Dream: Modern Criminal Justice (Weekend Edition)
Saturday:
We walked from Housewares up through Girls' Clothing, then past all the impulse-buy racks that separate check-out lanes. beltramgregor casually fell behind a couple paces to block me from the camera while I pocketed a syringe from the shelf. (It was nearly the color of maple syrup; I think the label said "Marburg variant.") I needed another vaccination for my trip to South Africa, and paying for it seemed unnecessary. Someone from security caught beltramgregor in the act, but they had to let him go when they realized he didn't have the syringe. We went back to Target a week later to get the second dose in the series, and they caught us both.
As punishment for these misdemeanors, we were sentenced to three days of army training. They threw us into the middle of the program, so we ran tactical exercises the first day. A squad of trainees (or people with longer sentences) was tasked with clearing a huge farmhouse. They shuffled quickly from room to room, fumbling with hand signals.
Watching from behind a picket fence on the ground, beltramgregor and I chatted quietly about their technique. The snipers in the attic never got a clear shot at the squad, so they were doing something right. Once they reached the fourth floor, though, everything fell apart. A trio of ninjas flashed out with swords and knives, carving through the bewildered trainees. They made a hasty retreat down fire escapes and grain chutes, drawing eager shots from the bored snipers above. Likewise, beltramgregor and I braced our guns against the fence and threw burst after burst of 7.76 FMJ in their direction. Sadly, the instructors had given us sub-machine guns; at that range, we couldn't target anything smaller than a Suburban.
Buffy (the Slayer) sprinted to the farmhouse, bounding to the top like a mountain goat. She was the only instructor attached to the squad, and she wasn't about to let them die. A flurry of kung fu knocked out the snipers. The ninjas rushed her while the wounded trainees stumbled to safety. We let them go and concentrated our fire on Buffy, but she didn't seem to notice.
Steve joined us on the street corner. Grinning faintly, he shot grape-sized balls of colored flame from his hands. Before we could bury him in questions, Steve scooped a handful of short paper tubes from his pocket and gave them to us.
"Squeeze flares," he said. "Here, try some."
They were nearly the size of rifle rounds, made of waxen, pale gray paper like fireworks. Faintly printed arrows indicated both ends of the flare, and we were unfamiliar with the iconography. One of them must have meant "this end towards you," and the other probably meant "point away" or "this end shoots fire." We played around until we got the hang of the them. The last one beltramgregor tried was a dud; the end popped open and a shower of pale gray dust accumulated on the tabletop. I searched through our tomato-rimed tupperware until I found a clean container, then swept the flare dust inside.
A confused bystander approached the computer and hesitantly ran the cursor across the screen. "What's this... page?" he asked. I assured him it was only a comic that the last user had left loaded. He closed the window and began his own project, never noticing the Strange Activities on which the comic had provided instruction.
I passed Weyerhauser, headed for our house on the Macalester campus. A rambling two-and-a-half story Victorian, it stood where the Bursar's office should have been. As I crossed the street, I veered over to 63 Mac. The kids living there were lounging in hammocks strung from the elm outside. It was a druggie house this year, and I didn't really know them, but we made small talk about the house every so often, commiserated about the closet-sized bathroom.
A navy blue 1984 Ford pickup with a camper top perched in the crook of the tree, some thirty feet above the napping students. Undisturbed for years, it'd become an icon for that part of campus. The closest anyone came to messing with it was when someone attached red bike reflectors to the tree just below it. They'd mounted a spare set of turn signals between the reflectors--countersunk them into the tree somehow--and now they turned them on any time they threw a party. Dusk smeared shadows across the street as the pair of orange lights flashed an invitation.
We walked from Housewares up through Girls' Clothing, then past all the impulse-buy racks that separate check-out lanes. beltramgregor casually fell behind a couple paces to block me from the camera while I pocketed a syringe from the shelf. (It was nearly the color of maple syrup; I think the label said "Marburg variant.") I needed another vaccination for my trip to South Africa, and paying for it seemed unnecessary. Someone from security caught beltramgregor in the act, but they had to let him go when they realized he didn't have the syringe. We went back to Target a week later to get the second dose in the series, and they caught us both.
As punishment for these misdemeanors, we were sentenced to three days of army training. They threw us into the middle of the program, so we ran tactical exercises the first day. A squad of trainees (or people with longer sentences) was tasked with clearing a huge farmhouse. They shuffled quickly from room to room, fumbling with hand signals.
Watching from behind a picket fence on the ground, beltramgregor and I chatted quietly about their technique. The snipers in the attic never got a clear shot at the squad, so they were doing something right. Once they reached the fourth floor, though, everything fell apart. A trio of ninjas flashed out with swords and knives, carving through the bewildered trainees. They made a hasty retreat down fire escapes and grain chutes, drawing eager shots from the bored snipers above. Likewise, beltramgregor and I braced our guns against the fence and threw burst after burst of 7.76 FMJ in their direction. Sadly, the instructors had given us sub-machine guns; at that range, we couldn't target anything smaller than a Suburban.
Buffy (the Slayer) sprinted to the farmhouse, bounding to the top like a mountain goat. She was the only instructor attached to the squad, and she wasn't about to let them die. A flurry of kung fu knocked out the snipers. The ninjas rushed her while the wounded trainees stumbled to safety. We let them go and concentrated our fire on Buffy, but she didn't seem to notice.
Steve joined us on the street corner. Grinning faintly, he shot grape-sized balls of colored flame from his hands. Before we could bury him in questions, Steve scooped a handful of short paper tubes from his pocket and gave them to us.
"Squeeze flares," he said. "Here, try some."
They were nearly the size of rifle rounds, made of waxen, pale gray paper like fireworks. Faintly printed arrows indicated both ends of the flare, and we were unfamiliar with the iconography. One of them must have meant "this end towards you," and the other probably meant "point away" or "this end shoots fire." We played around until we got the hang of the them. The last one beltramgregor tried was a dud; the end popped open and a shower of pale gray dust accumulated on the tabletop. I searched through our tomato-rimed tupperware until I found a clean container, then swept the flare dust inside.
A confused bystander approached the computer and hesitantly ran the cursor across the screen. "What's this... page?" he asked. I assured him it was only a comic that the last user had left loaded. He closed the window and began his own project, never noticing the Strange Activities on which the comic had provided instruction.
I passed Weyerhauser, headed for our house on the Macalester campus. A rambling two-and-a-half story Victorian, it stood where the Bursar's office should have been. As I crossed the street, I veered over to 63 Mac. The kids living there were lounging in hammocks strung from the elm outside. It was a druggie house this year, and I didn't really know them, but we made small talk about the house every so often, commiserated about the closet-sized bathroom.
A navy blue 1984 Ford pickup with a camper top perched in the crook of the tree, some thirty feet above the napping students. Undisturbed for years, it'd become an icon for that part of campus. The closest anyone came to messing with it was when someone attached red bike reflectors to the tree just below it. They'd mounted a spare set of turn signals between the reflectors--countersunk them into the tree somehow--and now they turned them on any time they threw a party. Dusk smeared shadows across the street as the pair of orange lights flashed an invitation.