Council Ford Insurrection

Near the end of my shift last night a report came in of a collision on my State Hwy-93 beat. As I approached the accident scene the moonless, starlit quiet of the prairie around me was broken by the intensity of my cruiser’s high beams and its roaring engine, cranked up to its top speed of 135 mph. As I pulled up to the scene and switched off the engine, the intensity of the fire of the crashed vehicle dominated the night. The driver of the burning vehicle and its two passengers were beyond rescue. Not since Chou Li had I experienced the smell of death by fire. Near the burning car was a second wrecked car. In it I saw a woman pinned in the wreckage. Her car had come to rest terrifyingly close to the fire. The motorist who called in the accident awaited me, silhouetted in the fire, and kneeling near the trapped woman, talking to her. ________________________________________________________ Mulvaney is a 33-year-old Marine veteran. He is of Irish heritage, a spare, good-looking man, with blue eyes and auburn hair. Despite the crisp military persona he projects as a State Trooper, he is soft spoken, well adjusted, even-tempered, courteous, and a complete family man. All these traits overlay his healthy law enforcement alertness. ________________________________________________________ The Truck: a beautiful 2043 Ford Infinity hybrid, the Carbon-Titanium series, a deep Candy Apple Red, with black accents; fancy carbon-fiber black and magnesium 21-inch wheels; One ton capacity, very fast. _________________________________________________________ As I walked along the cobbled path next to the Courthouse in the Council Ford Town square the fresh fragrance of Daffodils and Freesias introduced the early spring morning. Last fall Sheriff Jeff Likens donated a couple of deputies’ time to plant the bulbs now sprouting newly emerging flowers in the large bed next to the Courthouse. The Sheriff made sure that each of his 16 deputies spent some time on community service each month. The community was under stress with life changed in many ways in the past few years and the Sheriff believed that helping the community beyond providing law enforcement was a part of his job of keeping the peace. _________________________________________________________ Opening his newspaper, the Council Ford Voice, Sam Bufford said to Fleming Jackson, but for all to hear. with slow disgust: “All I know, that if they put in this d*mn “HUB”, on top of the NISW (“National Satellite Internet Web”) it’s the end of our easy freedom here, God damn them and f**k them. “ Sam owns the Big 25 Ranch, just east of town. He is a stringy, weather-beaten man, in his late forties. The Big 25 shared a border with the Galvan to the east, the Bar 20 to the north and the S93 to the south. Sam has lived there all his life, like his father and grandfather. When out and about, he wore a sidearm in a holster, on a well-worn belt, all inherited from his granddaddy. Sam had a reputation of a man of few words, known for his profanity in what little he did say, but this morning was an exception with him coming up with at least 25 well-chosen words for all to hear before sitting down. _________________________________________________________________ “…. our company was at a forward fire base and about to be withdrawn when we were almost surrounded by the NVA. They really knew what they were doing, but we killed a lot of them before we were able were able to get out. I got out on one of the first choppers that risked it all coming in after us. The work of chopper pilots was as amazing! Their radios were going crazy, the tree lines just a couple hundred yards away were lit up with the muzzle flashes from the NVA, rounds kicking up splashes of mud all around us, rounds pinging off the chopper armor. The din of the covering fire from our men was louder than the chopper. Then we were up and away! Just like that! I would have kissed both pilots, but the medic had just given me a syringe full of morphine. ___________________________________________________________ Flem parked his ATV along Foothill Road near the Mulvaney house. Vern got out with his briefcase. Eli was out in the yard with the girls. They were enthusiastically riding the swings. They were bundled up in brightly colored parkas. Their long blonde hair trailed behind them and moved in the rhythm with the swings. Flem could hear their voices as they played. As Eli saw Vern approach she spoke briefly to the girls and walked to meet him. Vern handed Eli the briefcase. She took it and put it down. She gave Vern a big hug, speaking briefly to him, her head next to his. She walked back to the girls and Vern walked back the ATV. To Vern’s surprise, or maybe he was just imagining it, as he got back into the ATV, he saw Flem dabbing tears out of his eyes. ____________________________________________________________ (By 2063) Gun ownership had slowly declined over time as more citizens cashed in on generous government offer to them to turn in surplus weapons. Insurance requirements, stricter liability standards and more effective storage required whittled away at the casualty figures. As important as any of these AI as fed by the ever-mushrooming data the government and organizations collected on Americans enabled a 20-fold increase in the accuracy of predictions about which citizens might go off the beam if they had access to a gun. The standard of “better safe than sorry” became the norm. Based on algorithms processing the vast trove of data collected on its citizens the authorities and non-governmental organizations would decide summarily which citizens should not have access to guns, leaving it to those who were denied guns to prove they should be allowed to have them. As a result of all this gun deaths dropped 60% on a per capita basis. Suicide by gun dropped 75%. This was accompanied by a 50% reduction in the overall suicide rate, resulting from better mental health treatment of those in need. The total number of guns in circulation dropped by 45%.