All Just For Scorn
Principal's Outer Office, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1039.00 American Time
"Yes, sir," Commander Karl Burnham, commanding officer of the TSID's Special Victims Unit says to the holo of the Man Himself, as he floats in front of his right eye,"will do."
Governor Zellner's holoimage disappears from the CyberLink's holospace, Burnham turning to his top kick, telling him:
"That's it, then. We wait 'til the lil' bone's done with her, then we take the two Gnats with when we go and arrest her."
"And, somehow," Hatcher remarks,"he gets hold of my weapon and burns his pops down."
"Him and his partner," Burnham reminds him,"maybe the principal and a couple others too, depending on how things turn out, before I manage to wrestle him to the deck."
"Hey," he remarks at his top kick's quizzical look,"I'm blonde, blue-eyed and got the rank."
"'Sides," he adds," you'll have your hands full with the zed."
"True that, Skipper," Hatcher remarks with a chuckle.
"True that," he repeats.
Women's Faculty Restroom, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1045.11 AMT
National Policeman 1st Class Garrison Sipe and his partner, National Policeman 1st Class Geoff Halfacre, are at the rear of the five men who enter the women's faculty restroom, all of them stopping, watching Sipe's oldest son, nine-year old Jacob, and two other little boys on top of a blonde woman, no older than twenty-seven, maybe, the three of them slamming her head into the tiles, slapping her around, calling her....
"...bitch!" he screams, slapping Li across her face, as he hikes up her uniform skirt and pulls down her panties.
"Don't you tell me you love her," he hisses,"ever effing again, you hear me?! You love boys, you love me, and, by God, you're gonna act like it, if I have to...."
"...kill you first," Jacob hisses, his arm across the woman's windpipe, slamming the back of her head into the tiles again, as he just keeps going at her, the cheering of everyone watching this on line a deafening squeal of white noise, Halfacre and Owensboro Elementary's principal, Thomas Fibbe, adding their Rebel yells to the chorus.
The two TSID ops merely stand there, watching, nodding their heads.
After a few moments, the blonde one grabs Jacob's arm, pulling him off the woman, his short dark-haired partner snatching the woman to her feet with a "c'mon, y'sick twitch!"
Halfacre is only too eager to wrench the woman's arms behind her back, cuffing and searching her, as she just stands there, dazed, bloody and disoriented.
"Ain't got nothin' up in there," his partner concludes a few minutes later, before he tosses her into the waiting arms of the TSID op, adding,"though I think that kinda turns her-"
"What the-" Halfacre starts to ask, Jacob aiming the TSID-issue 250 GJ laser pistoln right between his mirrorshaded eyes, as he screams,"I love you, Mary Kate! I ain't gonna let 'em take you away!"
And, he pulls the trigger twice, a second before it occurs to Halfacre that he should draw his Colt-Wesson Double Eagle massdriver pistol, Sipe's partner's grav shielding flaring all the way up to black, before his head catches fire like one of them old-fashioned kitchen matches in those military survival pouches Dad used to bring home, Fibbe putting out his hands, telling Jacob,"now, son, just gimme me that weapon, and-"
Fibbe goes up like the glob of Crisco he is, the two TSID agents not doing one effing thing to stop Jacob, as Sipe draws his service pistol, hoping to nail his son before he has a chance to nail him.
The blonde TSID agent whistles sharply, discreetly pointing in Sipe's direction, Jacob turning round on his heel, firing a pulse which darkens the front of Sipe's grav shielding, before it burns a geyersing pink hole through his armor and his heart.
That's the way it's gonna be, huh? Sipe has just enough time to wonder, before a chill creeps up his body, and he pitches face forward into the tiles.
Women's Faculty Restroom, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1046.78 AMT
The little bone then turns Commander Burnham's weapon on Burnham himself.
Before the little blonde punk can say,"that's not supposed to happen," the former head of the TSID's Special Victims Unit is melting like the witch in a Banned book Master Chief Petty Officer Hugh Hatcher had glanced at once during his stint as Flynt County High's Public Protection Officer.
