VEL
POLICE CORRUPTION
A short story by Chad Descoteaux
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October 26, 2617.
What was probably the nicest house on his particular cul de sac, the largest house with the shiniest gate, received a long look from its owner, forty-something fuel company exec Norman Bardsley, as he wrapped his tired, shaky hands around the bars of the gate. There had been a power outage about twenty minutes prior. It would be resolved in another fifteen, so Norman had to move fast. He slid the gate open just enough for himself to slide into the yard, trudging up a steep grass hill towards the colorless, Gothic-looking house on top.
It was early enough in the morning that most of Norman’s neighbors were asleep, resting up before their alarm clocks, maids and butlers woke them up and started their respective work days. So, they didn’t pay any mind to their neighbor, who was sneaking onto his own property after what appeared to be a rough night. His hair was sticking straight up and in four different directions. He was unshaven and he was wearing a trench coat that dangled in front of dirty jeans and sneakers. All these things were quite uncharacteristic of this normally well-dressed businessman, a man who never even slept in pajamas that had not been meticulously ironed by his servants.
And the security robots, the artificial intelligence that monitored the security systems on the property, were off-line, thanks to the power outage. So, they would not realize something that would seem obvious and alarming to a human security guard. Norman Bardsley was walking up the driveway, but Norman Bardsley was also asleep in his bed, snoring away in his expensive, pressed, silk pajamas as always.
The more-disheveled version of Norman entered his own house by jimmying open the door with his key card. He knew where he had to go and what he had to do and how quickly and quietly he would have to do it. His dog, Krypta, was alarmed by what seemed to be an intruder in the house. But before she could bark, Norman greeted her in a voice that would be familiar to his loyal Jack Russell terrier. Then, he dropped a chew toy that the dog was sure to be occupied with for the next few minutes.
Looking up, he saw a woman standing in his kitchen, wearing the armor, weapons and helmet of the last group that Norman wanted to encounter today. The badge on her bulletproof chest plate made it painfully obvious that she was a member of the Time Travel Police Department.
Norman knew that his past-self was sleeping in the next room and that the power outage had resulted in his alarm clock resetting. He knew that this alarm clock would not go off when it was supposed to tomorrow morning and he would be late for work. Power outages were something that Past Norman would not be prone to thinking about, because for hundreds of years, power outages only happened when EMPs were triggered. There are no power lines or any other technology that involves power cords in the 27th century. Due to a protest that was happening a half-mile away at a government-owned electrical plant, an EMP had been triggered and knocked out countless electronic devices within a two-mile radius. This included cars. There were not many hover cars on the skyways at this hour, but the few that were travelling along crashed into the bottoms of the mammoth glass tubes that led them here or there, to this city or the next.
Norman knew that his not waking up tomorrow would result in his past-self losing his job. Tomorrow was probably the biggest business meeting of his career. He was giving a guided tour to a presidential candidate and five members of the Planetary Congress, to show them how safe and effective his new lava fuel plant was, hopefully resulting in more funding for his life’s work. The stress of this important meeting would result in Norman not falling asleep when he wanted to the night before. Then, his alarm didn’t go off. His always-obedient serving staff had been ordered not to wake him…ever, so he would sleep until 10am and miss this important meeting and guided tour completely.
And he would lose his job, being voted out of the company by the other members of the board when the failure of this important meeting hit the news networks. He would also lose the house. And he would start drinking. And Norman’s scheming ex-wife would use his plummeting, spiraling life to take custody of his daughter away from him, prompting him to drink some more.
He had to make a deal with the Devil, or at the closest thing to the Devil that the time travel cops regularly concerned themselves with. In Norman’s case, he found a time-travelling mob boss named Rupert Blix, whose crime syndicate was the only organization besides the TTPD with a working time machine. His men preyed on people who had regrets in their life. Most of Rupert’s targets would say things like “if only” over and over again. They all seemed to have clear ideas of what had gone wrong in their life and what they would change if they had a time machine. Norman was certainly one of them. He wanted to go back in time and reset his alarm clock.
That is why he was here. That is why he had travelled back in time three years and snuck back into his own house. And that was why there was a Time Cop blocking his way, because changing time for any reason, even a simple one with minor repercussions, was against the law and punishable by death.
The dog was so preoccupied with his chew toy that she didn’t even see the time cop. Some guard dog you are, Norman thought, trying to figure out a way that he could make Krypta bark and wake his future-self up, even if he couldn’t get into his room.
“Hands up!” whispered the female time cop, loud enough to be heard, drawing a ray gun out of her holster.
Norman started to raise his hands, but when they got about waist-level, a metal rod appeared, one that he had been stashed in the sleeve of his trench coat for just such an occasion. Dropping to his knees, Norman used this metal rod, not to attack the time travelling officer, but to bang against the stove in this kitchen. The metallic clang was loud, echoing throughout the pipes of the seventeen rooms that were connected to this kitchen, including Norman’s bedroom. “Wake up!” Future-Norman screamed. “Wake up, you brown-nosing corporate schmuck!”
Soon, Norman was in a headlock as the loyal Time Cop continued to do her job. She was trying to pull Norman away from the stove, but Norman’s feet were planted. And he was a few heads taller than her too. Norman got a few more licks in (on the stove) as he struggled with the short, but wiry TTPD officer who was trying to take out his legs. “Nice try, Miss Piggy!” Norman shouted scornfully, laughing out loud, as the cop reached for a small button on her belt.
This button opened a time portal. Beams of light poured out of the fabric of the space-time continuum, wrapping around both the female cop and her suspect like they were shiny, clawed fingers. This portal sucked both her and Future Norman back through it, back to the interrogation room of the Time Travel Police Headquarters, three years later.
2620.
Norman dropped out of this portal into a dusty, dimly-lit room with cement walls, deep beneath the building that was the TTPD Headquarters. He was surrounded by four more time travel police officers, much taller than the first, who could only be seen as the light from nearby lamps reflected off their helmets. They jumped the time-travelling law breaker without delay and cuffed him before he realized where he was.
As Norman was being chained to the only chair in this room, the first cop, the one who had arrested him, left the room. She pulled off her helmet and let her curly brown hair fall out of it. This was Detective Aileen Buckman, age twenty-seven.
“Excellent work, Detective,” said a familiar, friendly voice, much friendlier than it was before Aileen had left for her assignment. This was the voice of sixty-something, heavily-mustachioed Time Travel Police Commissioner
Linden Bonin. He was standing next to a two-way mirror where he could see Norman getting chained to the chair from outside the interrogation room. “He’s a tall one too.”
No one ever says that to the male cops, Aileen thought, annoyed. She was trying very hard not to glare at this high-ranking official with a look of disgust. Can’t figure out if it’s because I’m a woman or because I’m shorter than the others. This guy’s a sexist pig anyway. Just ask Kat or Ebonee or…that girl who just got transferred.
“The bigger ones fall harder, sir,” quipped Aileen, trying very hard to repress her heartfelt disdain for this man. She succeeded when she smiled at him, politely laughing and being quite professional around her normally-stern superior. Because there was something, a deep dark secret, that she had to make sure that Commissioner Bonin didn’t know.
She knew about something that this arrogant man had done, something that proved how he was abusing his power in a most despicable way. There was no way that she could prove it at this point without illegally time-travelling to when it happened and risk getting arrested herself. And the Commish didn’t seem to know that she knew anything. But he certainly had the power to kill her if he suspected anything.