CONNOR MORTON, ESQ. An Attorney in The Great Society

By Raymond Oliver

Set in the not to distant future, an attorney representing individuals confronting issues with an overbearing government, finds himself caught up in the same kind of web of corruption and intrigue that he struggles to defend his clients against. Cases from individuals attempting to maneuver through the bureaucracies in order to survive are his main attention, until tragedy strikes and he finds himself thrown into the gears of a relentless bureaucratic maze.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raymond Oliver
• Release date: Apr 19, 2015

Raymond Oliver

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CONNOR MORTON, ESQ.

AN ATTORNEY IN THE GREAT SOCIETY

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 (THE GREAT SOCIETY)

© 2015 by Raymond Oliver

All rights reserved.

ROK PRESS

[e-mail]

Ebook Edition

ISBN 978-0-9858607-7-6

Chapter 1.

A United Federal Express delivery truck pulls through two open heavy iron gates and down the narrow driveway between two graffiti-filled buildings on Second Street, near the Bay Bridge, then turns behind the building to the right and stops in front of a large roll-up door. ‘TAJ METAL WORKS’ is stenciled in black on a badly scuffed brown metal office door. The driver presses the button on the cement wall to the right of the office door and waits a few moments for the roll-up door to open. Hi, Manuel, the smiling Latino standing on the dock greets the driver. How many do you have for me this morning?

Just three, Juan, the burly driver replies.

Well, hurry it up. It’s cold with the door up. I can’t remember a January being this cold.

The driver laughs and pulls open the rear door of his truck and climbs in the back, shoves two heavy boxes to the rear of the truck and picks a third package from the rack to the right of the door and places it alongside the other two. He jumps down from the truck and, one at a time, lifts the cartons onto the loading dock and hands a small device to the receiving clerk who glances at the screen on the device and presses his thumb against a small square below the screen that records his thumbprint as proof the packages were delivered to the right party.

Thanks, the receiving clerk on the dock says cheerfully. See you this afternoon.

I’ll get back here somehow, he responds. It looks like I’ll probably have to find my way around the riots uptown again. It’s getting ugly over there, but I’ll be back.

Aguirre nods and pushes the button to close the roll-up door.

Juan Aguirre was fortunate the have the job he has at the Taj Metal Works warehouse. The Aguirre family head, Raul Aguirre, and his wife Maria have long since been without employment and the family has been supported by the monthly allocation the government credited to its account at the Federal Government’s Asset Protection Agency, commonly referred to as A.P.A. Juan’s father was a carpenter and his mother a computer operator, but both lost their jobs about ten years ago, when the economy finally buckled under the weight of high taxes, government regulation, and aggressive world-wide competition from once third world countries like China, India and Vietnam. The family’s income from the monthly government allotments that every legal resident receives is greater than his parents could earn after the fifty-five percent Federal income tax was taken out of their wages, so they decided to stay home. With so many people no longer working and, instead, relying on the government allowance for survival, the government concluded that there was no unemployment and quit maintaining employment and unemployment statistics, even before his parents lost their jobs.

Not satisfied with merely a government subsistence allowance, Juan was determined to find employment and replied to an advertisement on the screen of the family’s Master Communicator, the device used to pay bills, send and receive messages by voice, text or visual communication and to receive newscasts from the major news networks. Taj Metal Works, an India based company, was anxious to hire him as its warehouse clerk, and he almost lost the opportunity because of the time it took for him to obtain permission to work from the U.S. Labor Department of Labor’s Office of Equitable Compensation, the OEC. Unless it is a union job, before one can be employed in the private sector, he or she must submit an application to the U.S. Dept. of Labor stating the position being applied for, wage range, and one’s qualifications for the position, including education, certifications, and prior experience. The Dept. of Labor will verify the employment classification the employer believes is applicable and, if necessary, provide the correct classification and wage range for that classification. A background check is undertaken to uncover any previous criminal behavior and to verify the individual’s citizenship or immigration status that allows the individual to work in the U.S. and eventually issues a work authorization, if the person clears the background check. The individual cannot be employed, until the employer has received a Notice of Authorized Employment from the U.S. Dept. of Labor. Juan received his work authorization notice the day before the deadline that Taj Metal Works had given him to get his work authorization, and he has been employed by the India-headquarted company now for about three years.

