#alhufamily | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jjjat3am · 10 years ago

Text

Holograms, stylus pens and assorted shenanigans

Written for bluehairdfreak, for the ahfancon exchange This is is a report on The 105th Precinct’s Prank War of 2048. Read at your own risk. Also on ao3

There are stories passed on, through generations of cops, an oral tradition of anecdotes and caution tales that every rookie memorizes by the time they’ve got stripes pinned on their uniform. Some of them are educational, others jaw splittingly hilarious and a few downright gruesome.

The tale of The 105th Precinct’s Prank War of 2048 is all three.

Nobody can agree on how it came to be exactly, or if it was before or after the Great Mango Incident of 2048, where an experimental food synthetic machine malfunctioned and buried Roosevelt Ave. and subsequently the 103rd police station with thousands of perfectly ripe mangoes. It has been said that the damage was so great that none of the firemen and police dispatched to the scene, to rescue their hapless colleagues, were able to smell a mango for the rest of their lives without being reminded of the incident. Mango sales plummeted. Fortunately, no one was hurt, except for a Detective Bellini, who was admitted to the hospital with mango related gastrointestinal problems.

(Note: In some versions of this story it is not mangoes that are produced in huge quantities, but in fact pineapples and the injuries are much more severe.)

But I digress.

It may be hard for us to pinpoint the exact source of The 105th Precinct’s Prank War of 2048, but it is hard to miss the reason for it.

Boredom.

It has often been said that true police work is nothing like what is seen in various films and TV shows (or HOSTs as they were called after 2030; Holo-oscillatory sensonary transmissions). True police work includes less running around with funky gadgets and a lot more sitting behind a desk for 8 hours a day, and filling out forms for the allotted amount of paperclips, which you would then use to pin those forms together and presumably feel very proud of your efficient use of resources.

The invention of the MX units further revolutionalized police work, allowing it to be even less hands-on and more ass-in-chair. A new type of police officer appeared, a subculture if you please, called Aerophobics. They were called thus, because Aerophobics only breathed the outside (yet still machine filtered) air when they had to go to and fro the precinct and even then they tried to minimize their exposure for as long as possible.

Not all were like this, of course. Many preferred to go out and observe crime scenes side-by-side with their MX. We mention the Aerophobics simply because the phrase ‘ass-in-chair approach’ amuses the narrator so much that they are willing to devote two whole paragraphs to it.

But let us return to The 105th Precinct’s Prank War of 2048, as it is, after all, the point of this whole story.

It is agreed that The 105th Precinct was and even is now, full of individuals who are somewhat unorthodox in their methods and consequently possess a rather unusual sense of humor, which, combined with an innate sense of boredom, can be a lethal force.

Richard was bored. He was also drinking his third cup of coffee in as many hours, because his MX had been insisting he heighten his daily liquid intake. Because Richard insisted on drinking only coffee and beer, the MX just continued bringing him cups of coffee as soon as he emptied them. Truthfully, Richard should have stopped after the second cup, but he felt that it would be impolite to refuse, as the MX had gone to all that trouble. His mother had raised him well, after all.

Eventually, his distracted gaze was drawn to Valerie, sorting out some paperwork on her pad with an ornately decorated stylus pen. Everyone knows how proud Valerie was of her stylus collection, fitted with gold and LED designs, and different tips for various levels of precision. She kept them all in cozy holders, in the upper drawer of her desk and polished them frequently. Richard could swear that she even talked to them sometimes, when she thought no one was watching.

But observing her now, his sugar and caffeine addled brain latches onto an idea.

There was this new device the science department was slowly trying to implement into police use. They called it the HOLOport, capped just like that, because the department was a bunch of drama queens with zero regard for linguistics. The HOLOport was basically an anchor for a holographic illusion that worked to cover whatever the user chose to be covered. It didn’t work for skin very well, but they had the HOLOmasks for that anyway (the science department was supremely unoriginal for some of the brightest minds in the world). Richard wasn’t a fan of the HOLOmasks, because they chafed, but he’d be the first to admit that they were useful in undercover work, which happened to be his specialty.

Now, the HOLOports weren’t strictly available for use yet, not without a very good reason, but Richard knew that today the gadget desk would be operated by Rhonda. And Rhonda happened to have a soft spot for Richard that he occasionally shamelessly exploited.

