Imagine This: Interplanetary Police Force
On one of my recent trips, I was able to visit a few people and interview them about life in the year 2417. My second interview was with Javaris-9290428 of North Korea. This is his story.
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NAME:
Javaris-9290428
AGE:
28
HOMETOWN:
Pyongyang, North Korea
EDUCATION:
Bachelor of Criminal Justice at the University of Pyongyang
Masters of Interplanetary Security at Yale University – North Korea
OCCUPATION:
Staff Sergeant First Class and Sector Supervisor (6 years)
PLACE OF WORK:
Interplanetary Police Force
Transportation Division
Alpha Depot
Earth-Mars Transfer Precinct 336
My name is Javaris-9290428. I grew up in North Korea and moved to our sister state, South Korea, when I turned 22, after college because the Seoul Police Academy is by far the best on the two planets. I have a beautiful wife, Stacey-8647897, and three children, Mark-9290429, Nica-9290429, and Javaris-9290430.
Since I’m a part of the IPF, or Interplanetary Police Force, I have a wide primary jurisdiction, which includes the two inhabited planets of Earth, Mars and satellite states of Europa and Titan. With Earth still restricted, nobody from Titan or Europa can immigrate and that causes massive influxes of false travelers; people who steal the identities of others to come to Earth through Mars. They have to get past us, at Alpha Depot. They mostly fail, and when we catch up to them on Earth, we send out a Marshals unit to deport them.
We also have secondary jurisdiction over any space within the solar system. The Interplanetary Sheriff’s Service has primary jurisdiction over those parts where people don’t generally live. But if we must, we can chase criminals throughout this section of the galaxy and we often do.
Most of the crimes my division investigates involves the transport of contraband back to earth. This can include foodstuff that was not sanctioned, drugs, chemicals, wildlife, pets and much more. We’re like the former Customs Division. The pay is very good and we get to commute on the Wire, which is much less crowded than the other ships and used only by government employees.
Alpha Depot is made up of 340 precincts. Each precinct handles about 14.7 million travelers a day. My work involves detecting potential threats before they become a problem. As a Staff Sergeant First Class in the transport division of Alpha Depot, I command a team of 450 men and women. We are the last line of defense for travelers coming to and from Earth.
Our unit designation is “Catastrophic Loss Prevention” meaning we make sure that no human lives are lost during the deathly thing that is space travel. We’re responsible for emergency rescue services as well. So far, we’ve only lost 34 people during my career. We keep a list of all their names on a wall that we have to pass on the way to work. It reminds us how much the universe is against us. And the danger of interplanetary travel.
Recently, we’ve been having a big problem with unauthorized pets. People love genetically altered animals that grow up on Mars and they’ll try to do anything to bring them back on Earth. It’s illegal and is considered an environmental threat. We use a device that can read your mind to police the areas of operation. It functions by mimicking brain waves and interpreting them. Every person who goes through Alpha Depot is scanned. And that is where our new problem has arisen.
Last season, we had an even larger problem with “Dedo-kin-folk” as we call them. They’re a group of radicals who, in their desperate attempt to leave either Europa or Titan for the utopian Earth, will allow smugglers to administer a lethal dose of a paralytic substance into their veins.
They die on the spot, and I hear it’s not painful at all, and then they’re immediately frozen. From that moment, their consciousness is transferred to a DNA Data Storage Device or DDSD. Then, they’re transported to Earth for burial, which is the only permitted way for them to ever come here, and when they arrive, they are revived and all of their consciousness is reuploaded back into their neocortex.
The saddest part of this story is that, when we catch them, we have to cremate the bodies. They wanted to be dead so we treat them as such. Do I lose sleep over them? No, absolutely not. They’re breaking the law and they’re aliens, so, no. Europa has 137 million compared to Titan's 316 million and every time you turn around, that number grows. They refuse to institute POPCON protocols like we have here on Earth and Mars. We already have 16.4 billion people on our planet - a number we've maintained for over 300 years. And if they’ve got 60 million too many than they can feed, that’s their fault.
The only down side, that I can presently think of, to being a police officer is that police personnel only work for 20 years, upon which we must retire and move on to other government agencies with non-peace officer status. We were told in academy that this reduces nepotism and graft. I for one don’t agree with this and want to spend as much of my working years doing this wonderful job. But I still have 16 years to go, so I guess I do not have much to worry about yet.
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