Full Authority to Arrest and Detain
by Mark Ifanson
part 1
Bennie rode his bike around the shopping mall parking lot in elongated ovals, elegant circles, and ornately-carved figure eights, the movement cooling his skin during the warm summer afternoon. The smile on his face was content, blissful even. It was a good day, a glorious day.
Bennie was on the lean side, a bit taller than average, and dressed for the summer heat in a t-shirt and baggy shorts. One could say he looked too old to be pedaling around on a bicycle but, then again, his bike seemed oddly well-suited to him: 20-inch wheels, fat tires, chrome BMX handlebars, pegs, several coats of rattle-can spray paint in various unmatched colors, and a raccoon tail waving from the back of his seat.
The guy he had traded ten food ration coupons for the tail said it was authentic, not some imitation. Bennie had figured that was just a story, an attempt to get more coupons. But it did smell funny when it got wet and then it would be really stiff for a while when it first dried out, so maybe it was real. He had never seen a live raccoon, just pictures, so he wasn’t sure.
“Who’s the spit-wad on the bike?” Carl Potter was having a bad day, one of several lately. A recent graduate of the Private Security Officer Training Program, he was working his way through multiple two-week training rotations with more senior officers. He liked nothing about his latest assignment, and he did not like being babysat by a partner. He found the work fundamentally boring, mostly surveillance from a beat-up squad car. He had hoped being a PSO would have more action.
“That’s just Bennie. He’s pretty harmless. Lives around here somewhere, I think.” Sgt. Patti Mulley, nine years on the job, was Carl’s current training officer. She knew Bennie had two strikes on his record but thought it best not to mention it. Carl’s personnel file had already been flagged, noting his “issues” with both the general public and with authority figures, including senior trainers like herself. Where are they getting these new recruits anyway?
“No one’s harmless, and everyone on the dole is a potential collar. That’s how we make our arrest bonuses, you know that, right, Sarge?” Carl raised one eyebrow while he emphasized “Sarge” just to make sure Patti knew he wished she wasn’t there.
Patti knew Carl hated the idea of having to split their arrest bonus; on that they agreed. But this was training, and Carl was the trainee. “Just stuff it, Carl.”
Patti and Carl watched as Bennie made little slalom runs around the cars belonging to commuters who parked on the far side of the parking lot before catching the bus to go to work in the city. The mall management tolerated the commuter parking; the lot was never full anymore, and some of the commuters would shop at the stores when they picked up their cars in the evening.
Bennie kept his distance from the PSO squad car, an older sedan with “Mall Security” on the door, and beneath that in smaller print the motto “Full Authority to Arrest and Detain.” Bennie had experience with both Private Security and Real Police, and the difference didn’t seem very important to him; either way it was The Man. Real Police had nicer cars and real guns, not just taser-darts, so maybe they were a bit more dangerous, but his experience told him both were worth avoiding.
Bennie stayed among the commuter cars to keep out of the PSOs’ chip scanner range so they couldn’t read his sub-Q ID chip and see the two strikes. Patti already knew, of course, and was glad Bennie kept his distance; she didn’t want Carl to obsess about tagging Bennie with some trivial infraction just to get the double bonus paid on third-strike arrests.
* * *
Back when Bennie graduated from high school, his parents had encouraged him to learn a trade: “Something you can do with your hands and is too random or too expensive to program a robot to do, like plumbing.” His dad would often say, “Pipes just gotta leak.”
But Bennie had other things in mind; he really liked math and computers, and he thought he’d be a great coder. His family couldn’t afford a full four-year school, so Bennie went to the local community college and in eighteen months earned a computer programming certificate. He graduated near the top of his class and quickly secured a coding job at a large nondescript company, working at a branch office in an ugly little building with dozens of other coders.
Bennie worked there for several years, advancing rapidly from junior analyst to project leader. And then one day his supervisor, Tom, asked him to come to his office.
“Hey, Tom, you wanted to see me?”
“Yeah, Bennie. Come in and grab a seat. And can you close the door behind you?”
Tom continued while Bennie sat down: “I’ll get right to the point, Bennie. The Company is shutting down this office as soon as our current projects are completed. From your weekly reports, it looks like your team will be done in about three weeks. That sound about right to you?”
Bennie was silent at first. He had heard other companies had been cutting staff recently. “Yeah, about three weeks. So, management thinks we won’t have any more projects after this, is that about it?”
“Yeah, Bennie. They’re blaming the Titus Limit.”
“Tom, the Titus Limit is bullshit. You know that. Everyone knows that. That’s why it’s called the Tits-Up Limit. It’s just an excuse to cut higher-paid staff.”
“I know, I know, and maybe sometimes it is. But our whole office is being shut down. I’ll be gone, too, in about six weeks. Hey, I hate doing this, we’re friends. But it doesn’t matter; we’re closing up.”
The severance package was fairly generous, amounting to six months of pay and benefits. Bennie managed to scrape by at an OK level for about two years, living off his severance payout combined with income from occasional off-the-books odd jobs. When the money ran out, he went on the dole, rented a small room in a rough part of town, sold his old car, and got a bike for wheels.
