SWITCH CHILD
A Short Story in the Slice of Life Series
David Lee Howells
Copyright 2013
“Pardon me, Officer, ma’am? I’m Karl Hoffman. I’m supposed to give a statement or something to a detective?”
The Desk Officer was a thirty-ish Afro-American, a little heavy from her sedentary job description. But her dark eyes struck one’s attention when she looked up at you. She gave a slight smile, then checked the screen that rose above the seemingly random folders, paper stacks, computer discs, coffee cups and wadded items that would require unwadding to find their level of importance.
The man before her would never be mistaken for white collar. The lines of his face documented thousands of hours squinting, focused on dealing with things mechanical. His open and friendly expression suggested that he’d not do well in a competitive business environment. The ball cap was a little strange...the front was ‘FIXIT’ emblazoned. It was one of those caps with LED’s built into the brim to shed light on something you needed both hands free for. The fellow had a Blue Tooth ear piece on board...it seemed a little out of place, but not badly so.
The snapshot scan by the officer accomplished, she said, “Please have a seat, Mr. Hoffman. I have you on the list to talk to Detective Roland. She’s interviewing someone else at the moment. As soon as she’s available, we’ll call you on the loudspeaker. There’s coffee and snack machines just down the hall, or you can go down those stairs to the cafeteria. The intercom doesn’t work too well there so you’d have to check back in, say twenty minutes?”
“Thanks, um, Officer. I’ll just get a cup of tea and read my paper over there.” Karl Hoffman, handyman for the Granite City Chronic Care Facility walked down the hallway and dropped six quarters in an aging hot drink vending machine and pushed a button. Nothing happened. He tried the decaf tea. Same story. “Oh, well. No, leave it alone...repairs might draw attention.” He pushed the button for black coffee. Third time’s the charm, though he’d been trying to cut back on the caffeine bean. “What’s one more gonna hurt?”
Karl went back to a bank of chairs against the wall facing the Desk Officer and wondered if all police departments had chairs including cup holders like this one. He thought briefly that, finally, his tax dollars actually paid for something useful to the common man.
Before opening the paper, it seemed a good opportunity to watch the comings and goings inside a station. Granite City didn’t have the size and depersonalization of a New York City or L.A., so he didn’t feel that there would be a similar bizarre clientele for people-watching, but this was his first visit to ‘Compound Constable’. It was only eight PM and things were buzzing, so maybe there was a changing shift. Certainly there were a fair number of uniforms strolling about. A fourth of them had a civilian (citizen?) in tow. Some of them looked like they were here to lodge a complaint. The rest looked like they WERE the complaint. He assumed the occasional suit with an attaché was someone’s lawyer. “Heh, look at that one...got the belly and receding hairline of success.”
Most players on the stage he saw seemed fairly calm; just going about their business. There was one exception for the evening. Young fellow, kind of scraggly looking, tied down on a stretcher and cussing up a storm at a couple of police and two men in a different kind of uniform wheeling the thing by at a brisk pace. Paramedics? Nut house guards? He’d never know, for once the gurney went through the doubled glass door entryway, the commotion rapidly subsided. As things went back to a more sedate mood and constant background noise and motion, Karl opted to sip the now tolerably hot coffee and open the paper.
Just that action advertised to anyone watching that he was a throw back to old technology (the Desk Officer noted it...part of her duty was to forewarn interviewers how their interviewees acted when they felt they were unobserved). The ghost of Gutenberg may beam with pride that print on paper still lived, but these modern youngsters were more apt to laugh at the dinosaur, then open up their pads and pods and God knows what else is out there in the electronic medium. Let’m. You couldn’t rely too much on things electrical. Well, news was news, whether the words were ink or electron formed.
The headline wasn’t big enough to announce a war or election result upset, but it still got your attention; ‘SCIENTISTS PROBE ELECTRICAL DISTURBANCES’. There had certainly been enough of those lately. Karl had been keeping close track. The article was by someone he’d never heard of, and he’d no doubt but that reading the name would only give him something else to forget by the time he got home. Names and he weren’t the best of friends.
‘Investigations continue into the widening distribution of electrical fluctuations. Granite City officials are now coordinating with resources in surrounding townships and neighboring cities. According to a released statement from the spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Task Team appointed by the Governor last month, “There is no cause for alarm. So far, there has been not a single proven adverse effect, computer system shut down, or failure of any municipal or private sector system that relies on electrical data flow. We are currently investigating causality to the recent solar flares, to the last two decades of shifts in the Earth’s magnetic poles, examining airborne pollutants, and we’re even looking into shifts in avian migration patterns and the lessening ability for honeybees to communicate to their hives of where a discovered cache of flowers can be found. In other words, we’re being ridiculously thorough. We have a lot of data, and we’re not worried. Neither should be your readers. Cont. C-4 section/page 4.’
Karl took a few moments to review the funnies (which he never used to read) and sports scores, then went on to the C section, page 4.
‘Electrical Disturbances, continued from page 1. The US State Department Spokesperson Madeline Frieze acknowledged and confirmed the findings from the Task Team to date, and stressed a similar stand on the disturbances as being innocuous and more of a curiosity than a concern. Federal resources, she stated, will be assisting local efforts to clarify the cause and scope of the ‘non-problem’. However, this reporter can affirm many sources recommending that those in the affected regions to back up their data regularly and take basic precautions in case this escalates to a power failure. Those precautions include...’ The reported then listed things like flashlights, potable water, gas camping stoves, water filters, a store of canned food. People with generators were encouraged to give them test run, just in case, and make sure there was an officially condoned red storage device for the appropriate generator fuel.
The rest of the paper had the usual competition for a reader’s attention, including theater features, restaurant coupons, ‘People On the Move kudos’, obits (always a favorite when you get on in years), weather prognostications...it was really phenomenal, when you got down to it, of how much information newspapers contained. He felt it was a shame they were going out of favor. But who knew? If this electrical thing scared people enough, maybe print media would come back into vogue. Perhaps that was why this made the headlines, while that foreign conflict where two US soldiers died yesterday was listed just above the fold, far right column.
‘Bong’. “Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Karl Hoffman, please report to the Front Desk Officer for your assigned interview. Paging Mr. Karl Hoffman...” Karl made it to the Front Desk before the second announcement cycle was completed. The Officer tapped the screen and the mechanically-generated voice was summarily guillotined.
“Mr. Hoffman, would you please go down hallway B, right there through those doors? Your interview room will be three doors down and on your left. If you need, there’s a men’s room just one more door down on the right. Thanks for coming in and being punctual. Report back to me when you’re done, please. Off you go
now. It’ll be fine.”
Karl suspected he looked nervous enough to cause that officer to be nicer than he thought she’d be. Or maybe the nice young lady officer took pity on an old man who didn’t have a record of even a speeding ticket. There was a parking fine, but he’d heard those weren’t kept as part of a criminal record.
“Thank you, Officer, Ma’am. Have a very quiet and uneventful shift.” He believed in being polite and mannerly, like his folks raised him. He didn’t use the officer’s name because it wasn’t listed on the desk or on any ID badge (maybe she was filling in for someone to grab a munch break), and asking her name would seem intrusive.
“Mr. Hoffman, that
Switch Child Page 1
