Greegs & Ladders

Chapter 21

                                                       CHAPTER 21

                                                        Bureaucracy

When you go about pompously and recklessly unleashing viciously contained zoo animals on the most populated and famous tourist destination in five trillion universes, you tend to raise alarm bells.  This is especially the case when you arrive in a shiny fleet of Obotron 7 space ships and leave 16 of them hovering nonsensically around the planet packed with pointless, idle employees.  This is even more the case when you carry with you an inter-universal celebrity like Dr. Rip T. Brash the Third and an upright walking, clothes wearing, intelligent conversation having Greeg. 

However, this being the Kroonum system, and this being the planet Lincra… these events were barely the six thousandth, five hundredth and forty seventh most interesting/bizarre/outlandish/casualty inducing incidents of the hour.

Nevertheless, hoards of Kroonumite Special Task Force Ranger Pods were immediately sent forth from the Central Kroonum Enforcement & Coercion Department on Persheron 8.  They were sent in waves and from different task forces to deal with each assault our trio of travellers had inflicted on the precious foundations of Kroonum Society:  Civility, Order and Peace, or COP.  Persheron 8 is one of 9 planets and 47 moons in the Kroonum system whose sole purpose is law enforcement, jailing, detainment, execution, rehabilitation, law writing, law re-writing, finding of outdated laws and updating them, finding of updated laws and outdating them, covert undercover operations, and the seemingly never-ending creation, integration and upkeep of more branches of The Upgrading, Expansion, Keeping Up of and Maintenance of Kroonum Civility, Order & Peace Agency.  Confused?  I hope not.  This is, as you say, barely the tip of the Iceberg. 

This fumbling, inefficient schmorgosborg is merely the Solar Enforcement Branch of Kroonum Law Enforcement.  There is also of course The Universal Legal Oversight Committee, The Galactic Territorial and Regional Integrated Intelligence Agencies (there are over 976 of these in this particular galaxy, no one is sure which ones are legitimate and which are fronts at this point.  None of them are remotely integrated, several are engaged in full out warfare.)  These are a mere nuisance, and a cohesive juggernaut of rationality and efficiency compared to the mind bogglingly complicated, freewheeling and unregulated enforcement agencies on individual planets... and let us not even begin to discuss regional law on various sections of those planets.  It is far more often that different splinters of legally sanctioned and government orchestrated law enforcement fights among themselves, rightfully believing the other is involved in criminal activity, which they all most certainly are, to a staggering degree.

All of these corrupt, unchecked, interlocked and mangled factions of law enforcement and bureaucracy has led the hyper oppressed and victimized civilians and visitors of Kroonum to retaliate in violent backlashes in the form of Civilian Organized Militias For The Restoration of Peace, Order and Civility to the Kroonum System.  They have developed the mildly confrontational slogan “A POCKS on the COPs.”  These militias are inevitably started by once innocent, indifferent travellers or residents who have been chewed up and spat out by various sanctioned policing groups and courts.  There is an entire volume of Hypocrisy Inaction: The Plight of the Pointless Protester devoted strictly to the militia's.  The true irony  here is that there never was, certainly isn’t now, and certainly never will be, anything remotely approaching Peace, Order and/or Civility in the Kroonum System.  This is exactly why it is such an amazingly popular and exciting place. 

This is not to suggest that there isn’t any real crime in the Kroonum system.  The overbearing, oppressive and clumsily gummed up together 'legal' conglomerate is entirely justified and necessary, considering the astounding number of swindlers, murderers, psychopaths, rapists, gangs, STD’s, daredevils, protostar hoppers, insanely violent religious organizations, and sinister plots to destroy and annihilate every single living thing in the system.  Not to mention the rather common occurrence of one species happening upon another that they find delicious, and whose vital organs contain nutrients imperative to their survival.