Sector 11, zone 2, near Everpreen college.
Arron and Kix hopped out of the APC and onto the sidewalk in front of a shabby-looking mega-apartment complex.
Both Chewy and Spike had been sent back to the Office of Reason research lab to undergo a thorough inspection, manual maintenance, and several software updates that were too sensitive to do over the holo-net.
“Kix, are you sure this is the new building near the new Everpreen college that was talked about in the report?”
“It’s the only building at the address Tooth gave us,” said Kix. Just to be sure he rechecked the details of their mission one more time.
“Why are they sending us to a simple domestic dispute? What are the police doing that they can’t handle this?”
“Do you need to even ask? The notes say it was the Office of Reason who sent the request that someone in M1 normalize the situation quickly.”
The building’s security was rather lax and the two were able to enter easily so they could start their daily workout by running up several hundreds of stairs.
“…why is the mag-shoot of a new building already broken…” grumbled Arron as he ran up the stairs beside Kix.
As they stepped onto floor 75, shouting could be heard coming from a room at the end of the hall through an open door.
Clothes, broken dishes, and other knick-knacks were scattered all over the hallway in front of the apartment’s door.
As Arron cautiously stepped over the items and got ready to look inside… Swoosh! Crash!
A whole freaking synth-food processor flew over his head nearly smashing into his helmet.
“What the…” said Arron as he cursed under his breath and jumped to the right side of the door while Kix posted up on the left side.
“Occupants of apartment 30, this is M1 Officer Kix, come out with your hands up!” Kix used the external speaker on his helmet in order to make sure that the fighting couple would hear him over their shouts and the destruction of personal items.
The fighting stopped and a young man and woman both in their late teens exited the apartment.
“What took you so long!? She’s gone crazy!” said the young man holding a piece of cloth to his nose to stop the bleeding. Other than a bleeding nose, he had a black eye, and his clothes were torn as if he had just escaped a wild animal attack.
“How so?” asked Arron as he scanned the two to bring up their identity.
“I let her stay here last night, but this morning when I was ready to go to my part-time job, I asked her to leave so I could lock the apartment. She went mental and started attacking me and destroying my stuff!”
Arron looked at the young woman who was still holding a broken armrest of a hover chair. “Do your jobs you mutts,” said the young woman glaring at them.
Arron was taken aback by her cold and aggressive voice. He frowned as he looked at the two teens in front of him and then looked to Kix for confirmation.
Kix only nodded his head entirely unfazed at the wild scene in front of them.
Arron stepped forward taking out his mag-cuffs, “You are to be normalized by order of the Office of Reason.”
“Wha..? Why me?” asked the shocked young male teen as Arron cuffed him.
“Sir, don’t worry. It will only be for a few days until both of you as well as this… predicament can cool off,” said Kix.
“What are you talking about? Look at me! I have bruises everywhere, my belongings are being broken and this is my apartment!”
“Ma’am we hope there are no other disturbances that will cause us to have to come back here,” said Arron.
“Hmph…” the young female did not even say another word. She just turned around and slammed the door in both Arron’s and Kix’s faces.
***
Office of reason building.
In a brightly lit white room, three white-suit agents sat at a white table with visors covering half of their faces as they silently read a stream of new information scrolling up from one of the secure datapads.
“The situation has been normalized and the informant has sent us all the data gathered so far,” said the male white-suit agent sitting in-between two female white-suit agents.
“Very interesting…” said the female agent on the left as she read the information.
“Should we invite our ‘guest’ to talk to us now?” asked the female agent on the right.
The male agent tapped a few options on his wrist-datapad and sent off a message to those outside the room.
A few seconds later the door opened and a female in her mid 20’s with black hair and a disheveled skirt and blouse was shoved inside.
She stood there frozen from shock as she stared at the three agents.
“Take a seat,” commanded the male agent in a deep voice.
The female absentmindedly nodded and sat down across from them. When she did, the chair automatically locked her legs and arms down so she could not cause any trouble.
“Professor Shepherd? You are one of the new professors at Everpreen?” asked the male agent.
“Y…yes,” said Shepherd in a small stuttering voice.
“Do you know why you are here?”
“No.”
“You are accused of presenting unsanctioned information to your students. To be specific the information posted during your block 1 class [The Heroes of the Troubles],” said the female agent on the left.
“What is wrong with having a debate about that?”
“…,” the three agents looked at each other for a few seconds silently chatting between themselves before turning back to Shepherd.
“This is basically debating whether or not Mother and Father are wrong. It is showing your disdain for them. I assure you Mother and Father are never wrong. This material is not acceptable in the type of learning environment we are trying to create. Do you see how this subject is not and can not be intellectually neutral?”
“But it is up for debate.”
“Ah… but, I mean you’re perfectly welcome to your thoughts when you keep them in your head. But when you bring this into the classroom that can become problematic. That… it creates an unsafe learning environment for students.”
“…but when they leave the university they are going to be exposed to these ideas. So I don’t see how I am doing a disservice to the class by exposing them to ideas already out there… and I’m sorry… I’m crying. I’m stressed out because, this to me, is so wrong,” said Shepherd, while tears spilled out of her eyes and fell onto her lap.
It was hard for her to see clearly now and she could not wipe the tears away with her arms since they were locked to the armrest of the hover-chair.
The three Office of reason continued to stare at her unfazed by her tears.
Even with her tears, she seemed to have found the courage in her belief and kept talking, “The thing is, can you shield them from those ideas? Am I supposed to comfort them and make sure they are isolated away from this? Is that what the point of this is? Because to me that is so against what a university is about. I was not advocating for anything, I was just presenting both sides of the information.”
There was a short silence before one of the female agents spoke.
“So the thing is… if you’re presenting something like this you have to think about the type of teaching climate that you are creating. This is counter to everything that Mother and Father as well as the Office of Reason stand for. Even if you had gotten permission, you must present it in a way to let the students know that it is a wrong idea and must be avoided.”
“But that’s taking sides,” said Shepherd.
The three agents once again silently talked among themselves using secure comms.
“Originally this was only going to be a serious warning but…” said the female agent on the left.
“This is indeed a more serious situation than the gathered information led us to believe,” said the female agent on the right.
“We’ll have to relieve you of your teaching degree,” said the male agent.
“But I spent 4 years learning to be a professor and I still have a debt of 100k credits!”
“Don’t worry! This is your first offense and from all the background checks and monitoring we have done, we decided to be lenient with you. You don’t have to worry about cleaning your stuff up, the cleaning bots are already disposing of all of your items in your old office and classroom.”
“What am I supposed to do for work then!?” asked a distraught Shepherd.
“You need to keep looking forward! There is no point in looking back at your major errors, you can not erase them now that we have all of them recorded. You will need to do your part to keep the city running.”
“I hear the new soap factories, fertilizer factories, and other random factories are always hiring,” said the female agent on the left.
“Well, she can apply for a job there after she finishes her re-education,” said the male Office of Reason agent.
“What? I thought you said you were going to be lenient?” asked Shepherd.
“Of course we are, you committed a class 2 act of terrorism. Instead of 30 years of re-education or death, we are letting you off with only having to be re-educated for 5 years.”