So he got his MX to fetch him a cup of coffee, and meanwhile used a bit of cologne and unbuttoned the first button of his shirt. Kennex wrinkled his nose when Richard sauntered past, but he didn’t say anything, too preoccupied with playing Hangman with Dorian.

Even with a brief look, Richard could see that the word was romance, but he doubted that it existed in Kennex’s vocabulary and judging by Dorian’s smug face he knew it too. It probably wouldn’t take long till the vein on John’s neck popped out and he’d start cursing. Usually, Richard would stay and watch, but today he was on a mission.

He had to go underground to get to the science department, which was always a gamble, because while everything in the precinct was unbearably smugly futuristic the elevator was like something out of a horror movie, with creaking doors and lurching stops. Thankfully, he arrived in one piece, if a little bit sweatier than before.

Rhonda was at the desk, playing with something that looked like it’d be expensive and should probably not be played with. They looked up when Richard came in and promptly dropped the very expensive, very complicated looking thing on the floor, where it emitted a loud beeping noise and smoked a little.

“Hi, Rhonda,” Richard said and smiled his best charming smile, which was damn charming, because Rhonda let out a squeak and accidentally stepped on the thing on the floor. It smoked again and died with a high pitched scream that left Richard’s ears ringing.

“Uhm,” Rhonda said. Richard opened up another button, for extra effect. Rhonda gripped the table for support.

“I was wondering if I could borrow the HOLOports for an hour? Important police business, you know.” In Richard’s experience, prospective dates liked it when he reminded them of the important job he did.

“R-right, yeah, I, uh.” Rhonda peered up at him from where they were studiously concentrating on the floor and then immediately dropped their gaze. “I, uh, can’t do that? I mean, I’ll get into trouble.”

“Ah, c’mon, Rhonda,” Richard smiled and leaned in closer. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”

Rhonda gave in. Like he knew they would. They really were quite cute and as he headed into the Elevator of DoomTM, he wondered why he never got around to asking them out on a date. Then he looked at the unlawfully obtained HOLOport in his hands and rolled his eyes. The answer was obvious; Rhonda was much too good for him.

But back to his mission. Valerie was just getting up to go to the bathroom, so he caught her just in time.

As soon as she disappeared through the door, he sneaked to her desk and set up the HOLOport, hiding it under a pile of post-it notes he’d never seen her use, and frankly didn’t know why she had, because she didn’t even have any ink pens. He then programmed a very precise set of instructions into the machine and rigged it onto Valerie’s stylus pens.

By the time Valerie came back, he was innocently sitting at his desk, sipping another fresh cup of coffee and watching her from the corner of his eyes. He caught his MX watching him with a disapproving look and frowned back at it.

Valerie came in. Sat at her desk and opened up the drawer.

The resulting shriek had all the MXs drawing their weapons in unison. Though, to be fair, they did that about a dozen times every day, so no one even blinked.

“My pens!” Valerie screamed, pulling one out of its case. “What the hell happened to my pens?”

In her hand was a perfectly formed goose feather, they kind they used to write letters in ancient times and that museums were trying frantically to keep from disintegrating. Richard admired his own attention to detail. The feather even had some gold details on it and was really quite beautiful, though judging by Valerie’s red face, she didn’t exactly agree.

Kennex choose the moment to burst in, only for his face to immediately brighten when he saw the newly decorated pens.

“Oh, wow, Valerie, I didn’t know you were so into history! Those look amazing!” he exclaimed enthusiastically, only to find himself on the receiving end of Valerie’s glare.

“Did you do this?” she hissed at him and her fingers clenched around the delicate looking pen.

Richard couldn’t hold it in anymore; he laughed.

“It was you,” said Valerie, calm and threatening at the same time. “Fix it!”

“It’ll wear off in an hour, don’t worry,” Richard said, still grinning, enjoying the way her face was beginning to turn purple.

It did wear off in an hour, but it was an hour Valerie spend sitting rigidly in her chair, scowling at anyone who commented on her ‘beautiful new pen’.

“I’ll get you back for this,” she said to him after, clutching her normal shaped pen. Richard just shrugged.

He didn’t have to wait for her retribution long. In fact, in about a week’s time the break room was rigged up with a rather impressive contraption that included a pot of black tar and feathers. A 20th century cartoon classic, the machine was made to douse anyone who came inside in the morning with both.

Richard had to hand it to Valerie; it was an impressive plan. She’d even memorized his schedule. Unfortunately, she hadn’t counted on John being early for work for once and walking into the break room just in time to bear the brunt of the attack.

