Situation Report

When Andrew’s limping figure walked into the room, he had to get Clement’s attention, because he hadn’t noticed him at first: “Hey, Clementine. So you’re here as well, are you?”

Clement, roused from his slumber, slowly turned his head towards him. To his surprise Andrew was a mess - black eye, busted lip, and torn clothes, but given the events he had experienced before that, and how often Andrew used to get into fights, he wasn’t too surprised.

“Yo, Andy. You look like hell.”

Andrew shrugged: “It’s not as bad as it looks. Just got into a short scuffle on Main Street. Nothing too serious.”

“I dare not ask who started it.”

“They were looking at me funny, and you know the rules.”

“Judging by your appearance, they weren’t just looking.”

“I gave much better than I got. I’ll have you know that I alone left the fight on my own two legs.”

“Impressive.”

“I know, right!” Despite his friend’s deadpan expression, Andrew was quite pretty proud of himself. He walked into the room and sat down next to Clement.

“Wow, what do we have here? You rob a pharmacy, or something?”

“Something like that.

“Wow, didn’t know you had it in you. Congrats on your first amoral act that you don’t weirdly regret as usual!”

In this moment, Clement wanted to be left alone with his thoughts, to decide on a new course of action. Sure, he was slow to make decisions, but if he had all the time in the world for every decision, that would not matter, as long as they were informed and benefitted his friends. However, in spite of his many quirks and oddities, Andrew was also a valuable ally, so instead of beating around the bush, Clement decided to tell him directly:

“The girls are injured. Their car hit a tree on King and Education last night. Didn’t even make it onto the main road.”

He watched Andrew’s proud smile vaporize from his face. Though this was the result he wanted to achieve, it brought him no satisfaction to see his friend like this. Without waiting for a reply, he continued to speak, recounting the events of the entire day up to that point.

For once, Andrew didn’t butt into the conversation, instead listening attentively until the strange situation report stopped. At first, he had nothing to say except his signature expression:

“Holy hell.”

“Yeah. Go upstairs and say hi if you want.”

“A little too late for that. We need to ACT!” The energy he had repressed during Clement’s monologue began bubbling out again.

“Act how exactly?”

“Well, let’s start with the fact that you have a massive water shortage.”

“Oh, that’s what you mean? Yeah, water’s a problem. I left some large plastic jugs at my place, though, so we could go back for those. Thought you were gonna suggest something illegal again.”

Andrew laughed, trying to hush his voice so as to not disturb the injured upstairs. “Well, I do have suggestions like that as well. You know how the school has a bunch of canned food they serve in the cafeteria, right?” Clement groaned.

“Come on, man. After armed robbery such minor things should look trivial to you.”

“I’m never telling you anything sensitive, ever again. First it was the asteroids, and now it’s this.”

His friend chuckled. “Fine, we can start by fetching your water jugs. We should go on foot to save gas in the car - who knows when we might need it again.”

It was at this moment, just as they were discussing plans for the operation ahead, Evan burst through the door, breathing heavily. This second visitor, all while he just wanted to rest, greatly upset Clement:

“Would it kill any of you to knock?”

“No time for that. Things have gone south in the city. You guys are gonna want to see this!”

Breathlessly, Evan gestured for them to follow him outside, where they noticed several plumes of black smoke rising above the city. The sound of gunfire, something they hadn’t heard thanks to the thick walls of the observatory, filled the air. Andrew shook Evan, rather violently:

“Stop speaking in riddles! If you know something, spit it out!”

Unlike Clement, who hadn’t had access to the Internet since the day before, and Andrew, who had spent his time fighting and sleeping off the injuries, Evan did, in fact, know what was going on, and what he did not know, his friends helped him piece together.

Order in the city had collapsed like a stack of dominoes. Immediately after the announcement there was an explosion of crime, mainly represented in drunken fights and robberies in the city’s center. The only somewhat intact department store on Main Street, for example, only held because the owner fired a shot into the air (probably the shot Clement heard when returning home) when the panic began, after which store-goers followed his instructions without incident and bought his entire inventory. Because the police’s forces were stretched so thin when dealing with these fights, they could not stop what came afterwards.

