J. Curtis - Calexit - The Anthology

Miguel had elected himself as crew-boss, and nobody had contested it. Miguel was almost twenty-six and was about to age-out of the system.

Six of the crew were male and four were female. All of the females had hormonal implants to prevent pregnancy.

Miguel led off, “You aren’t feeding us enough.”

Chad put down the post driver. “I am feeding you exactly what the book says I must feed you.”

Miguel said, “I talked to Ricky who was on your crew last year. He said you fed them more than the book said.”

Chad sighed. This came up every year. “I can feed you more if you work more. If you work by ‘the book’ I will feed you by ‘the book’. Last year Ricky’s crew worked when the temperature was above 75 degrees. More work, more food.”

Cali upgraded the original RFID tags to include biometric tracking information. Bona-Brown passed laws that prevented farmers from working “students” when the temperature was above 75 degrees Fahrenheit. In central Cali, that was most of the daylight hours during the summer.

The chips would beep if the wearer’s heart rate went above 120 bpm and the temperature was above 75 degrees. If the wearer said “Play,” the chip shut down. If the wearer said “Work,” then a crew of law enforcement personnel would come on the run.

Miguel thought about that for a minute: the temperature was 85, but it was a dry heat. The boss was working in it. He was working steadily, but not quickly. Word among the students who had been at the farm before was that Chad took care of his people. On the flip side, he was ruthless to those who fucked with him.

Miguel said, “I ain’t promising anything, but what needs to be done?”

“I need a row of fence posts driven from here to that pine tree,” Chad said, pointing to a tree sixty feet away. “The fence posts need to be six feet apart and they need to be driven in at least two feet.” “Then I need a circle of fence posts driven here,” pointing at the scratches in the dirt, “so it looks like the number 6. You can cheat a little bit on the depth of the posts at the top of the six, but the posts in the circle absolutely have to be two feet deep… or more.”

Miguel looked around. It was the oddest thing he had ever seen. The boss wanted a sixty-foot run of fence in the middle of nowhere. It started nowhere and ended nowhere.

“When does it have to be done?” Miguel asked.

“I need it done by August first, but sooner is better.” Chad said.

“Whadda we get if we do this?” Miguel asked.

“I ain’t promising anything,” Chad said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some eggs to go with the oatmeal at breakfast a couple of mornings next week.”

Miguel looked up at the sun. “You got any problem with us getting started after six in the evening, when it is a little cooler?”

Chad said, “It is yours to manage. I only want to be here to make sure it is done to my satisfaction and to get to know the crew.”

One of the other changes since Calexit had been the loss of automation. Izzo Farms used to have 160 acres of producing citrus trees. Twelve years ago Chad had an attachment on the three point hitch that would have driven six-foot Mesquite poles two feet into the ground in less than two minutes. It was not like that anymore.

Calexit had been devastating to the market for premium fruits. Facing bankruptcy, Izzo Farms grubbed out the fruit trees and sold them a chipper for “sustainable energy”. Then they converted their acreage to a potato-wheat-cabbage-hay-hay rotation. The potato-wheat-cabbage portion of the rotation was two full calendar years. The two years of hay were necessary to return fertility to the soil and to break the disease pest cycle.

The timing of the change had been lucky. Cali had fifty-five million citizens and quickly learned that foreign exchange markets are not impressed by governments with socialist leanings. The Callor slide from 1C-to-$1.35, to parity, and then then to 4C-to-dollar. With that devaluing of its currency, Cali was hard pressed to feed herself.

It took a couple of evenings for the crew to beat the fence posts in, but finally the strange shaped run of fence was put in to Chad’s satisfaction. Chad brought work gloves for the crew the first evening because the youngest ones never had them. Half the crew was Latin and chatted away among themselves the whole time. Chad had never thought it was important to let the students know he was a fluent speaker of Spanish… Listening to the conversation, he agreed that Mardi, his wife, was indeed a fine looking woman.

Chad, Mardi, Miguel, and Bonita sat on the front porch of the house. It was 6:00 pm, and the temperatures were still above 90.

Before Calexit, Chad and Mardi would have been inside, where it was air conditioned.

After Calexit, the power from the mandatory, roof-top solar panels was shunted to the energy collection farms in the Bay area, the sprawling barrios of greater Los Angeles-San Diego and the government compounds of Sacramento. The cyber industry of the Bay area was the main source of hard currency for Cali and got the lion’s share of energy to run the computers (and air conditioners) while the barrios were always on the verge of exploding into open warfare due to the lack of both. All that said, there was enough power leftover to make ice for their tea.

Bonita and Miguel were not a couple , per se. Bonita was the lead female even though she was only 20 years old. The four rocked and fanned, as they planned the next day’s activities.

“Looks like another hot one.” Mardi said. Mardi ran the administrative side of the farm. Chad freely admitted that he had the better end of the deal. The paperwork had been a burden before Calexit. Under the watchful eye of the eco-terrorists inhabiting Sacramento, it had turned into a 12-hour-a-day job.

Miguel said, “The young ones are getting restless. They are playing grab-ass and getting into fights. It is even too hot to work off-the-clock.” Miguel used the term from before the RFID chip days. “We all miss the extra calories and protein.”

Chad said, “Well… There is something we can do but it is not exactly by-the-book. I don’t mind trying it out with a couple of people who can keep their mouths shut.”

Both Bonita and Miguel perked up. Miguel said, “It is my job as lead to check things out. What do you have in mind?”

Bonita said, “Count me in, too. I need to be sure it is good for the girls.”

Chad said, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

A minute later he came back out onto the porch. He was carrying a gun. “Before you get excited, you need to know that this is a perfectly legal pellet gun. You pump it up like this.” He demonstrated. “You put in a pellet like this. And then…” he pointed it out into the dry yard, “you shoot it like this.”

A puff of dust erupted in front of a starling pecking at the ground thirty yards way. The bird squawked and took flight. “Every starling has about as much edible meat on it as a hotdog. Every sparrow is about a half hotdog. They aren’t hard to hunt. The hard thing is shooting enough of them to make a meal.”

Chad handed the pellet gun to Miguel. “See if you can hit the fence post over there.” Miguel pumped it up ten times the way he had seen Chad do it. He loaded a pellet. Aimed. Fired and missed.

“Let me try.” Bonita said. She pumped it ten times. She loaded a pellet. She used the railing of the porch for a steady rest. She let out half a breath and eased back on the trigger. The pinging sound of a metallic impact came back.

Chad said, “As you both can see, it is not a race to see how fast you can squeeze the trigger. And shooting is something that women can do as well as men.”