“Look, I’m just saying what everyone is thinking, and don’t deny it, everyone is thinking it. We all know it’s true.” A quarter-scale hologram of Konrad Hajek stood on the kitchen table and stopped for a moment of lips-puckered self-importance. Marc stood in the tiny white kitchen and looked past the outraged holo across the tiny white top-floor flat. A pale pre-dawn glow was seeping in through sloping windows and beginning to warm the cold gloom of almost six AM, the light slowly revealing Audrey’s sleeping form, lingering on her tussled platinum hair which began to glow softly in the pale light, scattering magenta, cyan, lime green and lemon yellow across the white pillowcase—chip generated colours in a white-on-white-by-chip-preference flat, their world meticuoulsly and thoroughly designed in augmented reality by Audrey, hacker artist and a master manipulator of the virtual world.
“CombatZones like Redcent,” Hajek’s holo ranted as Marc reached for the coffee tin, “are cesspools—rapists, murderers, foreigners, muslims, bad people…bad people, all animals. We have to protect our families” Hajek gestured in attempted earnest and Marc lit the burner, “and it’s not like every time one of them commits a horrible crime, yes, they commit horrible crimes—we all know they do. Horrible crimes, every day. They’re animals! You don’t read about it in the fake media, do you? But I know what’s going on, I always know, and I’m going to tell you. What’s going on is that we’re getting screwed, and I’m tired of getting screwed…and I’m sure you’re tired of getting screwed. It’s time for all of us to stand up for ourselves. Crybaby Moronka says that we’re not doing enough for them. Not doing enough for them? Is she on the rag? What about us? I’ve had enough of this socialist mamby pamby bull. You’ve had enough. Let’s build walls around all the combatZones! Wall them off! They’re already offGrid. Dangerous, crime-ridden, full of drugs. Get this, I’m sure you know this, they’re run by gangs, Razr4Kids, ever hear of them? Rapists, murderers, even the cops and CivDef are afraid to go in!” Hajek stuck his chin out and the coffee began gurgling, “that’s why they’ve been offLined. That’s why their rights were taken away from them! Wall them off! Read my lips: they have no rights…”
Marc turned the burner off, muted the holoCast and walked over to the bed. “It is six AM, chérie. You asked me to wake you up.” He kissed Audrey with his stubbly haven’t-shaved-in-three-days-because-I’m-French face.
“What? What did you say? Six? Oh god, no,” Audrey opened her eyes, “...you have your jacket on, you’re leaving already?”
“Oui, I promised Ahnka I’d be in as soon as her headquarters opened. I’m already late. There is the café for you in the pot.”
“Mmmm…this isn’t fair...” Audrey pulled Marc down and held him, feeling his sandpaper face and his soft, rumpled, faded suede jacket on her naked breasts.
He kissed her sleepy breath. “What time does your hackithon start?”
“As soon as the polls open.”
“Which is now.”
“I know,” Audrey said groggily, “I should get dressed.” Audrey swung her legs out of the bed and tried to clear her head. Marc walked over to the stove and poured her esspresso.
“Voilà, you need this.” He handed Audrey the cup and sat down next to her. “So where are you going for this hackithon? Maybe we call for a car?”
“No, I’m not going anywhere. It’s in SIM.”
“Ah, simulated reality, bien sûr…”
“Yeah, defend the vote,” Audrey took a sip of her espresso (French roast, of course), “from the comfort of your home.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of Defend the Vote. Is it an NGO agency?”
“Well, not really, more like just volunteers.” Audrey never brought up her affiliation with the artHacker collective BLANK.
“A non-profit?”
“Yeah, I suppose, since we’re all doing it for free…” Audrey downed the rest of her espresso and stood up. “It’s not that organized, Marc,” she reached for her robe, “the name doesn’t mean anything…we’re just a bunch of Switch that decided to monitor the election,” she wrapped the robe around her and tied it, “you know, to make sure no one is hacking in extra votes…or subtracting them, I suppose.” Marc's eyes followed Audrey as she walked to the stove. “Hajek has scads of money,” she said as she poured herself another cup from the esspresso pot, “enough to buy himself actual firepower.”
“Actual firepower?” Marc gestured with his hands, “like…?”
“Oh, you know, like, you know, black hackers.”
“BlackHack3rs?” Marc furrowed his brow. “They are Russian, no? They work for the mob, the Organitskaya.”
“Yeah,” Audrey shrugged, “supposedly.”
“So Hajeck's in the pocket of the Organitskaya?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Audrey took a sip from her cup.
“Merde!” Marc got up from the bed and walked towards her. “These people are dangerous. You leave one little piece of dust in your trace,” he gestured vigorously with his hand, “and they will find you.”
“Relax...I don’t leave dust.”
