Laughter with Kafka

I’m still working on the next chapter of Charlie and Me, trying to edit it into some form of sanity. Here’s something else.

This is an adaptation of something I wrote for a competition and never submitted. Sci-fi mildly dystopian future, courtroom drama, and a lot of laughs with a lot of dialogue.

Marcus gets the dedication here because I know he just loves playing with dialogue. Much like myself.

*****

I was in the wrong place. I really didn’t belong here in a court room. Yes, I was a barrister, but I hadn’t done any real legal representation in years, pretty much since my breakdown and subsequent messy divorce, and my retreat back to my roots in Lancashire. There I was among people I understood and cared about. In London, while I understood the people I’d had to represent in the gladiatorial atmosphere of the higher courts, I certainly didn’t like them.

I now made my modest living dealing with land sales, and house conveyancing, neighbours disputing boundary lines, drawing up and modifying and executing wills, the common realities of everyday life. A simpler more fulfilling existence than the one I’d so nearly lost myself to. But even in the glory days in London I definitely had never gone head to head with the biggest, most powerful, and what was widely regarded as the greediest, most corrupt, and most cavalier corporate juggernaut in the world.

I’d known my client Frank for as many of my forty years as I could remember. A real Lancashire farmer, broad face reddened by sun and wind and rain, broad shoulders, big rough hands. Big all over. But incredibly gentle, and a very good farmer. Straight as a die. Now here he was in the High Court accused of theft on a grand scale. Millions of pounds, according to the plaintiffs.

I’d told him, ‘Frank, I’m the wrong man for the job.’

‘Nay lad. You’ll be fine. I just need you there to be a wig. I’ll handle myself all right. Just be there and keep your trap shut.’

‘They’ll crucify you, Frank. BioAgriChem’ll have expert witnesses up to their armpits, a posse of highly paid lawyers. They’ll win. I know they shouldn’t, but they will.’

‘Then I’d be a damn fool to waste brass if I’m going to lose, wouldn’t I? Anyway, I reckon I can take on some soft southern suits an’ some poncey Yanks.’

‘OK. How do you want me to play this?’

‘Keep your gob shut. No cross examining anyone. Nobody. You’ll have only one witness for the defence, too. Me.’

‘Tell me the plan, Stan.’

‘Ever heard of Arnold Chrysler?’

‘No.’

‘He was a while ago. Must’ve been, oooh, forty year or so ago. About the time you were born. Mid 1990s I suppose. Look him up. Then you’ll get it.’

‘I’m your legal representative. I have to follow your instruction.’

‘That’ll make a change. You never done that when I caught you wrecking my tractor. Just keep your own counsel, and leave the rest to me.’

As I’d expected, BioAgriChem did come with teams of experts; geneticists, genetic engineers, botanists, entomologists. And a slew of patent specialists. They also had a gaggle of lawyers, and the best KC money could buy in the imposing shape of Anton Bradley. Bradley was the most feared corporate lawyer in the New Kingdom, a ferocious opponent, and with an impressive list of successes to his name. Not a single loss.

BioAgriChem had a bottomless pit of money. I suspected that they were using this lavishly and had, in the gallery and elsewhere, a number of jury consultants, who would read the reactions of the jury and report their findings at every break, with a full written report every night, to be pored over by BioAgriChem's corporate suits and the prosecution legal team. This was one of the tricks that had spread across the Atlantic from the good old US of A, and I disliked it intensely.