SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
There was a knife-edged moment where I felt like I could just pull on my underwear and
walk up to the nearest cop and say, “Come on, dude, let's be reasonable about this,” and
we could have talked it over like real people who lived in the same city with the same
problems. This guy might have kids who were going to get stuck paying off a quarter
million bucks' worth of student debt or he'd lose his house; that guy was young enough
that he might actually be living with his parents and trying to pay off that debt.
The moment stretched and broke. Our clothes were patted down and shaken out, then we
were allowed to dress again. They cuffed us again, too. I silently begged the universe to
keep me free from ankle cuffs and thought I'd made it, when the cop who was trussing me
up seemed to remember that I'd been ankle-cuffed and reached for his belt again.
“It's okay,” I said. “You don't have to do that.”
He pretended he didn't hear me, but grabbed one of my ankles and started to cinch the zip
strip around it.
“Come on, man,” I said, wheedling and whining now, hating the sound of it in my voice.
“It's really not necessary.”
The guy made eye contact with me and grunted. “You did something to earn those cuffs.
Not my job to figure out whether it's time to get rid of `em.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. This guy had no idea why I'd been cuffed, but because I'd been
cuffed, I obviously deserved to be cuffed. “Tom” was long gone, and so was the inspector
who'd rescued me. I could imagine wearing leg cuffs all the way to the courthouse and the
judge, and being denied bail because I was the kind of dangerous offender who got leg
bindings.
I shuffled out of the foreman's office and into the main building. The cavernous space
had been fitted with mesh cages, stretching in corridors as far as I could see. The cages
were made of chain-link and steel poles, the poles bolted to the floor and ceiling at precise
intervals, slicing the room into little pens. Each one had an electric lock fitted to its hasp,
an open-air chemical toilet, and a collection of grim-looking prisoners. Men were on one
side of the central aisle, women on the other.
One by one, the cops tossed us into different “cells,” following instructions on their hardened,
tactical handheld computers. I decided that “tactical” was the world's most boring
fashion statement. Sometimes, they put guys into cells that were so full there was no room
to sit, other guys went into cells where they were virtually on their own. Several cells sat
empty. Whatever sorting and packing algorithm was being used to incarcerate us, it had
a sense of humor.
I ended up in one of the nearly empty ones, and was glad that my hands had been cuffed
in front of me, because I was finally able to take the piss that had been trying to batter its
way to freedom for the past several hours, sitting down on the exposed toilet and hunching
over for privacy, then fumbling my underwear and pants back up.
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