J. Curtis - Calexit - The Anthology

Late that afternoon, Lois said, “The most serious charges are that you failed to meet your production quotas for several years running. You did not just miss them, you missed them by a mile.”

Mardi asked, “What are the years in question?”

Terry Branch answered, “Notably the years 2026 and 2027. You delivered less than 10% of your quota.”

Mardi, “I don’t see why this is a concern of The Cali Department of Education, Enforcement Division. We squared this with the The Cali Department of Food Security while it was happening.”

Lois said, “You are not asking the questions here. I am. We are establishing a pattern of flouting official Cali authority. That would make your acceptance of these students fraudulent and verify that you were putting the moral development of these students at risk. These are very serious charges.”

Mardi said, “There was no water in the aqueduct in 2026 and 2027. You cannot grow potatoes and cabbage in a desert without water.”

Lois said, “It is not documented that there was no water in the aqueduct. Do you care to substantiate that?” Gale-Leinhart-Diaz was hoping to catch Mardi in more falsehoods.

Mardi said, “We had three years of low snow-pack in the western Sierras. The water has to come from somewhere. They shut down the water from the Colorado River. We might have been able to tap into that, but there was no water from there, either.”

Lois said, “That did not matter. We had desalinization plants up and running.”

“We had some desalinization plants running.” Mardi said “Enough to feed water to the fifty million people in San Diego/LA. Another thing the bright boys over looked was the fact that you cannot reverse the flow in an open aqueduct. You cannot pump water 400 feet uphill using infrastructure designed for gravity flow.”

“There was no water in the aqueduct until 2028 when we renegotiated the leasing of the military bases to the Chinese.” Mardi said.

Lois looked at the wall clock. “For the video record, it is now 5:30 pm. Mz Magdalene Izzo, Izzo Farms of East Orosi, Head of Records is directed to return at 10:15 tomorrow morning for preliminary sentencing.”

Email

To: Erica Holder-Washington

The Cali Department of Education

Executive Director, Enforcement Division

From: Lucinda Yang-Gomez

The Cali Department of Food Security

Director, Central Valley

Date: July 17, 2031 9:15 pm

Call off your attack dog. Do not prosecute Izzo Farms of East Orosio.

Izzo Farms is in the top two percent of farms for compliance-to-quota.

Cali is on the brink of food riots. This next harvest is critical. Izzo Farms is one of the first operations to harvest and unrest in the agriculture sector will disrupt the entire 2031 harvest. We cannot afford to have any food rot in the field.

Calorie availability has fallen to 1800 Calories per person-day. Contracts with China for grain delivery are on hold pending verification of sufficient collateral.

Repeat. Do not prosecute. Do not harass. Return all electronic devices.

Confirmation of receipt, understanding and compliance with this email is required per authorities granted by PM Bona-Brown.

Copying, forwarding or otherwise replicating this email is forbidden. This email will auto-delete twenty-four hours from when it is opened.

The trouble with coyotes and raccoons is that they think they are smart when they are merely crafty. They start thinking they are the apex predator when in fact they are in the middle of the food chain.

Lois Gale-Leinhart-Diaz was, at heart, a coyote.

At 10:00 am she slid a card across the table to Terry Branch. It said, “Turn off the video recorder.”

Terry stood up, stretched and nonchalantly placed his hands in his pockets as he walked over to the corner with the video recorder. He was tall enough to reach up and press the on/off button. The bright green LED slowly faded.

Lois exploded. “This is complete and utter bullshit! Fucking ‘Ivory Tower’ executive director has no fucking idea how the world works.”

Terry asked, “What’s going on?” He had never seen his boss loser her cool like this.

“Fucking Executive Director of Enforcement just told me to let the Izzo bitch off the hook.” Lois spat. “Those people on the top floor have no idea how hard my job is. The only thing that makes it doable is to put the fear of God in the rabble’s heart. You get something on these people, you put your boot on their throat and you never let up. The only thing they respect is power and the only way to prove you have power is to use it.”

Lois sat quietly for a minute. “Terry, we are going off the reservation on this one. She will never notice that the green light is off. We are doing this to protect the Department, to protect the fucking cunt who sits in the Executive Director’s office. Just follow my lead… and leave the fucking video recorder off.” Terry just nodded.

Ten minutes later Mardi walked into the office. She suspected that she was the first appointment of the day and she had been left in the waiting room to “show her how unimportant she was”. She was correct.

Lois started, “We have decided to grant you clemency. You are on probation for the next five years. You will be subjected to random audits and spot checks. You may not leave Tulare County without our advance permission and we require two weeks-notice to process your out-of-county travel request. You may leave.”

Mardi asked, “When will you release our computers and other devices?”

Lois gave a causal wave of her hand. “I believe that you can collect them from the evidence room on Monday or you can wait until we mail them to you.”

Mardi asked, “And when would they be mailed?”

Lois said, “Probably before the end of the month. That is not in my silo.”

Lois said, “You have five minutes to exit the property or I will have you charged with loitering. You may leave know. Have a great day.” Lois said it with a sugary-sweet voice and a brittle smile, leaving no doubt that Izzo’s troubles were just beginning.

After Mardi left, Lois told Terry to turn the video camera back on.

The possibility that the power switch was a dummy and that high definition recordings of the event had been permanently stored in server farms in Cupertino, Mountain View and a dooms-day, continuity-of-government site in Grass Valley, Cali never occurred to them. Nor did the fact that the key word fields of those recordings were automatically populated by the “resource scheduling” software, the voice recognition software and the voice-to-text software.

Those recordings were accessible to all officials, Executive Director and higher.

Mardi and Chad leaned back in their chairs on the front porch. Their feet were on the rail. A small libation of Cali Whiskey and Branch Water was at hand.

“Thanks for picking me up in Visalia. I did not know if you would make it in time.” Mardi said.

“Ya, no sweat.” Chad said. “That’s what we do. At least Juan had a Burley cart, otherwise bringing home the computers would have been a real chore.”

As it was, the Suzuki dirt bike had not been the friendliest of towing vehicles. It was a racing bike with a very narrow power band and stiff-as-hell springs. Two passengers went a long way to softening the ride, but two passengers raised the center of gravity. Lack of attention by the driver could result in the bike pulling a wheelie that would pitch both people off the back end of the bike… even in second gear. Pulling a trailer only exacerbated the bike wanting to go ass-over-teakettle.

“So how was it that you were able to get the computers before Monday?” Chad asked. “You got me curious.”