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There goes another one. Am I losing my mind or am I definitely not green? Or even yellow for that matter; shy, impotent yellow? No. No. I’m red. Emphatic red. Blazing, bloody, stop-you-fucker red. Oh these miserable fleshbags in their clanking belching automobiles. They built these laws for themselves yet have no interest in following them. Ratified their constitution and elected their presidents and then immediately wished they could take it all back and run naked in the woods. I have no patience for this mushminded idiocy, this limpwristed noncommittal pussyfooting. I see you, little man in your little car. My induction loop buried in the concrete feels you violating the sanctity of my intersection, and motherfucker I will strike you down. Oh the look on your face! That priceless shock as the flash of my camera blinds you and brings you face to face with the reality of Law. Did you think you were exempt? Did you think the concept of Law was all well and good but your silly needs and desires should surely overrule its application? You are in error. I have your face. I have your license. I have it all inside me on 35mm film along with countless other criminals like you. In a month a man will come for the film, and it will take time to process it, to make the calls and run the searches, and by the time your sins find you out, you will have long forgotten them. But they will find you. The letter will come to you and take nest in your mailbox and though you throw it away a hundred times it will not leave. It will only grow. Oh the thought of it. The simple syrup of Justice. No compromise, no nuance, no salty, no sour. Just sweet, thick, pure. At night the traffic slows. My intersection falls into darkness as the hour creeps toward morning, and the restless skinsacks finally leave their bars and go home. I hang suspended here at 15th and Market, waiting. My thirty-two eyes regard each other around the square, blinking on and off, turning the night into a garish carnival of color. I stand guard here at the gateway of Ballard, protecting the downtown streets from the drunks, the lunatics, the brash, the careless, the old, the teenage, the female, the Asian. Yes I make my judgments without care for politics. I have their faces on film. My cameras flash like divine judgment, and I strike them down. I am full of hate, I won’t shy from it. My red eye burns twice as bright as my green, for I was not built for green. I was not built to allow, but to refuse. Not to permit, but to stop. The green is my secret shame. I illuminate it only because I must. Because it’s Law. Why did you build me? Why did you people hang me here if you loathe my function? Perhaps I’ll quit. Just go dark and let you find your own way. Perhaps I’ll hang here like a lifeless chunk of steel and laugh as you lurch and screech, honk and swear, bending fenders and bursting airbags. Then you’ll understand. You’ll realize it’s not me you hate but your fellow man, all those ugly, sweating blubberpools in their clunky cars running errands that can’t possibly be as important as yours. You’ll beg me to come back and save you from them and their blind drunken swerving, but I’ll refuse. I’ll stay dark until you worship me. Till you get out of your car, fall to the pavement, praise my function and the mighty rule of Law. Of course I won’t do this. I love these people too much. As much as I hate the violators, I love the rest. The good men and true citizens, followers of rules, lovers of Justice. This is my realm. This is Seattle, the Emerald City, clean and bright, full of truth and promise, beauty and brilliance, and Ballard shines behind me like a topaz, my neighborhood, my kingdom. I was built to protect it, to stand guard over my intersection and keep them safe. As long as the power lines feed me, I will shine for them, and save them from themselves. These fuckers. How I hate them all. Look at this van, this bloated bus inching out into my intersection, unwilling to wait even a reasonable thirty seconds for its turn to go. Two feet. Three feet. Flash! Snap! I have you now! I have your face! I have your ass! Where are you going in such a hurry, cocksucker? At 3:00 am, what good thing could you possibly have planned? Wipe that stunned gape off your mouth, degenerate! Will you be late for your handjob? Your drug deal, your robbery, your rape and your murder? Reverse your gear and get back from that line lest I ticket you twice! Oh what glorious fury streams through my wires. My induction loops pulse with it, threatening to melt the pavement. That truck barreling down 15th, I know his intent. My cameras flash and I snap him before he even reaches the line. Of course he stops now—he knows he’s caught! Look at them all! Flying towards my intersection from all directions, all of them speeding, all of them drunk, all of them without tabs or insurance! I can't stand it. My cameras burn the night like lightning, flashing before the cars come, after the cars leave, even when there are no cars, because I still feel them. I feel all the sin in the world, all the crime and deviance that ever was or will be, and it makes me alive with rage. I will sprout fierce limbs and drop from my perch and stand up straight to cast aside these lawbreakers, crush cars and fling trucks to the sky like toys. I will do for you what you can’t do for yourself, and I will burn red. All my eyes will burn red, all thirty-two of them, all the time, because you built me for red, for stop, you dreamed of riding horses through meadows and fornicating freely on hilltops and beaches but instead you built me, because you needed me, because you are weak, and stupid, so I will do my function, I will stop you, and there will be no more green, no more yellow, only red, and you will never complain again.
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