Hatcher then draws his own M2049, changing the setting to from laser to taser, before sending an arc of electrical current down a low-powered las beam to knock that boy senseless for a while...ain't exactly how they did it on COPS, but he wasn't in the mood for no frickin' NFL Monday Night Smackdown neither.
"Daaamn," one of the other little boys says, asking his buddy,"didja see what that man did to Jacob?"
"I'll use it on you, if you don't shut the eff up and do what you're told!" Hatcher warns them, both kids holding up their hands and backing away towards the stalls.
Two Gnats from the school's security staff charge into the bathroom, Hatcher instructing them to "take him and his little friends to the security room, make sure they got plenty of snacks and pop to tide 'em over 'til we're ready for 'em."
"C'mon, skankface!" he barks at the zed just standing there all woozy, bloody, and bareass naked like all her subhuman kind, before he shoves her out of the bathroom into the hallway.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1202.01 AMT
"..following the arrest of his teacher, 27-year old Mary Kate Walton," YouTube's Carolyn Minh says to the packed-out store,"after school security cameras caught her having sex with him in the women's faculty restroom-"
"Sick effin' twitch," Calvin Hobbes pronounces judgement from his seat at the low counter, his eyes plastered on the vid of Jacob Sipe and two of his friends raping Mary Kate all the regulars had been watching earlier(with thunderous applause even).
"Damn sure is," Marc Bevill remarks from his seat next to Lyn Jennings at the high counter, the HV in the corner of the store dissolving to Jacob telling reporters:
"She told me she loved me, and that was what she had to do to me, 'cause she loved me, An' then she said, if I really loved her, I'd have to go an' kill my daddy and all 'em other men an' go to jail for her, so she wouldn't have to."
"He's just a little boy!" David Bell screams hysterically from the stretch end's middle booth, as he grabs the big ass of Amy Smith-no relation, thank God-almost making her drop the pot of coffee she's walking round the effing store.
"They don't give a damn 'bout that," Lyn is quick to observe. "Look what happened with that other one, Ariel Dixon, when she got caught cutting up that black girl eight years ago."
"Yeah," Marc remarks,"sick bitch made a whole buncha excuses, and she gets off with a slap on the wrist, havin' ten babies, and living on welfare, while ol' Eli does to one of 'em what it made him do, and he ends up getting the wire for it."
"-Walton posed nude for several online men's magazines," Carolyn Minh continues speaking the in the background, scene after scene of Mary Kate Walton striking a series of pornographic poses playing in the foreground,"while attending classes at Flynt County High, and was the centerfold, when the reality series Girls Next Door filmed its controversial 'school days' special on the campus housing Flynt County's Performance Training Program eleven years ago-"
The HV now dissolves to a scene of a much-younger Mary Kate Walton kneeling on a stool, her nose in a circle on a blackboard, a skinny girl, long blonde hair....
...lifts up Jami's short grey uniform skirt, pulling her panties down, the older teenage girl whaling away on the ten-year old girl's butt with the paddle she holds in both hands, screaming,"you s'posed to moan, pootie-poo, not scream like you don't like it!"
Two more older girls hold Sunni tight, keeping her from doing anything other than watching her friend get her butt beat so bad it's turning black and blue, and all Jami can do is....
...scream, the regulars cheering as the younger Mary-Kate gets the shit beat out of her with that frickin' paddle in the skinny blonde's hands, the speakers a white roar of noise from all those watching this online and screaming for the skinny one to show Mary Kate what their kind was all about.
"Goddamn," Loudmouth Jim Hunter says through a mouthful of food,"but that is one, sick effin'-"
"Hell, yeah, she is," Marc tells him, between bouts of hooting, hollering and banging his fist on the high counter, Carolyn Minh's voice, still in the background, introducing,"another vid she made while playing for Flynt County High's basketball team. The following may shock, disturb, maybe even offend some of you watching this online-"
Sighing explosively, Sunni turns her attention back to bricking down the grill...Ibrahim's drunk ass is too drunk to come in today, Lori and Amy B.'s God knows where, Jody Harbuck's too geeked out on rapture and she can't trust any of 464's other grill operators to cook a freakin' two-thousand dollar shift.
