Free Spider's Web by Mike Omer

as months of training took over, her arms rising to point her own gun at his chest, aiming for center mass, her lips moving, shouting at the man. Shouting at him to drop it .
    She was surprised by how much her mind registered in a very small fragment of a second. The bewildered, unfocused stare of the man as he looked at her, the blue light flickering on his face, blinding his eyes. The way his gun hand moved, rising higher, the fingers clutching the gun fiercely, unwilling to let go. Her ears heard her partner as he yelled at the man to let go of the gun, that he was about to shoot.
    His finger wasn’t in the trigger guard, Tanessa realized. His five fingers were wrapped around the weapon’s grip, as if he held a walking stick, or a ball.
    “Sergio, don’t shoot!” she shouted. “Don’t fucking shoot!”
    The man froze completely, his hand halfway up. Only his lips kept moving, though Tanessa couldn’t hear a word.
    “Sir,” she said, walking even closer, blocking the patrol car’s blinding lights with her body. “Put the gun down.”
    The man stared at her and then looked at his hand. He seemed surprised to see the weapon clutched in it. Slowly, he knelt down and laid the gun on the ground.
    She was already at his side, grabbing his arms and twisting them behind his back. He didn’t resist, quietly saying, “I had to do it. I had to. I had to.” Her handcuffs clicked, fastening around his wrist, the metallic noise a soothing lullaby in her ears. The suspect was disarmed and restrained. No one was about to get hurt. Except…
    “I think he shot someone,” Tanessa told Sergio without looking back. She let go of the man, grabbed the flashlight from her belt, turned it on, and pointed it at the alley.
    There was something in the dark. She aimed the beam of light at it, and caught her breath. A small, open laptop stood on the alley’s floor, its screen shattered, spotted with multiple holes. It was clearly beyond saving.
     
     
    “I had no choice, I had to do it. Two months of work, gone! Just like that. BAM. Blue screen of death. No backup.” Kenneth Baker babbled in the back of their car as they drove toward the city jail. Tanessa half-listened to him, feeling exhausted. She was drained after the encounter, the adrenaline that had been pumping through her blood gone now. She wished for some peace and quiet, but it wasn’t meant to be.
    “I mean, you could hear the hard drive spinning. It was definitely still working, but it just wouldn’t start! Do you know how that feels? The fruit of your toil consumed by a… a… machine? I was furious.”
    Tanessa was sure he was. His breath reeked of cheap alcohol, and she’d spotted some white powder traces under his nose, probably cocaine. With such a fun cocktail running through his blood, it was no wonder he decided to go out to the alley and shoot his computer.
    “This never would have happened forty years ago. A typewriter wouldn’t suddenly chew up your novel. Humanity is being enslaved by machines, and we don’t even notice. People need to open their eyes, before it’s too—”
    “You know,” Tanessa said, turning around. “I’m not sure we read you your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…” She recited the rest of the Miranda warning. “Got that? Remain silent?”
    “My novel is gone!” the man said, his voice brittle.
    “Well, maybe it could have been restored, if you hadn’t shot your computer eleven times!”
    There was a moment of silence.
    “I doubt it,” the man finally said.
    “Yeah, well, you keep telling yourself that. Whatever helps you sleep at night.” She sighed and turned to face forward again.
    “All units.” The dispatcher’s voice filled the patrol car. “There’s a hit and run on Ambleside Drive. Ambulance needed.”
    “What the hell is going on tonight?” Sergio muttered.
    “Turn right,” Tanessa told him. “We aren’t