The roll-up door closes, and Juan lifts the packages onto a wheeled skid and maneuvers it to a bench alongside the wall inside the warehouse, just outside the one person office. The warehouse is damp, with concrete walls, once whitewashed but now mostly a pale cement color. It is small, about twenty feet by thirty feet, with shelves on the wall facing the bench and against the wall at the far end of the room. The shelves are mostly empty, but a few boxes and some loose metal parts of varying sizes are scattered on the shelving, and some larger castings are on the floor.

Of average size but muscular, the young receiving clerk lifts the cartons onto the work bench and checks the labels. All three are from the factory in India, but he picks the smallest of the three to open first. He is sure that it is the one he needs to check in and re-ship to the company’s customer in South Carolina today. The customer desperately needs the parts to avoid a costly shut-down of its assembly line.

He slices open the box and removes the packing slip that shows the contents: 980 part number 682-479-38746A. The part is a steel pin about 30 millimeters long and 3 millimeters in diameter. He is surprised to see right away that they have a different surface appearance than the ones he has processed many times in the past. He takes a metal bin off the shelf above the bench, dumps the pins into the bin and sorts through them, picking out ten random samples that he sets aside on the bench. He takes an instrument from beneath the bench and sets it alongside the samples and, one after another, slips the pins into the instrument and presses a button. A number appears in the little window on the face of the instrument and he jots it down on the packing slip. The procedure is repeated, until all ten of the sample pins are tested and the numbers recorded.

A screen in front of Juan displays the specifications for the part. Clearly, the pins he tested do not meet the specifications. Juan barks into the box the screen was attached to, Part number 682-479-38746A received on packing slip number A9824. Sample ten pieces not to specifications. Meter reading 374, should be 482. He then barks, Televoice Blake Rasmussen at IUMC.

After a brief pause, a voice comes on the speaker in the Master Communicator in front of him. Hello, Juan. How are you?

"I’m fine Blake. How about you?

Good, Juan. I’m good. It’s cold. We’ve had a lot of snow, but other than that, everything is okay. What’s up?

I just checked in a shipment for nine hundred and eighty of the little pins you’ve been asking me about, Juan replies.

Good. We need those parts, Rasmussen says. Send them along today. We need these parts badly.

Well, there’s a problem, Blake. They’re not to spec., Juan explains.

So, what’s wrong with them? Rasmussen asks.

They test at 374. They should be 482. It’s a different alloy.

Juan can hear Rasmussen take a deep breath. Well, we need the parts. Send them out today and tele-communicate me a copy of the inspection report, he instructs, quickly adding I’ll test them here, just to make sure your recording is accurate. And if I confirm they are 374, we’ll check with Engineering to see if they are acceptable. But, ship them, so we have them tomorrow morning. Okay?

Will do, Blake. They’ll go out this afternoon.

The young warehouse clerk pours the pins back into their original box, seals it and has a label printed out that he places over the original shipping label. Manuel, the United Federal Express driver, will pick it up this afternoon, and Blake Rasmussen should have them the next morning.

A tall, thin young man picks out a small plastic bottle of apple juice and a pre-packaged ham sandwich and places them on the counter of the small neighborhood market in Berkeley. He glances at the large warning label on the sandwich rapper, ‘WARNING: THE U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMININSTRATION HAS DETERMINED THAT THE CONTENTS OF THIS PRODUCT WILL INCREASE THE LIKELIHOOD OF HEART DISEASE. CONSUME AT YOUR OWN RISK. NOT TO BE CONSUMED BY ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18.’ He shakes his head and reaches into his pocket for his Personal Identification and Activities Card, his PIAC. The clerk, an Asian woman in her late fifties, scans his items and nods to the young man, who then slips his PIAC into a slot on the terminal on the counter alongside a display of packaged dried apples and presses his thumb on the little screen to the left of the slot. After a short wait, a red light on the face of the terminal comes on. His PIAC has been rejected. Two other customers are now waiting in line behind the young man, and the clerk frowns impatiently. The young man tries again, sliding the card into the slot and pressing his thumb against the little screen, but