Clarion Call

By Patricia Fish

“Clarion Call” is an American business dedicated to nothing more than making money. Through marvelous use of technology, mass communication and an interconnected society , “CC”, as it became known, unwittingly stepped up to podium when the government of the United States totally collapsed, all under its own bureaucratic weight.

Solidly set and running smoothly with an economic and intellectual infrastructure that included millions of American citizens, talents ready, workers inside of the government institutions, an ant hill existed below the fruited plains that arose to save the most powerful country in the world.

All this without a single bureaucrat lifting a finger, without a solitary politician casting a vote.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Oct 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781489725967

Patricia Fish

Patricia Fish is a dedicated social media writer and loves to write humorous fiction. She is a news and political junkee and has Blogs that detail daily life, reviews books, movies and TV.

Book preview

Chapter 1

FAKING FUNERALS

H aving been named the official spokesperson of the Common Sense, I am honored. This is not only for the obvious personal achievement of being chosen to represent your class in terms of words, both spoken and written.

After much reflection I have decided to begin our story with the tale of Clarion Call, how it began, how it grew slowly, softly, clandestinely, to the force that wrested our country back from the brink.

I have not been a member of Clarion Call since its conception. My tenure with this amazing organization that combines capitalism with talent to achieve an assignment, any assignment save the illegal, began with Betty Miller’s funeral.

My friend Ellen Simpson was first to introduce me to the Clarion Call organization and I was intrigued.

It’s been around for a couple of years, Ellen dashed off as she set out cutlery for her monthly barbecue. There’s a headquarters somewhere and via the miracle of the Internet and Google, boom, they assign ‘jobs’, and with this Ellen held her hands in the air with two fingers bent in the classic pantomime of a pair of quotes, based on the locale of the assignment and the resources available.

And they service the whole United States? I asked, still intrigued by this mysterious organization known as Clarion Call that just recently assigned the design and implementation of a fake funeral for Betty Miller as a task my friend Ellen and a few of her chosen friends could pull off.

Yes, Ellen said. She laid down the last plastic knife on the picnic table and stood to give me her full attention.

Clarion Call’s been around for a while, like I told you. It’s an organization that will do any task, no matter how crazy or out there, for the right amount of cash. Any task, anywhere on earth and in some cases not even restricted to earth.

Ellen laughed at my disbelieving eyes. Clarion Call has arranged for private trips into space. Yep, it was the Chinese that sent up the rocket ship but Clarion Call, for the right price, can make anything happen. It’s the perfect blend of unfettered capitalism combined with the amazing tools of technology that allow such a concept to grow and flourish.

How’d you get involved with it?

Ellen lit up a cigarette, then looked around for any other witnesses to her crime. You just go to their web site. You sign up that you’d like to join the Clarion Call Army. You list your skills, your limitations…generic stuff. When they get an assignment that suits you they call you up, tell you the deed, ask if you can do it, tell you what they’ll pay, on it goes. You must pay all taxes on wages paid and they do withhold. I have to form some kind of LLC thing but again, easy to do on the Internet. Don’t want no trouble from the feds.

Ellen snubbed out her cigarette, bent over to pick up the butt, and joined me in a stroll to her kitchen where weekly picnic festivities would begin.

Right from the start Clarion Call was a harmless enough business. And make no mistake, it was a business, not a CABAL, not some Latin American group that would bring down the United States. Clarion Call was a business fed by nothing but the minds, resources, curiosity, intellects, of millions of Americans. Made possible, of course and as now understood, by the technology denied all the businesses formed in years prior.

It just grew, like capitalism does when left alone.

Came the time, and with no pre-plan, Clarion Call responded smoothly and instantly to save the country.

God really does bless America.

The fake funeral of Betty Miller was quite an experience for me; I still smile at the memory. Though it turned out that faking her own funeral might have saved the very alive Betty Miller’s life as a murder plot on her was aborted due to, well Betty’s fake death. But I get ahead of myself.

