not the slightest chance that the line would intersect with any star, planet, or living thing again until. Until the end of Time. A romantic soul, in her way, is Jennifer. I guess you have to be, if for fun you use gravity itself to trade altitude for airspeed and range.

The nose had crept up a little, bleeding airspeed off the slim aircraft. Jennifer relaxed the stick, pushing it forward a little while straightening her aeroplane. She would have to land shortly; shower, change, and drive like a fool back to the city. Without moving her left hand off the airbrake lever where she always had it when flying, she could tell that it was five minutes to seven o'clock. She let the glider build up a little more airspeed before turning again, this time back to the aerodrome.

She joined the circuit at 1,500 feet. Bang on the money. By the time she finished her down wind leg she was down to seven hundred feet. That allowed her clear the aerodrome fence by only a wing span. She was seconds away from landing when her phone rang.

Now, there are some people who can afford to let a phone ring. When making love, using a lathe to shave that last 1/120000 inch off what will be a new drive shaft, when landing an aeroplane they would let the phone ring out.
One thing about gliders, you don't get to turn the engine on, go around and try landing again.
One thing about being the Director of Information Technology at the second biggest bank in Australia, when the phone rings with that particular tune, there can only be one person on the other end. When you hear that tune, you don't let it go through to voice mail.
Jennifer knew that many of her colleagues took their phone to the toilet with them just in case. She was only six feet above the grass now, in her distraction she had let the plane settle a little too much, she was too fast. She had to pull the nose a little higher to bleed off some of that airspeed. She opened the airbrakes a little more.

The phone rang again. Two rings. Eighty-five knots indicated airspeed. Break the under cart if she popped it down at that speed. This phone would ring four times, four times only. She wrenched the airbrakes to maximum deployment. Sixty-five knots, she bumped onto the short spiky grass. Let the blasted thing roll out. She let go of the airbrake handle like it had suddenly gone molten and grabbed the phone. The third ring had just finished and the glider was still doing fifty knots when she said "Jennifer Briany. Good morning sir." Then Sir Phillip Stores told her something that made her face go pale.

The glider was a long time still when she finally hung up her phone, popped the canopy and stepped onto the still dew moist grass. She would have to forgo her shower and her change of clothes, but she would still have to drive like a fool to her office.

Nolan was looking forward to breakfast. He thought that he would probably have bacon. He normally did. There was something about haunting the chat rooms of the fascists, the communists, about fifty different mutually exclusive One True Faiths for eight hours that could make a man look forward to bacon with greedy delight.
The coffee shop after the one after the one that was closest to his office knew enough not to drain the fat off the stuff before serving it. Yum. Nolan checked his watch. Five minutes before seven o'clock. Most of the crazies of interest to Australian cops had gone to bed already and there had been nothing of immediate relevance going on for a couple of hours. The next batch of Mad Guys, as Nolan affectionately called them, were still doing whatever they did between waking up and logging on.
Five minutes to relief, no more than twelve minutes to greasy fried dead pig. Where the hell was Mankin anyway? Nolan liked his job. It wasn't anything like his expectations when he graduated from Monash with his mechanical engineering degree. Then he had intended to take up a promised job with Australian Aid Abroad, building a damn in Kashmir. The greenies had put an end to that. The Ganges could not be damned because that would be genocide of the villagers, apparently. So the damn wasn't built and the Kashmiri villagers were free to live, or more accurately die at a revoltingly young age, in the filth, degradation and poverty that, it was circuitously argued, was their inalienable right and which the damn would have alleviated.
With nothing else to do, Nolan became a federal cop and now found himself watching the Internet for incipient terrorism. Life could be worse, could be better. His phone rang. With a sigh, as Mankin wasn't there yet, Nolan answered it.
©Matthew Oswald 2/1/2000

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