Shadows Over Utopia (Utopian Dreams, #2) by Alan Atkinson

Author:Alan Atkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alan Atkinson
Published: 2022-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

36 - Preparation for Disaster

Contents

Front Desk, Utopia City Main Precinct House

January 28, 2014

12:06 PM Central Standard Time

Sergeant Catherine Richardson, UCPD

It was quiet enough as Tuesdays went, though Catherine was fully aware the night would be somewhat livelier. Some of the troops had attended the morning commemoration ceremony at the statue in Challenger Plaza, but for the most part, they were patrolling the city in conjunction with the hexes. There was always someone who wanted to kick the celebrations off early and do something stupid.

The laws in Utopia had been expressly formulated to crack down on things that endangered the citizenry as a whole, while leaving personal liberties (to a point) free and clear. Fireworks, for instance, were legal in the city, though those manufactured and sold to the civilian populace were limited in size, range, and explosive power.

Tonight, from the tops of buildings and within parks, approved fireworks would be legal to set off for the celebration. Catherine knew perfectly well that no illegal fireworks would’ve been brought in via the maglev or the highway; the scanning systems were too efficient for that. In addition, since the demise of the Southsiders, there was no new contraband making its way into Utopia ... that she knew of.

Which just left Utopians who wanted to make their own over-powered fireworks. And no power on Earth was capable of preventing sufficiently motivated idiots (especially UCIAT students) from doing something they knew was risky, but which they wanted to do anyway. People could be remarkably stupid, even in Utopia where Catherine was personally sure the average IQ was a few notches higher than the surrounding state, much less the rest of the nation. That just allowed them to be idiotic in an exponentially more innovative fashion, giving the police more headaches than the typical run of dumbasses.

In other words, things were likely to get a lot more hectic once the sun went down, so right now was a great time to get pending paperwork cleared out of the way. And so, she was steadily tapping away on the keyboard when the armor-glass doors to the lobby slid open. The almost silent gasp from the few people waiting in the lobby made her look up.

She knew who Silent Knight and Lady Quantum were, of course. Along with the rest of the Force Majeure core membership, they maintained a robust presence within Utopia and occasionally outside it. Force Majeure wasn’t quite seen as royalty—every king or queen she’d seen in any movie tended to sit back and let the peasantry do all the work—but the scuttlebutt was that if they wanted the city council to vote a certain way, it voted that way.

Which made sense to her; they’d literally built the city from the bedrock up. Shouldn’t they have a say in how things were run? After all, everything that set Utopia apart from every other city on Earth was specifically due to them. This was, however, the first time she’d met these two up close.

The contrast between Silent Knight and Lady Quantum was essentially the same as night versus day.

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