It was a Saturday evening, so many people crowded to the local Catholic church’s evening mass to pray for salvation and confess their sins in an attempt to appease the divine. These sins, evidently, were numerous and grave, because a fight had broken out in the line to the confession booths. Despite the chaos, however, the parish and clergy were able to break up the fight without any serious casualties and sent the offender home with a warning. The service continued, and people thought none of it.

However, the offender apparently did not go straight home. Instead, he assembled a group of his friends to go get revenge, ultimately posting the invitation to his Instagram story. An angry mob, reinforced by the drunks the police dispelled from the downtown restaurants, stormed the church, broke in, and tried to set it on fire, not realizing they got the Anglican church down the road, instead of the Catholic one. In a strong effort, once again spearheaded by the clergy and parish, they were thrown out of the building itself before they could do any real damage, but still loitered on the premises, yelling angrily.

At this point, calls to defend the faith made the rounds on social media, and armed believers made their way over from all across town to defend their church, armed with whatever they could gather. A short but violent fight erupted, and the rioters were thrown out for good. The armed Anglican parishioners linked up with their Catholic counterparts, and established the first independent faction in the city - the Riverburg Christian Republic. Because the police had failed to protect them, they argued, they were going to secede and govern themselves, until they received protection from the Canadian Armed Forces. By morning, this group, despite its spontaneous formation, reestablished order in about a fifth of the town, building barricades and receiving reinforcements all through the night.

Evan alleged that they had just concluded their respective Masses and elected representatives were now holding debates on the separation of the church and state, Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, and the Filioque clause.

The remnants of the mob weren’t idle, either. Enraged by their defeat at the hands of the religious militia, they attacked and set fire to a gas station that apparently took too long to serve them gasoline for Molotov cocktails. It was at around this time that the ambulances started overloading, and also at around this time that Clement woke up. Here, Andrew made a mental note that with one gas station under the Christian republic’s control and another burned down, just two remained on “public” land.

Following the inferno, police deployed mobile groups to apprehend the ringleaders, but for the most part failed to do so, resulting in captured officers and weapons, and compromised radios. The rioters managed to form designated “jamming” units (from a video that Evan showed his friends, their job consisted of flipping through radio frequencies and screaming into the microphone), and their group chats proved to be very effective means of communication. Having regrouped, armed themselves with what they could scavenge from a looted department store, and formed rudimentary units with the ringleaders in charge, the rioters attempted two large assaults.

The larger of the two, directed at the Republic, failed completely, breaking against the barricades, in part because the defenders had secure group chats of their own, but the smaller pushed the police almost entirely out of downtown, and into the Mansion District. At that point, the decision was made to shut off whatever internet access the police still had access to, and make use of the police force’s last reserves and volunteers. This worked, briefly sending the rioters into chaos, and allowing the police - now linked up with the rest of the governmental forces - to stabilize critical areas, and even retake a few important buildings.

At the end of it all, the parties exchanged prisoners - captured officers for arrested rioters - and agreed to a ceasefire. The government had retained control over the entire Mansion District - the large, wealthy area on the other side of the river, the bridge across the river and into downtown, and a few city blocks around it - City Hall, the General Hospital, and the main fire station. In total, the official Canadian Government retained control over about a fifth of the town.

After seeing that there was nobody left to beat up, the rioters established their own mostly democratic government, calling themselves the Riverburg Peoples’ Assembly, and opposing the “dictatorial” emergency powers that the Mayor had assumed. They claimed the rest of the city for themselves, along with some contested land in the surrounding countryside, but did not yet have the organization to patrol and secure all that territory.

After listening to this story, supplemented with each other’s experience, the three friends went inside and sat at the table in silence. Something terrible was afoot, it seemed, and they would be playing a part in it whether they liked it or not.