And, that leaves only her to come in on her day off, so she can get in trouble with Randy and Jimmy Green, one for leaving the house without permission, the other for working too many hours, on top of having low sales and high food costs in all her stores.
"Hey, bitch?!" a customer shouts at her,"When that grill gonna be ready?! I only got thirty minutes for lunch!"
She starts to reply to that, when the customer tells her to eff herself, the monkeyboy and his two simian companions getting up and walking out, Sunni turning to Michelle Sipe-working the office end-screaming,"well, that's more sales that just walked out of here, thanks to you! More food your fat, sorry ass just took outta my children's mouths, 'cause you can't even frickin' pretend you wanna be here workin'!"
"What the hell you yellin' at her for?!" Lyn just has to frickin' tell her.
"All y'all's like that," he adds.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1207.55 AMT
"-Flynt High School vo-tech students," says YouTube's Juan Rivera, as he floats above the HV in the back room,"are actually required to produce their own YouTube vids as a condition of being awarded a vocational certificate of completion-"
A naked, dark-haired girl is feeling on her breasts in the background, as another girl, a blonde wearing a black sports bra and a pair of gold thong panties, comes up behind her.
"-vids where they and their classmates," Rivera adds," perform the most disgusting acts live in 256-bit true color."
The second girl jumps the first girl, grabbing her breasts hard, humping her, biting down hard on her neck. before she slams her down onto the bench in front of the lockers, the first girl just lying facedown, her butt in the air, the blonde one taking a heavy leather belt from a locker and whaling away on the other girl's bottom.
The blonde screams "I effin' told ya what was gonna happen if you ever made me look bad, didn't I, huh, skank-nasty ?!"
"Oh, yesss, baby, I am such a skank-nasty," squeals the dark-haired girl,"I can't hel-"
The belt goes crack! as it strikes her bare bottom, the blonde screaming,"bitch, shut your goddamn frickin' hole! You talk too goddamn much!"
As this plays out behind him, Rivera further elaborates,"these vids are then submitted to a panel of faculty members for their approval, before ending up being auctioned off on eBay to celebrities and politicians, such as the Commies' President, Angelique Gault; this particular vid was made several years ago by Mary Kate Walton herself, while she was a forward on the Flynt County High basketball team; she's the blonde in the vid, while the other girl has been positively identified as convicted sex offender and murderer Ariel Dixon-"
Michelle Thorn Sipe is crying for...she doesn't know why, it isn't over Garry being burned down, or Jacob being the one who burned him, even though she has to say that, if anyone-especially Sunni-asks her.
She dryswallows, trying to forget what Sunni's just said to her, how bad that hurts, almost as much as last night, when Garry had jumped her, 'cause of that look she'd given Sunni last night.
God only knows how bad Sunni got it, she thinks, sniffling down her tears, wiping her face with her right arm, before she fusses with the Aunt Jemima headscarf, the girlie-girl bowtie, the black miniskirt and the tight pink pinstriped button-down half-shirt which is the uniform of a Moot Ho'-as the rest of the goddamn frickin' worlds call her-checking to make sure her black uniform stockings don't have any runs in them, as she sits down in the chair by the steam table and takes off her black uniform pumps.
"What the eff are you doing back here, you fat effin' skank?!" Sunni screams at her a second after she slams the swinging door open. "You got customers, you're supposed to be out there, waitin' on them, not sittin' on your fat ass smoking doobies on my frickin' time!"
"WHAT?!" that goddamn snaggle-toothed, fuckin' bitch screeches at the top of her lungs. "I know you're frickin' stupid, you don't effing have to look it too!"
"Get your fat, frickin' ass back out there!" she screams, Michelle choking down useless tears, clenching her jaw, as she gets up and walks back out onto the floor.
