"Someone said the lines had aged and were sparking. We're here to inspect them."
Three electricians wearing Eastern Power Grid uniforms were about to enter the Capitol Building when the guards stopped them to check their credentials.
Unlike Community Service Companies, basically every Community Service Company had its own plumbers, electricians, and other tradesmen to provide services to residents within the community at any time.
But the Capitol Building, along with certain government agencies, found it difficult to keep such tradesmen and positions on staff, because—the taxpayers would object! Taxpayers were always a wondrous species, especially federal taxpayers.
The Constitution granted them considerable rights on the surface, and fueled by their sense of ownership, they were always causing trouble for the various departments of the Federal Government.
For example, Federal Government departments shouldn't establish too many unnecessary positions, since that could involve wasting taxpayers' money.
Government agencies purchased services from power companies, and those services naturally included free electricians. If they established separate electrician positions as well, wouldn't that be wasting taxpayers' money?
That reasoning couldn't be called entirely wrong, after all. Electricians didn't spend every day working from morning to night. Most of the time, they were still idle.
During this period, the probability of problems occurring in the federal electrical circuits wasn't high. For one thing, there were few high-power appliances, and for another, the circuits weren't very complex.
Aside from lighting, fax machines, and the like, there weren't many large appliances.
Besides, the power company had a station nearby. The Capitol Building had once employed electricians, but it no longer did.
After comparing the photographs on their credentials several times, the guards chose to let them through.
If not for the many people recently demonstrating outside the Capitol, he wouldn't even have checked their credentials. It was