Lois glowered. The early, and long, lunch she had been looking forward to had been delayed.
“The violations are almost too many to number.” Lois said. “A repeated violation is the frequent shortage of WIFI signal. As you know The Cali Department of Education takes the education of our youth very seriously and you agreed to provide educational opportunities (including WIFI) when you took the students.”
“For one thing,” Mardi responded, “We did not ‘take’ the students. You forced us to provide room and board for twelve of them.”
“For another thing, I am pretty familiar with the Education Handbook. I do not remember seen anything about a WIFI requirement. What page is it on?” Mardi concluded.
Lois looked over at Terry. Terry fiddled with his tablet, cleared his throat and said, “That requirement is on page 783.”
Mardi looked confused. “But the Handbook is only 450 pages long. How can the requirement be on page 783?”
Lois smirked. “The Department of Education has panels of experts who meet. They interpret the rules and break them down into observable actions. They publish those interpretations as series of addendums to the Handbook. Clearly, this is in one of those addendums.”
Mardi said, “But you don’t publish them?”
Lois said, “They are available through the Freedom of Information Act.”
“How would I know to ask for them?” Mardi asked.
“That is not my problem.” Lois responded. “We are documenting your non-compliances in this meeting and it is beyond the scope of why we are here to re-engineer the Department’s policies. So, back to the WIFI outages.”
“When did these outages occur?” Mardi asked.
“Most notably during the summer of 2026. Every student from summer, 2026 testified that there were extended WIFI outages.”
“Testified… what did you do, threaten these kids with jail unless they came up with some dirt on us?” Mardi was starting to get pissed.
“Terry, enter into the record that Mz Izzo is hostile and uncooperative. Mz Izzo, for your information, the students were sworn in and depositions were recorded. It is standard process.” Lois said, looking more reptilian by the minute.
Mardi realized that Lois intended to make her angry and lose control. Mardi took a half minute to compose herself… a quick Hail Mary and Prayer to St Augustine helped.
“2026 is the year the valley the electrical storms. As I told you in the emails, all our electronics were fried. That included the router. We were not the only ones. Most people had to wait for over a month to get a new router.” Mardi said.
Lois said, “We are not here to listen to excuses. We are here to verify noncompliance.”
Mardi asked, “When was the addendum that includes page 783 published? I could see the Department publishing something like that after the fact.”
Terry looked it up. “It was published in 2026 so it applies to that summer.”
Mardi asked, “What month in 2026? Summer is half way through the year.”
Terry’s face flushed. “November.” He had seen that it was November before he had stated that “so it applies to that summer” and had been caught.
The “interview” was being recorded on video and he hated to leave evidence that he was sloppy.
Lois tried a slightly different tack. “I am not conceding that the requirement did not apply to the summer of 2026. That is for the panel of experts to decide. It does, clearly, apply to the time period between November 2026 and the present, and there are multiple WIFI failures during that period. What is your response, Mz Izzo?”
“We don’t control the electrical power on our farm.” Mardi replied. “As you know, the Cali Power Board installed smart electrical distribution panels in every building in Cali. During periods of peak power draw our domestic circuits shut down and that includes the WIFI.”
Shivering in the AC, Mardi knew where that power had gone.
“If The Cali Department of Education, Enforcement Division has issues with WIFI uptime then they should take it up with The Cali Power Board.”
Lois said, “For the video record, Mz Izzo is being a smarmy, smart-ass.”
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.”
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.