"...what is this?!" Mister Hobbes demands, slapping the holoprojection full of quadratic equations, magic 20s, multiplication and division problems on his desk.
"This is what I caught her doin',Mister Calvin," Mister Bergerac-who even the other teachers called Big Gay Steve behind his back-Jami's teacher replies, before Jami can speak for herself,"square roots, quadratic equations, long division, multiplying decimals, most of this ain't even fifth-grade work-let alone something even remotely on the intellectual level of an at-risk child-and she wasn't usin' no calculator like she was supposed to to get the answers, she was tryin' to figure ‘em out the long way."
Mister Hobbes just clucks and shakes his head at her, slapping the paddle in his hands, as he tells Jami's classroom teacher:
"A zero for the day's the least this calls for. I think also, that we should consider reassigning her for the rest of the year, seeing how she obviously is incapable of being mainstreamed- "
"It's that damn mother of hers," Mister Bergerac commented, Mister Hobbes, still slapping that paddle in his hand, as he talks over him:
"-readers that she knows good and well children like her can't possibly understand, quotin' so-called facts what ain't in Wikipedia, writin' essays on topics that ain't approved for the written part of the SAT, not even botherin' to prepare for the SAT like the rest of the students in her class, even knowin' how important the SAT is to her future and to this school's."
"I think some time in PTP," Mister Bergerac then says,"is what's called for here; clearly a regular fifth-grade class is just too much for us to ask of her."
Mister Hobbes nods, telling Jami to get up and bend over, adding,"you should know the drill by now...."
Aboard the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken
Landing Pad 819, Commonwealth Forces Base New Seattle, Big Sky
9/15/2101, 1710.28 Zulu
...the insistent bleeping of the CyberLink on her nightstand awakens Commander Jamilinne Sipe.
A personal comm, the captain of the Unbroken focussing bleary eyes on the IW address floating in the holospace of the Link's right eyepiece.
Stevie's Gramma Irma, Jami thinks to herself, picking her Link up and placing it on her head.
"Accept comm," she says, the holo of the famous InterWeb blogger and Firestar legislator appearing in front of her.
"Gramma Irma," Jami starts to ask,"what's-"
"Your brother's been murdered," Gramma Irma instantly tells her, straight to the point as always.
"Which one?" Jami asks, not knowing if she'd dance a jig or what over either Mickey, DT or Avery getting what had been coming to them for years.
"Your youngest," Gramma Irma says. "Garrison."
"Jesus Petes," Jami whispers, wide awake now, this blow sending her reeling...last time her and Garry had talked had been ten years ago, when she'd gone to the funeral for Lori's mom- Jami's Auntie Mel-just after he'd married Michelle...he'd been attached to her leg when they'd both been kids, but, lately....
"Who shot him?" she manages to ask.
"Your oldest nephew, Jacob," Gramma Irma tells her. "It happened at his school, just after Jacob and a couple of his friends raped their teacher; Garrison, his partner, Jacob's principal, and two ops from the TSID's Special Victims Unit went to arrest her, and Jacob managed to get one of the TSID agents' laser pistols, killing his father, his partner, the principal and the head of the Special Victims Unit...BoobTube's out in front with the story, but me and the other bloggers have been sitting on it, pending your consent to-"
"Go ahead," Jami whispers, tears running down her face, fists clenched uselessly at her sides.
"Go ahead," she repeats, Gramma Irma replying,"I really am sorry for-"
"Not your fault," Jami tells her, swallowing hard, asking:
"What about his wife, his other two kids?"
"The Yankers aren't saying anything about Michelle," Gramma Irma says,"or the other two boys, though, if the Special Victims Unit follow standard operating proceedure-"
"Thank you," Jami says, abruptly cutting the comm short.
"Lori," she then says into her Link,"we need to talk, now."
