Law Factory

Would love to have this adapted to a short film. Inquire if you like.

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Law Factory

P. H. Madore

(c) 2010-*

7th draft, 08/19/10

Two days ago, a riot broke out at the Trash Market. I looted well, at least three or four tons. I hated life all the way to the other side of town. Once there, I sold my haul to a Black Marketer for dollars on the penny. The disgrace of all this led me to seek employment.

The Law Factory is at the corner of Tomorrow and Today Streets, a few blocks from Trash Market. Third time this month I've applied for a job here. Next time, I'll settle for unskilled labor. Today I'm using a falsified degree for which I bartered at the Black Market. It says I graduated from the High-and-Mighty School of Law and Debauchery with highest marks.

“How do you feel about the quality of the average law and its improvement over the past fifty years?” the interviewer—a Chuck Liddell doppelganger—asks. He wears a badge which reads “Three Weeks of Gainful Employment.”

“Quality? I feel it hasn't improved near fast enough. Production has been down the past three quarters, I'm aware,” I guess. I lay the crumbled papers from my pocket on the table between us. “If elected, I mean hired, I will increase production and quality at the same time.”

“How would you do both at the same time?”

“I'd fire people who asked me how I was going to do it, first off. Then I'd enact regulations which gave designers incentive to output more infallible laws—for instance, any designer who makes a law which doesn't fail in its first three days, he gets a ribbon. Any designer who makes a law which doesn't fail in its first six days, he gets a prostitute.”

“The prostitute incentive has been tried before, Mister Window.”

“Not like I'll try it. We're talking high class. Call girl. Seventh Street Chicas.”

“Right. Why are you applying for a managerial position, exactly? You should be opening your own factory with these qualifications.”

“It says here you've been arrested a couple times,” I tell him, looking at my shopping list.

“Who's doing the interviewing here?”

“I'm just saying, it says here.”

“Get out of here,” he says. He stands up and does a back-flip in place, his shaggy goatee unjustifiably undisturbed.

“Your only qualification is that you got here three weeks before I did.”

“Not seeing your point. You're hired.”

“What? Fuck you, I quit.”

“Just the kind of attitude we're looking for. You start Monday.”

Sunday's fog billowed over into Monday morning. In the pre-dawn I stood and scratched my balls. I pulled on the only dirty clothes I had—some old coveralls of the sort worn by train engineers some thousand and a half years ago—and burrowed my way through the apartment. In the kitchen I found coffee from some weeks before, resting on the burner, still hot, and grimier than anything I'd ever been served during the long war which stole the remnants of my sanity.

I took a green magic marker and wrote on the wall of the kitchen: here we decline, here we stand taller, and here we know better. I drew a massive X through the quip.

Into the shower I motivated myself. Forgetting to remove my clothes, I washed as if I were naked.

Soaking and sopping I stepped onto the landing and balked at the sallow nature of Insanity, or what I perceived to be her sallow nature many years before I'd become so intimately involved with the daughter of the filthiest whore this side of the Pacific. She awaited me at the bottom of the stairs, as always, and stood mumbling things about my attire.

“Shut your mouth,” I said, but there is no more stubborn bitch than Insanity. It took years to get her last name from her and once I'd done that she told me that it would be the death of me ever to repeat it. Nothing funny about a death threat from an invisible person. After all, everybody knows she was once the chair of the Committee of Invisible Radiances and now just pulls its strings. She lit a cigarette and we became street people.

A young man approached and attempted to sell us half-priced, day-old newspapers. His haggard face oozed determination and fancy. He broke down and shoved the paper onto me, mumbling about never getting any attention from invisible people himself. I urged Insanity to follow him and be rid of me. Someday I'm sure she'll get bored. It's never today.

Insanity finally took a cab to some secret meeting or another when we reached the Law Factory. A band of tweens stood just inside the door, playing some punk rock song from my childhood. I paused in front of the lead singer and sopped some water off my shirt sleeve onto her. “You've not broken any fucking records yet!” I shouted. Their volume increased, their numbers dwindled, and I became so irritated with the situation that I could not stand still a second longer.

