Chief Frequency

Seed: 3979191050199623279

Chief Earmon's commute is six hundred forty-six miles long and perfectly silent.

He doesn’t listen to music on the flight. He just sits, eyes forward, tuning in.

No one really minds that he lives in Idaho now. The city still gets his emails, the budgets still balance, and the crime rate keeps its steady hum of misery. But lately, people say they can feel him—like static on the scalp, like someone adjusting the treble inside their skull.

He doesn’t need to be in Milbner to run Milbner.

He’s got the frequency.

Every officer keeps a Bluetooth earpiece in, even when off duty. They say it’s “for quick response.” But the truth is they hear him anyway—his clipped voice inside the skull, the faint smell of ozone and aftershave, the twitch behind the left eye.

He sleeps in the station sometimes, sure. There’s a room upstairs. A cot. A kettle.

When reporters asked to see it, they were told, “No tours right now.”

Still, people talk.

One sergeant said he once saw the Chief sitting perfectly still, headset off, eyes half-open, like he was receiving.

Another swore the microwave in the break room flickered in Morse code.

Some say he trained overseas—that he learned certain techniques meant for coordination under pressure. Others just call it intuition.

Whatever he’s doing, it works.

He gives orders like a man who already knows where everyone will be standing when the call comes through.

Others think it’s simpler: that the Chief just found a way to project authority without being present. The rest of them are merely tuned to his station.

When the earthquake hit last week, dispatch said his voice came through before the tremor.

“Secure perimeters,” he whispered.

Like he’d already felt the faultline flex beneath them.

In the end, maybe it’s not treason.

Maybe he’s just efficient.

Either way, every time the microwave beeps, everyone in the department blinks at once.

In sync.

At the same time.