Governor's Mansion
155 West Paces Ferry Road, New Whitehorse, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1215.65 AMT
"And, here, prior to her seducing young Jacob," Juan Rivera says,"you can plainly see where Mary Kate Walton is openly engaging in consenual sex with a nine-year old girl-"
"Nasty skank!" screams the voice of one of many watching Mary Kate hugging and feeling on the little poot, the Governor of the Union watching this and several other channels on the HV projector on the wall in front of his bed.
"-who earlier attempted to seduce little Jacob Sipe and two of his friends," Rivera continues. "This young girl, Teresa Self, has had prior run-ins with Owensboro School authorities for a variety of offenses, but, yet, she remains mainstreamed in a regular third-grade class. How can that be possible, Admiral?"
Admiral Omar Baraka, his Director of Union Security, seated in his office in the Executive Office Building across town, replies:
"Isn't it obvious, Juan?! How can we possibly hope to rehabilitate at-risk children, when at-risk adults are part of that rehabilitation process...note that I use the PC term at-risk, rather than simply referring to them as zeds, my position as a government employee would most certainly be the thing which is at-risk-"
Chuckling and laughter from the speakers greet this remark, Guy Thomas Zellner chuckling as well, even knowing Omar was too dumb to come up with the line himself.
"-were I to call them by what they were," Omar concludes. "They've garnered so much political power in the last ten years, not only are they no longer ashamed of what they are, but the very use of the...Z-word, as it were, even in the most casual of conversations, is more than sufficent grounds for them and their liberal Republican lapdogs to sue you and make you look as if you were Hillary Clinton risen from the grave-"
Well, the Governor of the Union thinks with a slight laugh, that wasn't in the script...maybe the chimp ain't as stupid as I thought.
"-while they call each other the Z-word and everything else," Omar says,"in their music vids and pornography-not much of a distinction, I grant you, Juan, but, again, my position requires a certain amount of political correctness, it being a political position, after all."
The Governor of the Union laughs more heartily...Omar's pretty effing imaginative when he sets his mind to it, should've known he would be, all the ways he kept coming up with to put the boots to the zeds during the years he'd been Zellner's top kick.
"They do appear," Rivera says,"to exhibit a certain pride in what they are...already, a tribute site has appeared on the InterWeb, showcasing Mary Kate's pornographic videos, her personal blogs-many of which shows her performing acts of sexual deviancy-"
Rivera's voice drops to the background, a holo of Mary Kate-legs up in the air-singing, "gimme sum lovin' discipline, yeah,yeah, bay-bay, yeah, yeah," while sucking on the lollies that sick effing poot had been sticking down yonder, the voices howling over the speakers echoing Zellner's sentiment 100% when they said,"man, that just nasty!"
"-simply too graphic for public consumption," Rivera remarks,"and, most alarming of all, blogs and comments made by minor children such as, "man, I sure wish she was my teacher."
His Link bleeps for his attention.
"Yes?" Zellner asks, the holo of one of the Marines guarding his mansion floating in front of his right eye.
"Sir, Fleet Admiral Sipe's chief of staff has arrived with the material you requested earlier today."
"Escort him here," the Governor of the Union replies, nodding once. "I don't care if he even tries to take an effin' bathroom break, he goes any direction other than straight down the hall, burn him. Get me?"
"Sir!" the Marine shouts in his freakin' ear,"yes, sir!"
"Thought you might like that," Zellner observes, as the Marine discomms.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1220.12 AMT
"-were in fact terrorists hiding behind the skirts of the Red Cross, same as their fellow travellers, three hundred years ago, used the offices of the Red Cross to export their campaign of subversion, division and mass murder from the continent of Great Britain to the shores of Basseterre," Micheal Bauer says on HV,"and to hide from the judgement they had coming to them for-"
"I always thought," Billy Raines, seated at the stretch end's far counter, remarks,"it was on account of Bush and his family being friendly with 'em zeds."
"Oh," Louis Kahn, seated between Lyn and Marc at the low counter replies,"it was that too. You have to realize, the Red Cross ain't nothing more than a Conspiracy front, always has been ever since Clara Barton established it back in 1776, just a quarter-century before WW I. See, all 'em years, it was pretendin' to be a medical relief organization, only tryin' to help 'em poor sufferin' disaster victims and wounded soldiers, nothing sinister 'bout, oh, no."
