Chapter 4: The Plywood Declaration

Chapter 4: The Plywood Declaration

The silence that followed the final click of the telephone was heavier than any sound. Arthur sat at his desk, the receiver resting perfectly in its cradle, his hand still on top of it. He wasn't angry. Anger was an inefficient emotion, a messy burst of energy that clouded judgment. What he felt was a profound and absolute clarity, as if a dirty lens had been wiped clean.

The matter is closed.

The words echoed in the quiet of his study, not as an insult, but as a statement of fact. They had closed the door on logic. They had closed the door on reason. They had closed the door on him, a citizen, an engineer, a man trying to get home to his sick wife.

Politeness had failed. It was a language they did not speak. Data had failed. It was a truth they did not care to hear. The system he had so respectfully tried to engage with was not a system at all; it was a wall. A high, arrogant wall built by two men named Morley and Calloway. And when a wall stands between you and what you must do, you don't keep knocking. You find a wrecking ball.

Arthur stood and walked to the bookshelf, not the one with engineering texts, but a smaller one near the door that held household miscellany. Tucked behind a stack of old tax returns was a relic, a book nearly four inches thick with a faded blue cover: the 2002 Portland Metro Area phone book.

He carried it back to his desk and laid it open. The pages were thin and delicate, whispering as he turned them. This was his territory. Long before the internet had made information cheap and easy, Arthur had mastered the art of navigating the physical world's data streams: libraries, county records, and the humble, comprehensive phone book.

He ran a finger down the columns under 'M'. Morley, David. Morley, Dennis R. Morley, Douglas. He stopped. Dennis R. The initial matched the sparse information he had. An address on a quiet, tree-lined street in the suburbs. And a phone number. A home phone number.

He wrote it down in his notebook, the script precise and neat.

Next, 'C'. Calloway, William P. A younger man, living in a newer development on the other side of town. Another phone number. Arthur wrote it down directly below Morley's.

He looked at the two entries, side-by-side. These were the architects, the men who considered the matter closed. They had used the anonymous, impersonal machinery of the state as a shield. From the comfort of their homes, they had decreed that hundreds of people would waste a collective lifetime sitting in traffic, that his own carefully constructed schedule of care for Elena would be thrown into chaos. They had routed the consequences of their incompetence onto the public.

Arthur Vance, systems engineer, decided it was time for a rerouting.

He closed the phone book and walked out of his study, through the quiet house, and into the garage. He flipped on the overhead fluorescent lights, which flickered to life, bathing the space in a sterile, white glow.

This was his workshop. His sanctuary. For decades, it had been a place of pristine order, a laboratory for creating perfection on a small scale. On a workbench to the left, every tool hung on a pegboard in its designated silhouette. Jars of screws and bolts were neatly labeled. In the corner, protected by a clear plastic dust cover, sat his masterpiece: the scale model of the Port of Tacoma's primary shipping terminal, a project that had won him a company-wide award for logistical design. It was a monument to efficiency, a tiny, perfect world where every piece moved in harmony.

But today, he was not building a model of a perfect system. He was building a tool of chaos.

He moved to the back wall, where a single, massive sheet of four-by-eight-foot plywood leaned against the studs. He’d bought it for a shelving project he’d never started. It was heavy and unwieldy. He grunted with effort as he dragged it to the center of the garage floor, the rough surface scraping against the smooth concrete. The sound was an ugly intrusion into the workshop's customary peace.

From a cabinet, he pulled out a can of flat white primer, a roller, and a tray. The rhythmic, repetitive motion of painting the board was meditative. Back and forth, he laid down a smooth, opaque foundation. It was a blank slate. A declaration waiting to be written.

While the primer dried, he sat on a stool with his notebook, sketching the layout. He measured the dimensions with a tape measure, calculating the optimal letter height and spacing for maximum readability from a moving vehicle. The font would be a simple, bold, sans-serif block style. No flourishes. No artistry. This was not an appeal to emotion. It was a transmission of pure, weaponized information.

An hour later, he returned with a can of black enamel paint and a roll of masking tape. With the same precision he had once used to draft blueprints for complex container cranes, he taped out the letters. Each line was perfectly straight, each corner a perfect right angle.

Then, he began to paint.

The words appeared on the white background, stark and uncompromising.

TRAFFIC JAM ON SUNSET HWY?

The question was a hook, designed to snag the attention of every frustrated driver.

YOUR 20 MINUTE DELAY IS BY DESIGN.

The accusation, turning vague anger into focused injustice.

CALL THE ENGINEERS RESPONSIBLE & ASK THEM WHY.

The call to action, simple and direct.

And then, at the bottom, the payload. The two names and the two phone numbers he had plucked from the dusty pages of the phone book, rendered in three-inch-high letters of stark black paint.

DENNIS MORLEY: (503) 555-1284 BILL CALLOWAY: (503) 555-7319

He peeled away the tape to reveal the crisp, perfect letters. He stood back, his arms crossed, and surveyed his work. The sign was brutal. It was crude. It was a four-by-eight-foot violation of the unwritten social contract that kept the architects of public misery safe in their private lives. It was the most logical solution to an illogical problem.

He heard the soft whir of Elena’s electric wheelchair behind him. She had wheeled herself to the garage doorway, her expression curious. She looked from the sign back to her husband's resolute face.

"So much for a strongly worded letter," she said, a slow, appreciative smile spreading across her face.

"The matter is closed, my love," Arthur said, his voice flat. "Mr. Morley's junior man informed me. They will not listen to me."

Elena's gaze fell upon the two names and phone numbers at the bottom of the sign. Her smile didn't falter. It widened. She understood completely. This wasn't a petty act of revenge. It was a strategic masterstroke. It was the culmination of his philosophy: if a system's operators refuse to acknowledge the system's failure, you must bypass the system and engage the operators directly.

"You tried to talk to the machine, Art," she said softly, her eyes shining with the fierce pride he loved so much. "Now you have to talk to the men who hide behind it. Or rather," she amended, looking at the sign, "you're going to let everyone else do the talking for you."

She gave a small, decisive nod. It was all the blessing he needed.

Arthur looked back at his creation. The plywood declaration leaned against the wall of his workshop, a stark promise of the battle to come. He had failed to fix the system from within. So now, he would route the consequences of its failure directly to the front doors of the men responsible. He would turn the public's simmering, impotent rage into a tidal wave of personal accountability, and he would aim it right at their dinner tables.