In the next room a man with the girth of a delivery truck demanded identification. I produced it in a begrudging huff. He gave me a badge. The badge read:

Graspy Ricardoneros Window

Manager of the Fifth Level

First and Only Law Factory, Inc.

I couldn't complain, really. At least they got my last name right. And I was starting out two levels higher than I'd been promised by the credential peddler at the Black Market. A manic group of delta testing mid-wives huddled some meters away, chanting:

Fake orange. Fake orange. Fake orange.

Were that to make any sense I might have done something about it, for they were cultish in their ways, but I saw no reason to get rowdy just yet. And anyway I wanted to see my office.

I found it on the third floor of the building, tucked within a row of much more spacious janitorial closets. It contained a gray metal desk of the rickety sort governments still put to use and a plush pink chair you'd find in Neo-Caucasian restaurants down in Shanty City Proper. A sheet of paper rested square in the middle of the desk. On lined paper were written my tasks for the day. There were no initials at the bottom and the handwriting was mechanically indistinct. I rifled through the drawers and found nothing but dust. I was satisfied for about two minutes. Then idle ratcheting got the best of my better judgment and I deciphered the words written on the page.

Fire at least three people.

Figure out how best to leave early without anyone noticing.

Hire an intern using Craigslist.

“What the fuck is Craigslist?” I asked aloud.

A muffled voice came through the overhead vent: “It's not what Craigslist is, dearest pal of mine, but what it is not—a place to hire an intern. Hire from within!”

“I'll not be told what to do by a fucking vent!” I took a deep breath. “Whoever you are, you're fucking fired! Assume the position of attention and hide until I find you! Weeds of fuck all! There will be no tolerance for things of this nature! Eat shit, die slow, give me something new to complain about!”

I stormed out of the office in search of this insolent scum. Over an hour passed without finding one single douche bag standing at the position of attention. I thought of firing them all for good measure. Didn't want to reach my bag limit without first catching my prey. I returned to the office and pretended to take a nap. I heard the whole sneaking process of his entering. He slouched in front of my desk, staring at me. I saw this all through barely-opened eyes. Suddenly—or so it would seem to him, for to me my actions were well calculated—I jumped up in the air like Michael Jordan and tripped over my desk as I tackled him. He was a mere courier, I discovered, bringing my office supply starter kit: a sticky pad, a broken pen, and a machete. I fired the chiseler just in case. Upon his dismissal he let some diarrhea exit his pant leg.

I went a door down the hall and discovered a janitor with a beautiful prostitute. I asked the janitor politely to clean up the mess in my office when he was done with her. He agreed with a nod and went back to work.

The following day I sought to determine my actual function within the factory. In search of Chuck Liddell, all I came up with was the fact that he had been fired. The last hope of knowing what the fuck I was doing here had been shredded by the very bastards who'd have benefited most from it.

For the rest of the week I went to work two hours late.

That Monday, I was promoted and given a cash bonus by a mail clerk. It was a whole big ceremony. I just stood around and looked dumb. I placed the bonus check in my pocket and decided I could invest it in something. A brothel. Something. Everyone there knew damn well I'd take that money and buy a gallon of milk and horde it

I paid my rent that Wednesday for the first time in three years. It was a hefty bill. The landlord made me present identification to prove that I was the delinquent tenant of so long. For an interest rate of negative point-five percent, we settled the debt. “I was born in the vinegar section of a grocery store,” he told me. He began to twiddle his thumbs with purpose. I told him I'd see him again when I had a chance and left.

In the afternoon I went to the first big office I saw. “Hello,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I'm going to need the next month off.”

“Why is that?”

“I'm quite sick of your bullshit is all,” I said.

“Right, well, a month it is.”

“Good. See you around.”