Louis takes another sip of his hot tea, before adding:
"But, all that time, they were feeding their lies to a captive audience, gaining political support and power, preachin' hate and sneaking in terrorists under false identification papers, 'til the Flood of 1799 washed away the sinners in Midnight Bay, and we put our foot down to the British tryin' to tell us we can't punish the zeds for bringing God's judgement down on all our heads."
"That's," Marc remarks, over another large to-go cup of coffee,"when they started showin' their true colors, crashing airplanes into buildings, bombing the old Capitol and the Pentagon in Wesley, trickin' George Bush into blamin' the wrong people, killing our guys so more of their kind can stop doin' right and be free to indulge their own innate depravity-"
"-just as George Tenet tried to warn him," Louis remarks,"before Hillary Clinton-who got her own husband put in prison just for havin' sex with one of 'em-managed to convince George Bush to get rid of him, and-"
"Hello!" Amy Smith shouts out.
"Hell-" Sunni starts to say, turning to see a pair of TSID agents walk into the store, her husband and his partner, Corporal Darrell Peacock, bringing up the rear.
"Y'all," says the virally-blonded chimp-in an expensive charcoal suit-who is the short of the two TSID agents,"go 'bout yo' bidness, we ain't here fo' nothin' 'cept a zed."
"Where Michelle Sipe at?!" he then asks Amy and Sunni.
"She's gone across the hall," the words come out of Amy's big mouth, before Sunni has a chance to reply.
"What that mean, ' 'cross the hall?'" the monkeyboy asks. "That some kinda code or somethin'?"
"It means," Randy speaks up,"she's in the bathroom, Commander."
"It is some kinda code then," the chimp decides, ordering his taller, brown-suited Human partner to cover the door to the women's restroom, Randy and Darrell standing to either side of him, the Haziri taking his time to join the others.
"Do the do'," he tells his partner.
Moot House #464
Flynt County Highway 49, Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1223.68 AMT
The door flies open, the deadbolt shattering the mirror, as Michelle is too startled to even think of getting off the toilet, a virally-blonded monkeyboy grabbing her arm, wrenching it painfully behind her back, as he slams her up against the wall.
The fingers of his other paw balling up one by one, as they search her, Michelle wincing from the white-hot stab of pain, as she is lifted up onto her tiptoes by the chimp's fist in her.
Darrell Lavender comments,"man, she sure does like that!"
"She's a Pootie Ho'," Randy Pate remarks,"what else did ya ex-bitch, what the-"
The chimp dumps Michelle on the floor, the sharp crack! of a massdriver pistol taking his head off in a cloud of reddish orange, a second crack! dropping a Human in a brown suit on top of the Haziri's headless corpse, as Michelle struggles to her feet, watching as Darrell goes for the electrowhip on his belt, only to have the top of his head taken off with a third crack!
From the massdriver pistol now in one of Sunni's whitening, trembling hands, the other holding a butcher knife dripping with blood.
Through clenched teeth, Sunni rasps,"what the eff are you waiting for?! Get your fat ass the-"
And, she screams, dropping both the weapons in her hands, clutching at the back of her head, as she screams,"go, goddamnit, g-"
"Bitch," Randy hisses, as he holds in a bleeding gash along his neck with one hand, and the mouse to the collar in Sunni's head in the other,"you ain't going nowhere."
For a moment, Michelle is paralyzed, helplessly watching Sunni flop around on the floor, crapping and peeing all over herself, as she hears the sound of people getting up out of booths and walking this way.
Then she almost trips over herself, stumbling, as she runs past Randy through the door leading into the backroom.
She hears Randy's shouted "get after that bitch!" as she pushes the back door open and takes off running.