“But Audrey, do you know what the Organitskaya do to people who cross them?” Marc’s eyes flashed emphatically.
“Don’t be so melodramatic. BlackHack3rs may be cyberspiders,” Audrey’s eyes sparkled a smile, “but I’m liquidEcho.”
Marc placed his hands on Audrey’s waist, feeling the curve of her hips and the silk of her robe cool to his touch. “Audrey, I love you. I know you are the best, but if anything happens to you, then they should cut open my chest, chain me to the mountainside, and let the vultures eat my heart.”
“That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“Sweet? Audrey…”
“Oh, Marc. I love you, too! But, please, don't worry. This is only a parliamentary by-election, and we don’t even know if the Organitskaya is involved. For all I know Hajek’s hackers, if he hired any, are just a bunch of scriptKiddies…” Audrey kissed him. “Ça va?”
“Really?” Marc looked at her suspiciously.
“Ye of little faith.” Audrey grabbed Marc by the elegantly frayed linen scarf that hung loosely about his neck and pulled him into a deep frenchKiss.
* * *
For a little edge Audrey popped a TripTab and Rasanz (Swiss uppers, the best), closed her eyes, her chip flared electric blue, and Real dissolved into SIM. She entered an archaic URL, typed it in the old-fashioned way, and a maze of gloomy, opaque corridors materialized. She metamorphosed into her avatar, TinkerBell, touched the grey corridor wall in front of her, an iridescent patch appeared, the quantum state of her entangled particle’s link was authenticated, and her bioData was scanned and confirmed. Like a glittering ghost, TinkerBell slipped through the state of the art fireWall, and into featureless, colourless cyberSpace, an empty three-dimensional Cartesian matrix, an abstract backdrop waiting for scenery software to be initialized, but the site’s SIM code hadn’t been updated in well over a decade, and current net protocols could no longer read the ancient background generating plugIns. It was barren, obsolete, frozen in time, forgotten, and therefore unlikely to be noticed by stalking spider algorithms or random sniffBots. Because the gravity protocol was a global default in SIM, Tinkerbell stood solidly on an invisible groundPlane facing a group of arms crossed, eyes rolling, foot-tapping cartoon avatars. BLANK did fads, and Looney Tunes was the latest. But Audrey was always Tinkerbell.
“TinkerBell, you’re late,” Bugs Bunny complained in his wise-guy voice.
TinkerBell shrugged her slender, bare shoulders, releasing a little cloud of vexed pixie dust. What was Bug’s problem? She might be late, but she wasn’t that late.
“But now that we are all here,” Bugs bit his carrot and turned to Yosemite Sam, “Sam will explain things.”
“The darned EU election laws require the encryption of voting. It’s called VoteX and this here’s what it looks like,” Yosemite Sam swept his hand and a spectral barrier appeared enveloping an array of fluctuating spreadsheets of real-time vote tallies. “It’s crappy useless encryption,” he stuck his hand through the barrier, “written by a bunch of greenhorn EU eyeT bureaucrats. So, to keep the election from being hacked and hijacked, Porky Pig and I decided to streamCypher encrypt every vote right away, as soon as it’s cast.”
* * *
“…truth to power: this is an extraction economy rigged for the benefit of the few.” At six thirty AM Marc walked into the large generic commercial space with a generic commercial vinyl tile floor and generic commercial lighting, unflattering and harsh. Half-eaten Danish pastries and cups of cold Americano were strewn across cheap folding tables, but at six-thirty AM Ahnka Stemberg headquarters were already lively and bustling with noise and activity, all to the sounds of her voice on the PA, last night’s speech, the last of the campaign. “Over 40% of our society, the fortyPercenters, have been completely disenfranchised. They live in neighbourhoods we call combatZones, neighbourhoods with an underground economy based on fold, meaning cash, which we all know has been illegal for over twenty years. So what do we do? Hajek says let’s build walls around them. For a moment let’s take him seriously—although I’m not sure why we should take a serial liar seriously, but let’s say we do. The thing is, every time the economy hiccups, things get worse. After the next crash, the fortyPercenters will be the fiftyPercenters, then after the next one, sixtyPercenters—where does it end? At seventy? Eighty? Ninety percenters? This is not sustainable. Konrad Hayek tries to sell us his great, beautiful, tremendous future—but, truth to power, we all know it’s snake oil, it’s only great and beautiful if you’re a onePercenter. For the rest of us it’s a bleak dystopia. But we can choose a brighter future, a future with an economy that would benefit everyone. The answers have been staring us in the face: a universal income and Lanerian economics …”
* * *
“Hey, there’s somethin’ funny going on here,” Bug Bunny’s big ears stood straight up.
“Funny?” TinkerBell flapped her gossamer fairy wings and flew over to take a look, leaving a pixie dust trail in her wake.
