Netwrck
The Quota Line
The state mark is hers. So are the eleven cases attached to it.
- ~180 min
- 12613 words
- 61 scenes
- 14 branch points
- 5 endings
- Bellwether, Harrow County, five days in July 2027
37 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
Cover art · licensed music, credited in the build · listing metadata: listing.json · counts: authored
About
At Morrow Pork, eleven hundred hogs pass the inspection rail every hour. Dr. Elena Ortiz has 3.27 seconds per carcass, the state seal in her pocket, and eleven people sick two hundred miles away with a shipping code from her plant in their refrigerators. Lena is the Veterinary Officer in Charge at the only slaughter plant in Harrow County. She can retain a carcass, reduce the line, write a non-compliance record or withhold inspection and stop production. Morrow employs 612 people in a town of 4,083 and loses $186,000 for every slaughter shift that does not run. Plant manager Hal Mercer bought every improvement Lena requested except the second inspection rail that would erase most of the cut floor. Union steward Owen Beck is twenty-eight and one failed shoulder away from never earning plant wages again. The outbreak trail points to lot 7K-441: 1,842,600 pounds killed on a Sunday when Morrow's scanner failed for forty-seven minutes. The plant's lawful record makes the whole shift one lot. Nia Bell, Morrow's own quality inspector and Lena's only close friend, kept a private notebook that may narrow the failure to twelve minutes. It also contains badge assignments for a workforce built on employer-tied temporary permits and names that do not always match the people who answer to them. The Quota Line is an adult procedural drama about food safety, industrial work and the bodies hidden inside lawful decisions. Choices alter contamination risk, plant solvency, agency standing, worker exposure, crew trust and an intimacy that cannot be separated from evidence. Five endings turn on the difference between closing a plant and recalling its product, and on the legal thing Morrow can do to survive.
Content notice11 topics · tap to review
- industrial animal slaughter and carcass inspection
- foodborne illness and hospitalisation
- repetitive-strain injury and disability
- worker compensation
- employer-tied visas and immigration enforcement
- identity-document scrutiny
- mass layoff and plant closure
- poverty and institutional pressure
- alcohol use
- sexual content implied, cuts away
- bigotry shown through behaviour and consequence; no slurs written out
Cast
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Dr. Elena "Lena" Ortiz
protagonist; state Veterinary Officer in Charge at Morrow Pork
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Nia Bell
Morrow quality-systems inspector; Lena's closest friend and possible lover
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Hal Mercer
plant manager; responsible for yield, downtime and 612 jobs
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Mila Vukic
first-shift line supervisor; keeps the temporary-permit crew together
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Owen Beck
union steward, relief knife and Lena's landlord; shoulder failing at twenty-eight
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Daniel Cho
State Meat Safety Directorate district supervisor
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Dr. Priyanka "Pia" Shah
Corbin state epidemiologist tracing the eleven-case cluster