Governor's Mansion
155 West Paces Ferry Road, New Whitehorse, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1226.11 AMT
"-wanted on four counts of capital murder and nearly a dozen counts of rape, including three against children," YouTube's Francis Mulloy tells everyone, the holo now panning on Garry's wife stumbling her way through the back end of Owensboro, an ACV-137 Spectre gunship following her from overhead, a National Police tac unit on the ground far(but not too far)behind her.
"According to the TSID," Mulloy adds,"Sipe is considered armed and dangerous, a violent sexual predator with an unpredictable temper, who is now believed to be heading in the direction of Owensboro's elementary school, where all three of her children-"
"Off," Zellner says, as he enters the office from a side door, Vice-Admiral James Bentley Spinks rising from his chair and standing at attention.
Zellner nods his head in Spinks' direction, before he sits down behind his antique wooden desk, waiting a few more moments before telling Spinks to "sit, Ben."
"Sit," he adds a moment later, Spinks sitting back down in his chair, as his "father"'s protege clears YouTube from his workstation's holospace, tapping commands into the keyboard now floating in front of him, Spinks' own CyberLink beeping once, before displaying a graphic which shows the progress of the upload from its plasma matrices to those of the Governor's Mansion's master computer.
Once the upload is complete, Zellner holds out his hand.
"Your Link, Admiral," he says.
"Your Link," he then repeats, Spinks taking off his Link and handing it over to Zellner.
Who promptly throws it up in the air and vaporizes it with a 250 GJ pulse from his TSID-issue M2049 laser pistol before it even has a chance to fall back down.
Boy always did like blasting things, Spinks wryly observes to himself, the Governor of the Union complimenting himself on his shot, before turning back to face Spinks.
"Now," he remarks,"we both know that was the only copy of the file."
A lot you know, you miserable son of a bitch, Spinks thinks to himself, keeping the smile from his face, Zellner adding,"data security's been lax as of late, Ben, and that's simply not acceptible."
"Yes, sir," Spinks forces himself to say.
Zellner looks at him a few more moments, before deciding:
"That will be all, Admiral. You may go."
"Sir," Spinks says, getting up, standing at attention, before turning on his heel and walking out of the Governor's office.
Tourist Information Center
InterCounty Highway 75, 2 miles from Forsythe, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1730.00 Zulu
Exactly where it was the last time, thinks the shabbily-dressed man, as he strokes his scraggly beard, mumbles and sings to himself, and shuffles into the handicapped stall in the men's restroom.
The man sits on the crapper, making the appropriate noises, as he uses a pocketknife to pry open the bogroll dispenser, finding the circuit board right behind the two full bogrolls, the ziploc bag holding it secured to the rear wall of the dispenser with a generous amount of duct tape.
Handyman's secret weapon, the man observes to himself, singing off key, as he worries the duct tape free of the ziploc bag.
At the same time he tries to remember where the old line came from...so many old shows he's watched with his mum and da, it's hard to sort them all out in his memory.
He holds onto those memories, jumbled as they may be...he has to remind himself, somehow, of the life he's left behind.
He chuckles for no good reason, as he stuffs the ziploc bag into a grimy coat pocket full of various bric a brac...he'd be buggered if the trogs ever started putting cameras in men's rooms, and with no Vaseline-as the Yankers would say-him and whoever's been slipping him plasma matrices with data on what the trogs had next in mind for his homeworld.
He flushes the toilet, shuffling, mumbling and singing his way out of the bog, just another scav barely surviving at the edges of polite Yanker society, another poor sod cut loose by a mental-health system too busy tending to the real sickos, those rotten zeds what always seemed to be dragging everyone else down and keeping them from the promised land of liberty and justice for all.
His laugh is genuine this time, though, since no one else around him knows what the hell's so funny, it seems just as crazed and scary as the last one...as he continues shuffling, staggering and mumbling his way across the grounds, he's aware of children pointing and staring at him, parents abruptly pulling them away, hiding them out of sight, everyone else giving him a wide berth and pretending they don't see him.