Richard’s morning was immediately improved when he saw Kennex charging down the hallway in a flurry of feathers, looking like a canary who’d gone a few rounds with a very tenacious cat. Of course, Richard got blamed for it at first, but Valerie fessed up soon enough, possibly because she didn’t want her remarkable feat of engineering to go attributed to Richard.

Dorian spent about 20% of his charge on uncontrollable laughter.

“This means war!” John announced to a bemused precinct, still dripping tar and feathers.

And war it was.

Richard woke up from his desk nap the next morning and realized he was glued to the desk. The MX tried to help and that’s how he got glued to his MX. Valerie found that all her recorded football matches were swapped with a season of a popular crime romance drama. It was a double insult, because Valerie ended up binge watching it and getting addicted.

Then, another player covertly entered the game. All it took was an insensitive comment from John and Dorian was in. It turns out that pissing off an android with access to your robotic body parts in the middle of a prank war was a really bad idea.

The next day, John’s leg let out a bloodcurdling scream every time he as much as stepped on it, so he was forced to hop around the precinct on one leg, until he managed to find Rudy to get it fixed. Of course, he blamed Richard and Valerie, oblivious to a snickering Dorian hiding his head in his hands.

The day after, John earned himself the nickname of ‘Sparkly Pants’ as the LED lights on his leg had been rigged to circle through all the colors of the rainbow, which was of course visible under his pants so it looked like he was carrying around a disco.

John didn’t catch on until he realized that every station he chose in the car was playing Elton John songs and that all the generic pictures in the hallways of the precinct would change to Elton John pictures when he passed. Nobody could have known about the Reginald connection, but Dorian.

Other members of the precinct were getting into the spirit of things, pads were getting hacked daily, personal possessions altered and none of the foodstuffs in the vending machines were safe. It was mayhem.

But the prank war didn’t grow up to its full potential until Rudy Lom entered the game.

He’d escaped the pranks for a relatively long time, all things considered, probably due to the isolation of the robotics department. But then the unspeakable happened; somebody messed with the coffee. And Rudy was out for blood.

Suddenly the MXs started behaving…weirdly.

There were a few instances where they interpreted their commands much too literately, leading into several misunderstandings.

A simple command of “Stay close!” had Richard tripping over his MX all afternoon, not to mention how it breathed down his neck every time he tried to concentrate. He drew the line when it tried to follow him into the toilet cubicle and slammed the door in its face.

He had to call it back a few minutes later, shame-faced, because the toilet paper holder was empty.

John gave one of them some paperwork and ordered it to “take it down to the labs and step on it!”, and then ended up paying for the repairs to the pad, because the MX literately stepped on it.

One detective asked for a powdered doughnut and got it…powdered. As in dust. The MX had dried and grinded it into powder. When told to keep an eye on the clock, one MX ripped its eye sensor from its socket and placed it carefully on the antique clock that Captain Maldonado kept in her office.

Which is consequently how Captain Maldonado became aware that something was very much not okay in her precinct.

In hindsight, the missing toilet paper should have tipped her off. Or when the missing toilet paper reappeared decorating all the offices and a few hapless MXs. Or when her detectives started walking around with their chairs on their asses, because someone put superglue on them. Or when all the coffee was replaced with a decaffeinated brand.

But then again, Captain Maldonado dealt with so much shit on a regular basis that we could forgive her for not considering this anything out of the ordinary.

She put a fast stop on any pranking activity and even called all the involved for a discussion in her office, one by one. She had to take tea breaks in between, but she managed to sufficiently yell at them all and they walked out of the office appropriately chastened.

It wasn’t until later that they noticed that everyone who touched the doorknob now had their nails painted a bright red.

So ended The 105th Precinct’s Prank War of 2048. Thankfully, there were no casualties, unlike the Fishbowl incident of 2041. There was, however, considerable material and mental harm, though the traps implemented during this ordeal ended up actually benefiting the precinct when the Insyndicate tried to infiltrate it a year later.

(It was very hard to deliver an evil speech covered in black tar and feathers, and looking like a chewed up canary.)

So let this story serve as a reminder and an inspiration to future generations of police officers. Never tickle a sleeping dragon, always cuff the criminal and don’t start a prank war at a police station.

#ahfancon #alhufamily #bluehairdfreak #ahexchange #richard paul #dorian #john kennex #valerie stahl #sandra maldonado #almost husbands #my fic #almost human

17 notes · View notes