Streamlining

George Bricker

(One act radio drama)

The common characters, CCs in agency speak, are sitting around a lacquered table near the production room. There are reels and scripts on the table, stacks of old show scripts on the shelves behind their backs, and pieces of splicing tape on the checkered carpet. Two printers connected to the Central Newsroom print incessantly news, correspondent reports, backgrounders and directives from the front office. The CCs sneeze, not in unison but in a sequence sufficiently dense to discern a pattern. It’s the air-conditioning, they say. They mean the air they breathe is continuously recycled but never replenished because the front office fears the toll of nasty viruses that lurk in the capital’s streets. They have reporter notepads and pencils in their hands, rings on their fingers, belts at their waists and security passes hung around their necks. They are waiting to begin the morning debriefing, waiting for the MIC (the more important character), one of them whispers.

If I told you this office is a tiny fraction of a huge radio station, I would have to explain why the morning meeting is called a briefing, why the superior offices which oversee the office where the CCs and I work are sending signals to the MIC that there is growing dissatisfaction with his work in the Directorate of Communications, why the MIC keeps copious notes on what he overhears the CCs say and so on and so forth. I am just going to say that the CCs broadcast to an audience overseas, less tangible but more thirsty for their voices. They are all immigrants from the country they target with their broadcasts. It’s a delicate arrangement but the Directorate of Communications had no other way to credibly reach overseas audiences. The CCs do not really care for politics in their adoptive country but constantly bicker over politics in their old country. They do not declare which political party they support back home but -- it’s in the record vault of the front office -- they lean towards the parties their fathers belonged to. The MIC used to be a CC but he was promoted to an MIC after years of ratting on his agency colleagues to the Directorate of Communications. FYI, the MIC is also considered a true son of this agency because he has worked here since graduating from college.  Next page