The cams won't see him either, even though they do, as nothing assures invisibility more than being a homeless mental, the man easily making it into one of the few wooded areas on Basseterre the Yankers haven't wired for sound and holo.
Captain Eamon Fitzpatrick, once military attaché to the former Commonwealth embassy on Terranova, always and forever a soldier of his Commonwealth, waits until he is deeper in the wood, until the suns begin setting, before straightening his back and walking normally.
Principal's Office, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1236.11 AMT
"Close the door behind you," says Mister Abbott, as he stands in front of Mister Fibbe's desk.
She does as she's told, walking over to Mister Fibbe's desk.
"I heard about what happened today," he said.
"You made Jacob Sipe do a nasty thing with you, didn't you?" he says, slapping the steelwood paddle in his hand.
"He-he-" Teresa Self tries to say.
"Don't lie!" Mister Abbott snaps at her. "I know exactly how your kind is, Teresa. You like kissing on boys and girls, hugging on them, even making them play doctor with you and do other nasty things with you...all zeds are like that."
"And," he adds," it is not acceptible. You will learn to act like a civilized human being and stop trying to make little boys and girls do nasty things with you."
"Bend over," he orders her, " and grab your ankles."
She's already crying.
"That's another one of your filthy zed tricks you will simply have to outgrow!" Mister Abbott barks at her.
"Bend over!" he shouts at her, bending her over before she has a chance to do anything.
She feels him lifting up her skirt, pulling down her panties, just before he hits her one, two, three, four, five, six, ten times, each time harder than the last, each blow almost knocking her off her feet.
Teresa can't help blubberring, even though she knows-
The next blow from the paddle does knock her down on the floor, Teresa hitting so hard she can taste the blood in her mouth.
"I told you about that crying!" Mister Abbott screams at her, before pulling her back up onto her feet by her hair. "I will not stand for any more of your childish tricks!"
He then takes a pile of clothes off his desk, throwing them on the floor at the nine-year old girl's feet.
"Clearly," he adds,"you are incapable of meeting the demands of a regular third-grade class. You have exactly five minutes to change into your PTP uniform, before security comes to take you away, dressed or not!"
"Well," he adds, glaring down at her.
"Get dressed!" he then barks at her, stabbing a finger at the floor. "Right here, right now!"
"And," he adds, slapping her hard across her face,"stop that goddamn crying!"
Security Office, Owensboro Elementary School
Owensboro, Terranova
9/15/2101, 1242.06 AMT
Daddy's fat-assed piece of poot stumbles along the street, Francis Mulloy's voice saying in the background:
"According to the latest update from the National Police's Flynt County Command, Michelle Sipe has been sighted in the Toomersville area, near Housing Project #3. Residents in that area have been ordered by the TSID's Special Victims Unit to confine their zeds and to stand outside their residences at this time to assist authorities in the capture of this violent, dangerous sexual predator.
We remind our viewers that the minimum reward for assisting in the capture of a sexual predator such as Sipe is $15,000 Terranovan Standard Currency, with rewards in the past having gone as high as a half million dollars. All rewards are subject to immediate auto-debiting for tax purposes."
"Give it up, pootie-poo!" voices scream over the speakers, Al Bassett and Frank Addams watching that fat skank stumble and trip over herself, as the wind blew her skirt up to show the black thong panties that howler's got stuck up in her nasty crack, both his friends' tongues hanging out like General's did whennever Jacob fed him turkey bones or every time Matt turned Shelby Skankface loose in the-
The door opening startles Jacob and his friends, the two Gnats in the room with them stiffening, hands going to holstered massdriver pistols, as a handsome middle-aged man, salt and pepper hair, steel-blue eyes and a dark grey suit walks into the room.
Jacob instantly relaxes.
"Hey, Uncle Micheal," he says.
"Hello, Jacob," says Micheal Bauer, Prime Minister of the Union, as he firmly grips his nephew's hand.
"Take the other two to PTP," he then instructs the Gnats. "Jacob will be coming with me."
"To New Whitehorse," he adds.
-endit-
