My response to current events and the state of our society.

October 28^th, 2046. A day I’ll never forget.

It started just like any other day. I was at the station, watching President Ocortez on TV as she sentenced a criminal to death for denying that women experience erectile dysfunction, when the call came through. 10-37, Triggering In Progress at the memorial! I dropped my tofu and latte, sprinted to my patrol Prius, and blazed out of the parking lot at my max speed of 22 miles per hour.

On the way to the call I reminded myself not to get complacent; these situations can turn deadly in an instant. But I knew I’d be okay as long as I followed the escalation of force steps. If the suspect was a cishet patriarchal oppressor, shame, then accuse, then destroy online. But if the suspect was an oppressed victim of colonization, he wasn’t a suspect at all. So the steps were to ask for compliance, beg, plead, cry, apologize for my privilege, grovel, cry, admit everything is my fault, ask permission to touch him, cry, run away, drive to the station, cry, quit my job. Hopefully this situation wouldn’t require more than one cry.

As I tore through the streets, making sure not to hit any of the bicyclists passing me, I heard a muffled thump ahead. Smoke drifted from around the corner of a building. I turned and saw electric cars aflame, blood and body parts scattered on the street, broken glass and shards of metal everywhere. Just ahead of my car a human with long blond hair, wide hips, round stomach and large breasts frantically pushed a baby stroller away from whatever had just happened.

I cranked down my window and yelled, “Excuse me! What gender are you?”

“What gender am I?” She asked? “I’m obviously a pregnant woman!”

I glared at her. She was on the verge of a thought crime. I asked, “What happened here?”

“A suicide bomber just blew himself up!” she screamed.

I shook my head. “Trump,” I muttered. “That son of a bitch.”

“What?” she blurted. “Trump hasn’t been president in 25 years and has been dead for over a decade. This has nothing to do with Trump. Some guy yelled ‘Allah akbar, I love ISIS’ and blew himself up. People are dead and dying, please send help!”

“Oh, I’ll send someone,” I said. “You just stay right here and wait for them.” As I drove away I keyed my radio. “Dispatch, we need a Bias Response Team to 600 Main. A pregnant, female-appearing human expected me to assume her gender. She also failed to understand why a marginalized member of this oppressive society would lash out against the cishetero patriarchy. Tell the team to kill if necessary.”

The dispatcher responded, “Yeeeeeeeee!” Zhe was triggered, and nobody could blame zher. What I’d just described was traumatic. But I knew that zhe’d send the team as soon as zhe got zherself under control. Then I added, “Oh yeah, there was a bombing or something too. No idea of motive, probably workplace violence.” I continued toward the memorial, leaving behind patriarchal colonizers who’d no doubt gotten what they deserved.

I arrived at the memorial. Melinated humans approached me, carrying signs proclaiming their hatred of the non-melinated. Who could blame them? I slowly opened the door, stepped out and said “Hello, may I be of service?” in a pleasant voice, careful not to inadvertently reinforce the trauma of past police violence. Don’t get me wrong, police violence is almost unheard of since climate change ended the world in 2031 just like President Ocortez said it would, and we police have been unarmed since then. Just like socialism, disarming the police has worked perfectly. We only lose 16,000 officers killed annually and we’ve managed to not kill a single suspect, not even mass murderers or terrorists.

“I need to report that homo right there,” one of the melinated humans exclaimed as zhe pointed toward a white-appearing young person standing a short distance away. I looked up in shock at the anti-gay slur, and noticed the melinated humans were also holding anti-LGBTQIA++JFC/0 signs. I started to Yeeeeee, my eyes rolled back in my head and my hands trembled uncontrollably. But then I remembered that the people holding the signs weren’t part of the cishet colonizer patriarchy, so it was cool.

“What did zhe do?”, I asked?

“I called him a bunch of racial insults, told him he and everyone like him should die, accused him of being gay and insulted him for it, and he refused to back away!” the human exclaimed. “Can you believe I had to endure such racist hatred?”

“Yeeeeeee!” I blurted, then recovered from the triggering. “Are you okay? Do you need an ambulance?”

“No, I just want him dead!”

“That bastard,” I spat as I turned away. I started walking toward the racist, but then another human beating a drum jumped in my way.

“I’m a Vietnam [times] veteran!” he yelled. “The men with the signs were insulting that child, so I beat my drum in his face to protect the men with the signs! That child is a beast, and they were his prey! I’m a Vietnam [times] veteran, and I’ve seen this kind of mob violence before!”

“Oh god!” I stammered. “What did the racist do when you beat your drum in his face?”

The drummer burst into tears, obviously traumatized. “He…he…he racistly smiled at me! And I’m a Vietnam [times] veteran!”

“Yeeeeeeeeeeee!!!” I triggered, overwhelmed by the intensity of racism I’d just heard. “Take cover, I’ll handle this!”

The drummer retreated toward safety, still beating his drum. “I’m a Vietnam [times] veteran!” he yelled over his shoulder as he disappeared behind a trash can. I dashed toward the suspect and confronted him.

“You!” I screeched. “What did you do to make those people with the hateful signs insult you?”

The young, male-appearing suspect appeared confused. “Uh,” he muttered, unsure what was going on. “Nothing. I didn’t do anything to them.”

“Nothing but 400 years of oppression!” I screamed. “You expressed your privilege, and I know it! I’m a grown man, I know racism when I see it!”

“But I didn’t do anything,” the suspect said quietly. “I was just standing here and those guys started yelling racist and anti-gay slurs at me. I stayed away, but then the protester with the drum got in my face and started chanting. I didn’t know what was going on, so I just stood there.”

“Yeeeeeeeeeeee!” I triggered. “You just deflected blame onto the melinated protesters because you think your whiteness lets you get away with everything!”

“What? No!” he yelled back. “I didn’t do anything! Seriously, I just stood here and smiled.”

“Yeeeeeeeeee! You admit it! You racistly smiled at a Vietnam [times] veteran activist drummer!”

“All I did was smile!” the suspect said. “And anyway, he’s not even a real Vietnam veteran. He was an electrician who never left America.”

“Yeeeeeeeee!” I triggered again. “He’s a war hero! Stop denying his personhood! Allow people other than yourself the right to exist! Stop mansplaining!”

“Mansplaining?” he asked. “But, you’re a man too.”

“Yeeeeeeeeeee! Now you’ve misgendered me!”

“Misgendered? You just told me you’re a man.”

“That was seconds ago!” I gushed. “My gender changed since then!”

“What the heck?” the suspect asked in shock. “Forget it, I’m leaving.” He turned around and tried to leave but I threw the cuffs on, dragged him to the patrol Prius, and threw him in. After assuring the drummer and people carrying racist signs that I’d arrested the violent, vicious criminal, I took him to the station. Judge Reza punched him to death that afternoon. Criminal cases are so much faster, more equitable and fair since we banished the racist “presumption of innocence” that nazis loved so much.

Chris Hernandez is a 24-year police officer, former Marine and retired National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is an Iraq-times, Afghanistan-times and combat-times veteran who actually deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and was in combat, and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and has published three military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve, Line in the Valley and Safe From the War through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at chris_hernandez_author@yahoo.com or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).