Capitalist Hero - the Novel By Roger Martinez

     Adam stole a glance at the clock on the wall which seemed to stall at 3:15.  Tonight was his nephew's tenth birthday party and he was anxious to give him his present.  He dared not look again lest his superiors were watching. Obscured by black domes, he could never be sure if the cameras on the ceiling were focused on him.

 

    Not that he was worried about being fired. He was unionized with five years seniority. Only a criminal act like grafting or accepting a bribe would be grounds for termination. Even then he would have the opportunity for arbitration, remediation, and rehabilitation.  Nevertheless, as the department's least productive employee, there was nothing to be gained from drawing attention to himself.  Besides, everyone knew that a watched clock moved slower than an unwatched one.  He would make a game out of it.  If he could go the forty-five minutes until quitting time without looking, he won.  Adam was famous for games like these.    Just today he challenged himself to parlay one hour of work into a whole days worth.

 

    That one hour of work being an earnest young woman applying for a business license to open a seamstress shop, and Adam had spent the better part of the day editing, revising, and then rechecking his report of denial.

 

    In truth, Adam knew immediately upon reviewing  her file that he would deny her application.  You see her district already had a tailor shop whose proprietor happened to be well connected to the local bureaucrats and elected officials. He did make their suits, after all.  Although illegal, he undoubtedly let them cut the line and probably used banned fabrics like silk and high grade cotton.

 

    This young seamstress could cause big problems for the local tailor. She was young, hungry, and was probably willing to work late and weekends. This added competition would surely cause a drop in the price of suits. Not the official price, of course, but the real price.

 

    The official price for a suit was one hundred New Dollars.  By law, the tailor had to charge $100 for a new suit.   No more. No less.   The tailor was required to produce one suit a week.  At that price, the demand for suits was a lot more than a one a week. If you wanted a suit you had to wait in line and enter a lottery and that was just for the suit.  If you wanted alterations, that was another lottery and another line. The tailor made his real income through bartering.  He would trade his goods and services for others goods and services.

Bartering, as you might expect, was illegal but only in the most egregious circumstances ever prosecuted. 

    Adam could not fathom why bartering was not more vigorously investigated, but as the poem goes his "was not to wonder why." This was an issue, the political elites, with Aptitude Scores of forty plus, had to grapple.  Adam, with an Aptitude score of 33, concerned himself with more mundane issues like whether he would stamp "REJECTION" across the middle of an application or in one of the corners.  Nevertheless, it seemed obvious to Adam, that if the tailor was concerned about serious legal consequences to his bartering infractions, then he would abstain.  As it was, the tailor traded his wares with impunity.  A few months in jail and the tailor might think twice about bartering or perhaps abandon the practice all together.  Then maybe the tailor would have the energy and the wherewithal to produce or more than one suit a week for the lottery participants. 

 

    The seamstress had brought samples of her work; and at her urging, Adam reluctantly tried on the suit jacket.  "You look so important," she beamed.  "Like a politician or banker. An inch here...an inch there..." Ah yes, there it was...the bribe.  Adam had expected it, but he appreciated the seamstress' subtle delivery.

 

    Unfortunately for the seamstress, Adam placed little value on the suit.    He was a low level bureaucrat with no occasion to wear it. He supposed he could barter with it. But the suit was poor currency and not widely accepted like say cigarettes were. He would have to search very hard for a trading partner that would want a suit in his dimensions, and even then he would have to make multiple additional trades with multiple partners to ultimately get something he wanted or needed.  Not to mention that accepting a bribe and the subsequent bartering were illegal, and the authorities loved making examples of corrupt government employees.  Adam had no standing and thus no protection from prosecution.  A suit?  Why? For what purpose?  What he really needed were pipes.  Copper or PVC, he didn't really care.  These days, he'd settle for lead. 

 

    Immediately Adam could sense the quality of the jacket, and the natural fiber was such a refreshing change from the synthetic almost plastic feel of his 'suits.'  He glanced at his reflection in the glass door of his office, but the reflection he saw was not of himself but of his father. Not the broken and beaten man you might see in the textbooks but as a young man in his prime.  Could it be? Dad!?

 

Adam's resemblance to his father had been a source of great pride during Adam's boyhood. Adam and his father shared the same fine facial features and graceful physique.

    His father was a traitor and swindler.  He bought and sold money.  He traded this and that for those and the other thing.  He did not produce anything.  It occurred to Adam that, he too, did not produce anything.  Adam quickly chased that thought away.  He might not produce anything tangible but he allocated resources.  He decided which entrepreneurs would be allowed to set up shop and where.  Adam thought of the hundreds of capricious would-be business owners he saved from economic ruin.  Adam may have resembled his father in appearance, but he was nothing like him.

 

 

    Another game Adam played was the ongoing challenge of repressing the memory of his father.  If Adam could go a full twenty-fours without thinking of his Father, he won.  So far his personal best was six hours recorded during last year's Winter Solstice Holiday party.  Granted he had been severely intoxicated, but nevertheless six hours was quite an accomplishment.  He typically averaged less than hour.  After seeing his father's reflection today, he knew it would be impossible to make any meaningful headway in the game.

    Intellectually Adam knew that he was not having hallucinations when he saw his father in his own reflection, and he was certain the reflection was not his father's ghost attempting to communicate with him.  It was simply an optical illusion, a mind trick as it were, that could easily be explained away using optics, physics, and biology. 

    As an adult, Adam had never seen himself in a traditional suit jacket, and he had no memory of his father without wearing at least a sport coat.  When the light of his reflection bounced off the glass door it traveled to through his pupil and onto his retina.  It then traveled down his optic nerve to some nether region of his brain where a solitary neuron, containing within its protoplasm the memory of his father's visage at age 35, lie dormant .  This neuron had lain for decades awaiting its opportunity to contribute to Adam's consciousness.  Awakened by this beam of light, the neuron sprung to life and screamed out, "Dad!"

    Adam attributed the appearance of this spectre to science and a trigger happy neuron, but the feelings of guilt would linger with Adam the rest of the day.  Not some form of familial guilt for the crimes of his father, but rather guilt that he did nothing to protect his father.  Adam wondered if the descendants of Hitler or Stalin had such tender feeling for their nefarious relatives.  Did their descendants hide and deny their relation like Adam?  A visceral pang of regret washed over Adam.  When would this day be over?  Adam glared at the clock:  3:19.