by CORIANDER NEUMANEIMANAYMANEEMAMANN, Alternate Reality News Service Urban Issues Writer
Hassan Akbaralamode was proud of the fact that he kept his van up to strict Uber standards. Thee were three to five cigarette burns on the back seat, but not in obvious sightlines, so they were more vaguely disturbing than openly offensive. The van smelled just a little bit of an unidentifiable foreign food and rum. Akbaralamode kept the radio turned to a channel of 1970s surf music. He had studied for three months before he took his first fare, and was conversant in weather trivia and several different sports languages and.
But, nothing had prepared him for that night in Portland, Orefornia.
He was told to wait on a side street, where at first he could hear chanting, then the firing of guns followed by screams. Just as the ensuing silence became eerie, a burly man in heavy camouflage gear opened the door and shoved a skinny young man with a goatee into the back seat. "Just drive," he said.
Akbaralamode just drove. A haphazard, meandering path with no destination. For three and a half hours.
The skinny young man with the goatee whined, "Hey, maaaaaaan! I didn't, like, do anything, maaaaaan! I was just walkin' down the street to get some snacks for my friend Scoob, maaaaaan! This can't be kosher according to the law, maaa -"
"I am the law!" camouflage gear man shouted, and hit the skinny young man with the goatee on the knee with his baton. "Like, owwwwwwww!" the skinny young man with the goatee screeched.
Akbaralamode turned up the surf music to drown out the pained moans. Soon, the skinny young man with the goatee was bopping his head to the rhythm, and his moans took on a musical quality.
Although there was no way of Akbaralamode knowing this, the ragtag group of unidentified federal law enforcement officers, likely from Homeland Insecurity, mostly from the Immigration Corralling and Expulsing Service (ICES), had underestimated the need for transporting protesters to random places in the city. So, the call went out for Uber drivers with black, unmarked vans.
"Oh, I was well aware of it," Akbaralamode boasted. "The man in camouflage gear was surprisingly talkative. Were you aware that their move against the protesters was specifically timed to make the nightly news?"
Oh, SCOOP!
"This, this, this, this, this," sputtered token smart person Amy Sheshutshotshitbam, "I mean, unidentified, heavily armed officers in camo snatching people off the street, throwing them into unmarked vans and disappearing them for several hours? This is not Vesampuceri! This is Oozekazafranistan! This is Saudi Brasilia! This is the Duchy of Grand Fenwick! This -"
"You might think that," responded Grand Fenwick Prime Minister Rupert Mountkilamanjoy, "I couldn't possibly comment. Hunh. It's been a while since I had reason to say that - it feels good to be back!"
At a coronavirus update/not really a coronavirus update, President Ronald McDruhitmumpf said that if Joe Bidenhisbeeswax were to win the upcoming Presidential election, "there would be rioting on the streets of YourTown, USA that would make Portland look like Dizznizzfizzlizzeyland, people. You know it. Benny and Joon know it. Even the men who faked landing on the moon know it. You want lawnorder? Of course you do. Well, just call me the Mower Man!"
When a reporter pointed out that the protests had been harmless*, and the violence only started when the unidentified police attacked the protesters with batons, tear gas, flash grenades and rubber bullets, the President looked blank for a few moments, then abruptly turned tail and walked out of the press briefing.
Before he was out of the room, though, his ass snarled, "You know, if reporters for the Fake News didn't write so many articles about cases of police brutality, they wouldn't happen!"
Reporters dutifully wrote down everything that the President's ass said. After all, it was where he got all of his ideas...
When I interviewed Akbaralamode, he was cleaning blood that had seeped down the skinny young man with the goatee's leg and pooled on the floor of his van. "I may leave a couple of drops for effect," he stated. "It's not official Uber policy, but the company does reward initiative!"
* After consultation with the editors of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, we have upgraded this assessment to: "Mostly harmless."