That’s when he met Lisa, who was also on the dole and had a bike, too. Bennie and Lisa would cruise around parking lots on their bikes, looking for a quiet place to hang out. Lisa called it “having a picnic.”
Bennie liked that. They’d get some burgers and stuff, back when food ration coupons were more plentiful, and search among the parked cars until they found one of those old-style pickup trucks. After scoping it out for The Man, they’d stash their bikes under the truck and hop into the truck bed. As long as they stayed low, no one could see them and they’d be able to “picnic” in peace.
Their luck ran out one day when a PSO noticed their bikes hidden under a pickup truck in a remote parking lot where they thought no one would bother to look. Moving in to investigate, he found Bennie and Lisa napping in the bed of the truck.
“OK, you two, out of the truck, now. We don’t need vagrants and loiterers like you around here.”
Bennie and Lisa woke up and started to explain they meant no harm; it was just a picnic.
The PSO kept yelling, “A picnic? What the hell, get out now. What were you going to do next, steal this truck?”
Stealing the truck had not even crossed Bennie’s mind, as that was super illegal and he wouldn’t have even known how to do it if he had wanted to. Lisa started to panic, yelling, “Oh my God, we didn’t even scratch the truck. I can’t go back to Detention, this would be my third strike!”
Lisa jumped out of the truck bed and started to run. Lisa’s flight was just what the PSO needed, taser-darting both of them on the spot. Bennie had not been tasered before; it hurt like hell and he pissed his pants before passing out.
Bennie never saw Lisa again, but had heard many stories about what happens to people in Detention on their third strike. While the stories were wildly conflicting, none of them were good. As this was Bennie’s first strike, and he was only charged with loitering, he drew six months of Detention and two rounds of Guidance to inhibit him from loitering in the future.
Bennie learned that Guidance sessions followed a simple pattern: a pill followed by several hours in video goggles, imprinting the detainee’s subconscious with a behavioral modification lesson ordered by the Detention Authority. A round of Guidance would require several sessions, depending on the desired results and the detainee’s willingness to be guided. Bennie’s sentence of two rounds of Guidance only spanned a few weeks; the balance of the time spent in Detention was merely punitive.
* * *
After being released from his first-strike Detention, Bennie really didn’t have much to do, but he had trouble staying anywhere for very long since his Guidance encouraged him to not loiter. So he walked. A lot. All over town. It was good exercise, but it stimulated his appetite and his dole barely covered his basic nutritional requirements.
One day while wandering around town, he found a new taco joint, Tommy’s Tacos, and was standing outside, trying to not get in the way of paying customers. He was enjoying the smell, which was all he could afford. He did this for several days. He would stand outside, peeking in to see what was happening, imagining how good the tacos would taste, until his Guidance training compelled him to move on. One day, he heard a familiar voice say from inside: “Hey, Bennie, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Who’s that?
“It’s me, Tom, from work. Why’re you just standing there? Come on in.”
Bennie walked in. “Tom, is this your place?”
“Yup. It was just a cart at first, but I’ve built it up and finally got all my permits and went totally legit just last month. You want a taco?”
“Gee, Tom, thanks, but I can’t afford it, I’m still on the dole.”
“Hey, no prob, it’s on the house. What meat would you like?”
“Can you do beef?”
“Sure. I’ll do two, and make it a platter with beans and rice. Just don’t ask if it’s real beef.”
“Is it?”
“Really, don’t ask!”
Tom brought Bennie a two-maybe-beef-taco platter and Bennie inhaled it. Tom smiled, watching his old friend enjoy the food.
Tom needed some extra help around the taco joint, but couldn’t legally hire Bennie because of his strike. So, Bennie started to hang around the store when he could, doing odd jobs and filling in wherever needed, as long as he could keep moving. Tom paid him with food, which was great for both of them, as Bennie was usually hungry, and having an off-the-books employee saved Tom a bundle on wages and taxes.
After a few weeks, Tom approached Bennie with a proposition. “Hey, Bennie, you keeping your coding skills sharp?”
“No, not really, there hasn’t been anything to do since Tits-Up.”
“Well, would you like to do some coding again? It’s not really a sanctioned job, so I’ll probably just have to pay you with more food. And there’s a spare room you could stay in upstairs for free, if you’d like; probably better than the flop house you’re in now.”
Bennie took the deal and started doing surreptitious coding for Tom on one of the best computer workstations he had ever seen. He took frequent breaks to move around in order to satisfy his Guidance-induced urge not to loiter.
Just as at the Company, the work was compartmentalized, so he didn’t really know what he was working on. But he had a decent place to sleep, a cool computer, and plenty of food. He could even save a little money from the tips he’d get from some of the customers when he helped at the restaurant.
It was a sweet deal until it wasn’t a sweet deal; Real Cops eventually busted the whole operation. Bennie cooperated with the authorities, and after they determined he didn’t know the coding was for a foreign government, he was only charged with unsanctioned employment and possession of contraband electronics without the proper import documentation. His sentence was two years of Detention, plus several more Guidance sessions.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Mark Ifanson