I decided that I wanted to attend my own funeral. Hell, my heirs will have to pay for my funeral out of my funds so I figure, why can’t I attend what I’m paying for? I want to see who comes, who says what about me…I’ll pay whatever the cost.

I’d known that Clarion Call client Betty Miller had requested that someone accept an assignment to arrange and oversee her funeral. Betty explained that she would be attending that funeral, as was her wish, but not as Betty Miller. Betty Miller would be the corpse. Betty would attend disguised as a co-worker of the deceased Betty Miller.

It was at our first face-to-face meeting when Betty explained her reasons for wanting to attend her own funeral. It was not on Clarion Call to question logic or reasoning for an assignment. So much as it was legal, Clarion Call would take any assignment. For the right price.

In fact, some 75% of Clarion Call assignments were in the party-planning category: birthday, anniversary, Bar Mitzvah, graduation. For the breadth of party planning options, Clarion Call became somewhat famous online, known as CC, the place to go to pahtay. It was the CC appellation that confused many, that and the innocence of party planners who would take down an entire class of dictators, who knew?

Parties planned by Clarion Call were not cheap, to be sure. They were very special, often involving elaborate surprise, guests of fame and renown. Yes we got Elton John for Rush Limbaugh’s failed marriage, made quite a fee on it. Elton had no problem with Rush’s political leanings. For the right price, of course.

Folks with money and elaborate plans contacted Clarion Call’s national web site and after terms, requirements, conditions and most importantly, amount of monies, were determined, someone out across the fruited plains, someone who’d already signed on as an expert on Bar Mitvah’s, someone who could lead a birthday hike, that someone was contacted, interviewed and assigned the task.

1099’s were given by Clarion Call to all recipients of assignment funds, taxes were withheld as a requirement of employment, even double the cost of FICA almost as it is for a private business person. Clarion Call wanted nothing to do with any IRS scrutiny. Though the IRS did keep an eye on this organization, as it would for any organization of such a size. Clarion Call filled government coffers handily, both at a federal level and on a 50 state level. That and their practice of withholding taxes on payees beyond federal requirements also made the IRS field agents happy.

Each year when Clarion Call filed its corporate tax return, it got so that the agents assigned to such high level audits took a quick look over and if the number went up from last year, they approved it on.

Arranging a funeral was a piece of cake and the fact that Betty Miller wanted to attend her own funeral was important only in terms of planned seating, introductions…that sort of thing. Clarion Call made no value judgment on one’s reason for doing an event, or how or why, besides the legality of it as must always be emphasized.

Which is not to see that such whacky assignments don’t cause giggling and gossip amongst the assignees. Clarion Call does not much care about even that normal human trait, so long as the company name is not tarnished, enjoy the human event of the moment.

Betty Miller was 57 years old at the time of her fake funeral. She was a pretty middle-age woman, short, wide-hipped and big-bosomed. Betty was heiress to quite a fortune it would turn out. She was a widow, having lost her third husband LeRoy five years prior to her own death. Betty had no children of her own, but she had a step-daughter by her first husband Frank Reynauld and a step-son by the aforementioned LeRoy. Betty had no siblings and stood to inherit her parent’s wealth from their chain of hardware stores, then long ago sold out to a national chain but at a handsome price and which proceeds from would be in the millions. Betty’s mother, JoAnn Harper, was 92 years old and a severe diabetic.

I never had no children of my own, Betty sniffed softly that day of our first face-to-face meeting. Tried, even tried an implant or something once. God didn’t mean for me to have babies so I moved on. I had a close relationship with my step-daughter Stacey. I married her cheating father when I was only 19. He was 29 at the time, already married twice, three kids, Stacey the one left behind when her mama got tired of finding strange women in her bed.

Betty Miller was as intriguing as the task she wanted assigned. She came from money but her language was a bit coarse. She certainly didn’t come off as an educated upper class woman. Her story was certainly interesting.

I’m adopted, Betty offered, a