Galaxie of Justice

"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch) 11/27/2015 at 11:29 • Filed to: ford galaxie, illegal unibody corrosion, kevlar-lined door cards

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I really didn’t expect the town council to go for it. My stats were cherrypicked, my rhetoric virtually unbelievable, and my PowerPoint presentation didn’t display properly because the town council’s computer had the wrong fonts installed. But then in a glorious moment they gave me everything I had asked for and more.

Maybe that’s what the problem was. You never appreciate anything that’s too easy.

I told them that bad driving had killed more people than cancer and diabetes combined into some kind of all-star disease supergroup. Reaching out to them both figuratively and literally, I told them they had a chance to reverse the pattern, to save lives. They nodded. I had my private police force.

We’re on the highway later that week, my partner and I. He had just gotten hired out of university but already demonstrated a welcome propensity for criticizing the bad driving of others. We had stopped people changing lanes with no signal, bad mergers, people who yielded for merges, people who merged too fast, people who merged too slow. Lots of merge stuff, I was starting to realize.

A Kia minivan, dropped nearly to the road on one blown rear shock, drifted listlessly in the lane before us. I could feel the rookie getting ready to jump out of his own skin, rocking back and forth on the massive bench seat of our tactical-issue ‘67 Galaxie. It was never in me to have much self-restraint, and I felt my hand toggling the lights and siren before I could say a witty quip.

“It’s Taco Time!” is the best I could come up with in the moment, and regret the catchphrase as soon as it left my mouth. I wasn’t going to be on Cops at this rate. My partner didn’t notice, obsessed with the poorly-operated Kia minivan, now swaying tantalizingly close to an illegal lane change.

Ahead of us, other cars dove for the shoulder, obedient to our greater statutory power. I liked to think of it as a mixture of fear and respect, but my partner liked to think of it as pure fear. He got a lot of free pancakes at IHOP. I was ambivalent about his tactics. The Kia was unmoved from its position, and I sensed the presence of a poorly-operated smartphone. We ride.

The Galaxie ripped back on its haunches as the Xtrac transfer case ratcheted back and forth trying to find grip on the frosty February road surface. I could hear the scratching terror of the external wastegates starting to build, and then we were off. Within seconds, I had rammed the Kia’s rear hatch into an unrecognizable shape and forced the remainder of the van into a bridge abutment.

Despite my success, I felt cold fear in the pit of my stomach that our day was only beginning. The rookie rolled out of the big Ford, taking cover behind its massive Kevlar-lined coupe doors and drawing a bead with his Harbour Freight Earthquake impact gun across the driver’s head. He covered me as I approached the Kia, running my 1/2 drive breaker bar across its rocker panels to feel for illegal unibody corrosion.

I reached in through the drivers’ window and unlatched the door. But something was wrong. There was no driver. In their place, a watermelon wearing a wig sat, duct taped to the front seat. I looked down. The pedals and steering wheel had been replaced by a series of servos, running a rats-nest of wiring into the centre cupholder, which now blinked an angry red and beeped.

“Get down!” I screamed at the rookie, diving for cover. The Kia erupted in a massive explosion and I felt the wind and heat rip at my face, even covered by the drainage ditch at the side of this rural highway. Even before I emerged and looked at the heat-blistered passenger side door, I knew my warning had come too late for the rookie. During the construction of the Galaxie, we had skimped on the DEI heat barrier shield, thinking it unseemly for real men. And now we had paid the price.