Chapter 20
Hartford, Homeland
A huge black armored vehicle with an angular body design to deflect heavy weapon strikes against it pulled up in front of the Thomas’s home. The door displayed the text: “Homeland Police – Sensitivity Compliance Dept.-Inquisitor Unit No. 1”. The back doors popped open. A twenty foot tall heavy black police robot with chicken legs and a battering ram for one arm and a chainsaw with huge teeth for the other arm unfolded its massive self and exited out of the large back door. The robot, known as a “Blockbuster” walked up to the front door of the home with heavy thumping steps. Four more smaller six foot tall robots, humanoid in design, armed with heavy Plasfusion rifles which they carried in-hand were close behind. The Inquisitor squad was unnecessarily powerful, but was intentionally so, to act as a deterrent against would-be dissent-minded malcontents.
Dr. Fallon, the Senior Sensitivity Compliance Officer emerged from the armored truck. He was represented by his synthetic presence, dressed in his usual all-black. Fallon walked up to the door and knocked with an overhead motion with the bottom of his fist. There was no answer.
Fallon took a step back and commanded the huge Blockbuster unit. He said, “Battering ram.”
The big steel chicken-like monstrosity moved the battering ram arm to the upper corner, then across to the other corner, to calculate the center of the steel door. Then it moved very slowly until it barely touched the center. Then the Blockbuster said, “Clear.” FOOOM! The ram sprang forth in a cloud of dust so fast that the door instantly vanished from its jam and hinge. The door and most of the surrounding debris flew inside the house. Any human and most androids standing behind the door would have certainly been killed upon impact. The huge robot’s battering ram hydraulic motor slowly retracted the ram with a whining noise. Meanwhile the four inquisitor troops rushed inside. The dislodged front door tore up the walls in the entry way upon impact. The troops entered and scanned each room, looking for the Thomas family. As programmed, they started looking in more and more secretive locations, and would continue to look until the house was completely taken apart and placed into tidy organized stacks of chattel and building materials, or given the order to cease.
“Never mind,” Fallon said. “They’re not here.” Fallon was speaking not only to his Inquisitor Team but also remotely to the Homeland Police headquarters. “I’ve seen this so many times before. They are long gone. They never stay around for long in the same location. They are probably on their way to the ISA with all of the other low-lifers. Looks like a wasted trip over here. Load up.”
Over a hundred years earlier, the United States was unable to reunify itself after a devastating monetary crisis that led to a total economic collapse. This was brought about by excessive government debt. The will to fix the situation was not shared by many who were on the dole so the US dollar eventually became worthless.
After the US government collapsed, the land became ruled by hundreds of Kings and Clans. Several nations emerged but they never reunified because of deep cultural divisions. The liberal northeast quickly traded their freedom for security and became the UN proxy state known as Homeland. The individual states in Homeland were abolished and there was a great purge among any and all dissenters in Homeland. The independent-minded Midwest reassembled itself as the Independent States of America. The south remained Balkanized with non-stop brutal wars. The open spaces of the west had a variety of realms; including a large poorly defended area known as the Reconquista, which was reclaimed by the Mexicans with the help of a Chinese expeditionary force. Also, some of the western States became feisty independent nations.
Homeland and the ISA remained rivals throughout their history, which was punctuated by brief border skirmishes. Each clash added another layer of difficulty to their thorny coexistence. So travel between the two nations was difficult as everyone was extremely vetted as a possible spy or enemy sympathizer.
Fallon knew that it would be a lot easier for the Thomases to flee across the border into Canada, but they would be much harder to locate if they went to the ISA. Either way would prove to be very difficult to get information out of them. Yet, Fallon was sure that this Milton Thomas kid was somehow at the core of this new looming threat and must be found.
The Inquisitor Unit boarded the armored vehicle and returned to its home base in Stalin City, formerly known as Washington, DC.