spreading out a bit to provide cover.
'What are you two doing out here tonight?' Broward asked them.
'Nothin,' they both muttered, giving the standard ghetto answer to such an inquiry.
'Nothing huh?' he said, looking from one to the other. 'We got a report that a couple of guys were going around the neighborhood spray-painting things on buildings. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?'
'No,' Matt said, shaking his head.
'Haven't seen nothin like that,' Jeff said.
'Really now?' Broward said. 'The report identified these people as gang member looking types, very out of place in this part of town. They're reported to have Capitalist tattoos on their arms, kind of like the ones you two are sporting.'
Knowing that they were caught, both Jeff and Matt simply shrugged. What else was there to do? In a minute they would be taken into custody and hauled down to the booking area for processing. It was something that both had gone through several times before, although never for crimes against corporations.
'What's that all over your hands?' Broward asked them next.
They looked at their hands, seeing that they were obviously splattered with paint residue. 'I was painting some furniture earlier,' Matt said sarcastically. 'I forgot to wash up.'
'Me too,' Jeff put in. 'Water don't run too good in the Heights buildings. You know how it is.'
'Yeah,' Broward said, nodding his head a little. 'I heard that about them buildings. So what are you two doing in this part of town? Just taking a little walk to enjoy the night?'
'That's right,' Jeff said.
'We like the night,' said Matt.
The cop continued to look them up and down for a moment, his blue eyes piercing. Finally he nodded, as if satisfied. 'Good enough then,' he said. 'I guess you've explained yourselves.'
'Couldn't be our guys,' one of the other cops said.
'Nope,' said another. 'Just some furniture painters out for a walk in the commercial district. Our mistake.'
'Huh?' Matt said, confused, wondering what sort of game they were playing.
Apparently they were not playing a game however. 'You two have yourselves a nice night,' Broward told them. 'We apologize for the inconvenience. And if you see any gang member types going around and painting graffiti on corporate buildings, you give us call, okay?'
'Yes,' said one of the others. 'That's certainly a crime that we need to stamp out.'
'Umm... sure...' Matt said, thinking that this was the most bizarre experience he had ever had. 'We'll uh... do that.'
Broward gave them a little two-fingered salute. With that, all four of them walked back to their patrol carts, their tanners clanking, and got inside. A moment later they were driving off, their taillights fading quickly with distance.
'Holy shit,' Jeff said, watching them go. 'Did that really just happen?'
'I think it did,' Matt agreed blankly, still unable to believe that they were still standing there after being pretty much caught red handed. They hadn't even scanned them! They hadn't even asked them for their PCs for identification!
They stood there for more than two minutes, looking at the empty street, their brains trying to convince them that they had just hallucinated the entire episode. 'Well,' Matt finally said, 'shall we carry on?'
'I guess so,' Jeff said.
They began to walk again, looking for their next target.
Stanley Clinton had been the director of the Federal Law Enforcement Bureau for nearly ten years. As such, he was accustomed to occasionally briefing the WestHem executive council — that group of nine elected representatives that had replaced the single-person presidency shortly after World War III — on various security issues. Never however, had he dreaded a briefing as much as this one.
He had flown from the rooftop of the FLEB building in downtown Denver — the WestHem capital city — in his private, computer operated VTOL craft, landing after a ten-minute flight on the restricted back lawn of the capital building itself. From there he had been escorted inside of the 220 story triangular high-rise, the tallest building on planet earth, and up to the 218th floor, where the executive briefing room was located.
The briefing room was not very large but it was opulently furnished with genuine oak tables and chairs and top of the line Internet screens equipped with the very best encryption gear available. The window on the western exposure looked out upon the snow capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains, which were starkly visible in the clear air. Denver had once been one of the smoggiest cities in the nation but smog was now a thing of the distant past thanks to fusion power and hydrogen burning engines.
Only two of the executive council members were present for Clinton's briefing. John Calvato, who represented to eastern North American district of WestHem, and, at three-quarters of the way through his second six-year term, was the senior member. As such he carried more power than the other members and was accorded with the title
The other member present for the briefing was Loretta Williams, a first termer in her early fifties. She was one of the junior members but she was the elected councilperson that was supposedly representing Mars (as well as Ganymede and the Pacific Islands of Earth) although she had only been there once and had never been a resident. She too was owned lock, stock, and barrel by Agricorp and the other food production corporations, having received more than a billion dollars in campaign contributions and other handouts from them over the years of her career. It was Williams who would present the official federal government face to the growing crisis on Mars. Already she had been on Internet multiple times stating in no uncertain terms that Laura Whiting was a corrupt, possibly mentally ill person and that the WestHem government would not now and never would in the future consider negotiating independence with the Martians. 'That planet is a part of this great nation,' she had been quoted as saying. 'It is WestHem that colonized and built that planet and it is WestHem business interests that have paid for everything that is present there. Mars is a part of our union — as much a part as Cuba and Argentina and Ganymede — and they always will be.'
That was the official WestHem line on the Martian situation — a line that the corporations who had put the politicians where they were insisted upon. It was a line that Clinton and the sixteen thousand FLEB agents under his command would uphold to the death. It was the line that the big three were feeding the people on Earth and were attempting to feed the people on Mars.
'Welcome, Mr. Clinton,' Williams said with an accommodating smile as he entered the room and closed the door behind him. 'How was your trip over?'
'It was fine, Madam Councilperson,' he said with a slight smile. 'The air was very still today, hardly any turbulence to speak of. And the secret service was particularly fast about clearance for landing.'
'That's nice to hear,' she said. 'Sometimes they are a bit too diligent in their duties. Won't you sit down?'
He sat down. Williams exchanged a few more pleasantries with him, most having to do with his family and his office. She then congratulated him on his ongoing campaign against the scourge of software piracy and illegal music file duplication. Since being appointed as director, convictions for those most heinous crimes had increased by more than eighteen percent, as had the prison terms handed out for them. Through this all Calvato simply sat in place, a frowning, irritated expression upon his face, his brown eyes boring into the FLEB director.
'Now then,' Williams said once the preliminaries were taken care of, 'about this Laura Whiting situation.'
'Yes Ma'am,' Clinton said with a nod.
'I don't believe I have to tell you that some very important people are becoming increasingly upset about her continued presence in that capital building. It has been more than two months now since she showed us just what kind of person she was; two months and she is still in office, still riling up those greenies into a fury, and still getting on the Internet twice a week shouting about independence. Can you explain this, Mr. Clinton? Because frankly, we