“As in ha-ha f-f-funny?” Porky Pig asked.
“No doc, as in fishy funny. I think they’re voting dead people.”
“Dead people?” Yosemite Sam growled and looked skeptical. “As in plumb kicked the bucket dead?”
“Yeah, doc,” Bugs munched on his carrot, “as in pushin’ up daisies dead, thousands of dem dead voters…see? And here’s their death certificates.”
“They’ve got to be kidding!” Yosemite Sam glared from under his huge red eyebrows, “it’s the oldest doggone trick in the book!”
“M-m-maybe you should f-f-flag the list and p-p-post it on all the social p-p-pages, and also s-s-send it to the Election C-c-commission,” Porky Pig stuttered his suggestion, “and r-r-re-attach the d-d-death certificates they’ve s-s-stripped f-f-from the citizen infoPackets.”
* * *
“Marc!” Joseph shouted over the din at the Ahnka Stemberg election headquarters. Marc stood next to the microwave oven, one arm across his chest propping-up his other arm, which in turn propped-up his chin as he broodingly listened to Ahnka’s newscast while he nuked the cold watery remains of a pot of coffee.
“Oui?” Marc looked up from his contemplations. “Oh, hello Josef.”
“Marc, can we talk?”
“Certainement…”
“In my office.”
Intrigued, Marc picked up his coffee and followed Josef into his campaign manager’s office. Josef closed the door. “Marc, I was just talking to Sara, she’s one of the young volunteers here…the one wearing a pink skirt.”
“Oui, I have noticed her…”
“Yes, of course, she’s very pretty, and I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but it seems the feeling is mutual, and that’s the point, in a way. You see, in fact, all the young gay and female volunteers around here think you’re really hot, and that’s given me an idea.”
“An idea?”
“Yes. With your permission, I’d like to take a detailed scan of you, to fashion a personalized roboCall hologram.”
“Moi?”
“Yes. Exactly. You. That way you can make calls, thousands of calls at once…to gay and female voters…”
* * *
“Rootin’ tootin’ tarnations!” Yosemite Sam shouted, “Hajek’s just gained himself a two point lead...”
“What?”
“...and our all our fancy-pants firewalls and hoity-toity encryptions are plum useless!” Yosemite Sam threw his hat on the invisible groundPlane and began stomping on it. “The doggone varmints did hack those rust-bucket machines, but before the blasted election! They added just enough votes to squeak through without anybody gettin’ the wiser!”
“So the dead people voting was just a diversion,” Tinkerbell scowled in a cloud of angry pixie dust.
“We’ve b-b-been outsmarted,” Porky Pig stuttered, “and we’ve only g-g-got one hour until the p-p-polls close.”
“Nyaa, don’t get yer panties in a twist, doc…” Bugs was scanning the latest voter data, “I got an idea. You know dem youth voters that flooded the eXitTrip fundraiser? Well, they ain’t voted…not yet, anyway,” he added slyly, “whaddya say we help them out a little...”
“Saay, I like the idea, varmint,” Yosemite Sam stopped stomping and wiped his brow, “but can we make up a two point lead without gittin’ caught with our hands in the cookie jar? It’s a lot of darned votes!”
“You got any other ideas, doc?”
* * *
“It’s nine O’clock!” Josef called out. “The polls are closed! The vote is too close to call at the moment. You made a heroic effort and I know we’re all exhausted, but if you can manage it, everyone is invited to join the campaign party at the Marriot Hotel Ballroom.”
* * *
“You’ve b--b-been working on hacking t-t-that V-v-voteX for almost an hour!” Porky Pig was getting nervous. “You s-s-said that would only t-t-take half an hour. It c-c-can’t be that hard.”
“It isn’t,” TinkerBell answered, “unless you want to leave no dust, as in zero. When I’m done here, nobody will ever know liquidEcho was here, but the self correcting tunneling algorithms in the ghosting frackWare take time to arrange themselves into the proper fractal.”
“Well that’s all nice and fine, darlin’,” Yosemite Sam shouted, “but wees runnin’ outta time here, and if no dust means no votes, I say dang the dust!”
“Be quiet, I need to concentrate,” TinkerBell crossed her arms, her pointy pixie face scowling.
“Tarnations, TinkerBell!” Yosemite Sam hollered, “there’s just two doggone minutes left!”
“Yes, I know. Is the data clean?” TinkerBell asked.
“Whaddya mean, is it clean! Just load the suckers in!”
“If it’s not perfectly clean—”
“Y-y-yes, the d-d-data is clean,” Porky stammered annoyed, “I f-f-finished laundering it t-t-ten minutes ago.”
“Okay, one last thing. This will only take a few seconds…I just have to inject the bioRoutine seeds.”
“What? We only have forty-five seconds!”
“There! Now the data...”
“Thirty seconds!”
