Zoey leaned into the window, her breath steaming the glass in front of her. She wiped it away and looked out wearily down onto the street, five floors below. The agitators in the crowd were hurling objects at the line of armored police officers who had fanned out to contain the unrest that had begun to kindle in earnest.
Cars along Commonwealth Avenue were now bearing the anger of the crowd as some of the demonstrators jumped on and smashed their windshields with pieces of brick taken from the once posh intersection.
Then a flaming garbage barrel was thrown through the front window of the restaurant in a building housing the graduate dorms across the street. Black smoke billowed out the window as anarchists entered to do more damage.
It was getting too out of hand. In an almost choreographed maneuver, the riot-gear-clad officers thumped their batons against their plexiglass shields as a warning. A dispersal order was read over a loudspeaker once more and then the tear gas rounds were fired. The officers advanced their line forwards in a run against the crowd sending people back towards Kenmore Square.
“How long do you think we’re going to be up here?” Margo said exhaustedly.
“Probably into early tomorrow,” Zoey replied, looking to Joe at his computer for confirmation. He returned the look and nodded.
The five of them had come to the graduate lounge early Sunday morning when the building opened to do a crash study session for Monday’s exam. But with the rioting, that had started a few hours after they arrived, they were now trapped.
Lev, bored out of his mind was watching a YouTube video on the history of Disney World. His laptop blared, “Disney invented The Land Pavilion at Epcot to showcase the potential for hydroponics to bring fresh food in mass to cities, from within the cities themselves.”
A light went off in Lev’s head. “You know how much dope you could grow doing that? In a small space too.”
“Yeah. What, you’ve never heard of hydroponics?” Steve replied, disinterested.
“I suppose I just never thought about it applied to weed. You do this longtail stuff we’re studying, like Amazon…get like a million varieties…pair that with a Grubhub-like delivery service. ‘Weed-on-Demand’, son,” Lev pronounced with satisfaction in the idea that had formed in his head.
“Licenses though. Licenses. The law hasn’t caught up with the demand yet. It’s certainly gone a lot further than I thought it would have, but there are limits.” Joe wanted to put the damper on this idea before it got legs.
Margo, shifting attention from the window, was getting turned on to it though. “Uber bucked taxi and limo commissions. Airbnb ignored zoning ordinances and inn keeper’s laws. Flout the law. It’s slow. It will catch up.”
They all looked at each other. Was this the moneymaker they needed to stay in school amid the federal student loan system collapse and new recession?
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