“It’s loading...”
“Ten seconds…”
“There! Done!” Tinkerbell smiled in a cloud of happy pixie dust.
“Dang it, TinkerBell, five seconds to spare! You sure you got all of it in?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
* * *
Ten o’clock. Ahnka’s headquarters were dark and deserted and the action had shifted to the Marriot ballroom. Huge smiling holo headshots of Ahnka Stemberg floated like balloons above the crowd, mixing with holoBanners flashing her official ‘Truth to Power’ slogan. Melody London, monster megastar, had opened the show alone, wearing a black RainSong acoustic guitar and little black dress, her performance vulnerable and exquisite. Now (slammin hot up and coming) The eXitTrip held the stage, rocking out, no SIM effects, the holo and light show kept to a minimum.
“Okay everybody,” Dano, lead guitar, stepped up to the microphone after the first number, “we have a very special show tonight for Ahnka, our next member of Parliament. I took a bullet for her, so she better win, and to that end, to help us rake in more votes, please welcome back Melody London!”
The ballroom erupted in a deafening mindfreak roar as Melody walked on to the stage, hugged Dano, and plugged in a black Les Paul Custom. Zora tried not to look too put off, JP stayed kool behind his shades, and Seth couldn’t help but stare at Melody’s legs. But Max Drummer was there. He hit the count, and suddenly it was all there. It was as if Melody had always been in The eXitTrip. She clearly knew the tune. She backed Zora with style, played to the song, and never got in the way. When Dano’s solo came around he invited Melody to be his foil. It was Strat vs. Les Paul, but not the standard battle of dueling guitars firing off blindingly fast meaningless riffs with no mojo. This was real, sultry notes coiling around each other, an extended electric voodoo dance that took you on a trip and then finally exploded in an all-out slamJam orgasm. Time stopped. The song ended.
Josef appeared on the stage and held up his hand. The spell broke, everyone fell silent. This was it. THE announcement.
“As you know, it’s been a very tight race, and, up to an hour ago, most news networks had Hajek ahead.”
Booing filled the ballroom.
“But…but,” Josef held up his hand again, “all the networks have now declared Ahnka Stemberg the winner!” The crowd exploded. “All the networks except for Foxz News, of course! And...and...” Josef waited for the pandemonium to subside, “...as of one minute ago, all the votes were tallied and Ahnka Stemberg was declared the official winner by twelve hundred and twenty one votes! Konrad Hajeck is about to make his concession speech…”
A huge holo lit up one end of the ballroom and Hajek appeared.
“The polls closed an hour and a half ago and the people have supposedly spoken…I say supposedly because even though Crybaby Moronka has just been officially declared the winner…”
The ballroom broke into an ecstatic uproar.
“…that’s fake news. Trust me, it’s fake news. Nobody but a loser would vote for that vile woman. I want all my supporters to know I will not be conceding defeat, not until there’s been a recount and all possibilities of fraud, there is fraud, believe me, there is, and we’re going to look into it. Tomorrow morning I will…” As the huge holo of Konrad Hajek bitterBitched, it slowly transformed into a giant black duck, and as his big orange duck-bill grew, Hajek’s speech morphed into Daffy Duck’s sputtering, spitting, vitriolic quack. “…file a complaint with the Elections Commission to have all possibilities of fraud officially investigated,” his duckbill sprayed a shower of holo spittle into the ballroom, “for now, it’s goodnight…but…”
The sound system suddenly filled the ballroom with the Looney Tunes theme, steamrollering over Daffy Duck’s sputtering words, and a holo of Bugs Bunny with a big stick emerged.
“Ain’t I a stinker!” Bugs declared as he pounded Daffy into the ground to the sound of the Merrie Melodies theme, a shrinking circle enveloped them, disappeared, replaced by ‘That’s All Folks!’. The lettering lingered in the air for a moment, and then it too disappeared.
The shock in the ballroom lasted a couple of seconds, and then the place erupted in riotous laughter. Once again Josef held up his hand for silence. “I think Hajek’s just been BLANKpranked.”
Wild cheering.
“Please…please…let’s now have a big hand for your next MP, Ahnka Stemberg!!”
* * *
Marc woke and Audrey snuggled up to him as he flipped on the holoVid of the post election analysis. It played as they half-watched drifting in and out of much needed sleep.
“…there were unsubstantiated rumours all over social media of dead people voting for Hajek, and there was literally a last minute flurry of young people voting for Stemberg, but the data indicates that the real swing demographic lay with women…”
Audrey secretly felt the relief, and she turned to Marc. “Marc,” she said sleepily, “I never asked you what your assignment was at Ahnka’s phone bank?”
“Josef wanted me to help with the female and gay vote.”
“Female and gay?” Audrey eyed Marc suspiciously, “how?”