Hurry up and wait. Again. At least I get paid for this. A couple hundred dollars to sit in a comfortable room and play Sudoku for a while? Sure! A few others were in the room with me. There were enough seats to hold at least thirty in a seminar seating layout. None of us talked to each other as were our instructions. Well, one tried, and before he could even finish leaning forward to whisper, an attendant came in and kicked him out.
No Internet. No cellphone signal. No contact with the outside world. We were standby voters for some convention. I knew only that the fact we knew nothing about what was being voted on made us ideal standby voters. That, and we weren’t nosy.
I could hear rushes of activity in the hall without the door. They were cushioned by long periods of silence. The initial period of time we were contracted for ended. The attendant came and gave us our pay in small unmarked bills. I raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. As we began to leave, myself and two others, were pulled to the side. After everyone left, the attendant offered us another two hundred dollars to stay a few more hours. “I don’t know how long you’ll remain on standby. Could be over before I finish asking you. Could be late into the night. If you stay past two hours, for every hour you remain, you’ll be given another hundred dollars.”
I’m sure what is going on is perfectly legitimate and legal under current law. Which bothered me intensely. There are a lot of perfectly legitimate and legal activities that are just wrong. But my wallet conspired with my curiosity and won me over. I chose to stay. One of the other two asked also stayed. The third regarded us with contempt, took the cash already earned, and left quickly.
I sat back down and got comfortable in the brown and red upholstered chairs. The other person, a white young adult, sat far away from me. Two hours later, the attendant returned with our promised two hundred dollars in small unmarked bills, and a third hundred in advance if we would remain another hour. Just before the third hour mark, the attendant came back with an executive hot on her heels.
“This is it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Shit. Okay.” The late middle aged white gentleman in the black suit looked us both over. His face was neutral, almost passive. His eyes angered me, for he was looking us over the same way I look over meat at the butcher’s. Who is better hidden in the stew, and who can be served on good china? But I kept my emotions from my face and my eyes.
The other person in the room was legally an adult, but still had the impatience of immaturity. The executive’s eye twitched barely so subtly at him. I saw the movement and knew I had been chosen, not because I was the better, but because the executive had no other choice.
“Miss.” He addressed me so softly, as if speaking to a child. He held out a hand with perfectly manicured nails. The cufflinks on his wrist were large diamonds, large enough to show he has wealth, but not so large that they are gaudy. He wore two rings. His wedding ring was plain with an engraving circumscribing it. The second ring could be dismissed as a fashion statement, but I recognized the placements of the stones as the mark of a society. Occult or financial, I did not know. He smelled of dust and musk, as if he was trying to hide his scent by covering it with another. “Would you come with me, please.” It was not pleasant wording, it was not a request, it was a command. As far as he was concerned, I had no say in the matter.
The teen behind me sighed in disappointment. I kept my neutral face as I put my stuff away and stood, but I did not take his hand. I smiled sweetly instead. His eye twitched again. I felt something like blinders fall from my face even though there was nothing there. “Let’s go.” I spoke to him with the same tone he spoke to me. A ripple of emotion flashed across his brow. He tightened his lips, nodded, and opened the door for me.
“What of the remaining standby, Sir?” In the light coming from the hall, I saw the attendant clearly. Her face was featureless. Her body had a plastic sheen to the skin and the joints were boxy. An automaton, I thought to myself. But as she moved I could feel the echoes of blood and bones. Fuck. A Stepford. I became fully lucid but did not reveal my concerns.
“Keep him.”
“Yes, Sir.”
I was led down the hall into a large convention. The floor was in chaos. Well dressed executives and businessmen were shouting at each other. There was a screen overlooking the floor. A live transmission of an awards show was being broadcast. Many were looking at the screen and cursing profusely.
“Never you mind what is there, Voter. I apologize if any of the scenes are distressing.” He spoke with a veneer of concern. When I did not react, he furrowed his brow. We went past the convention to a side room. A series of voting machines were sitting on the table. Most of them had been spent and were locked down. Three were sitting waiting to be used.
Several executives were in here as well. They frowned when I walked in. Immediately they turned to a knot of bodies in the corner and began hurling expletives on the two men there. My curiosity turned my head before I could restrain myself. Two young male executives had been forcibly stripped naked. One was being held down over an upturned chair so that his head was on the floor and his butt was available to all. The second was in the process of anally entering the first. It was an action neither man wanted to do. The first was screaming and the second was crying. The gathered executives were whipping the second man across his back. The second man saw me and mouthed, “Run”.
“Pay them no mind, Voter. However, you can thank them for the financial gains you have received tonight. They did not do their job, and as a result, our business was fucked. Heh. Forgive the vulgarity, but they must learn their place. If this is distressing to you…”
“What am I voting on, and what are my options?” The executive looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. He smiled a strange little smile, as if I had finally done something pleasing to him. When I did not react to that smile, it turned at the corners. I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he was expecting from me, but I was sure that I wasn’t giving him what he wanted.
He presented me one of the available machines, and a folder of candidates and positions. I started to open the folder to read the dossiers, but he held it closed. “You don’t have to read this. In fact, you should even have it in your possession. The machine requires it to be in proximity for it to work however.” I looked at the machine and saw entries were already filled in for me. “You’re a smart girl. You already know what’s going on here, and why you are here.”
“I do. However, shall we play the game out properly?” His forced smile finally fell, and his facial expression screamed his disgust at having to even look upon me. “It’s a risk. I know. Having to choose between someone… proper… and someone that won’t accept their station in life. The kid’s naivete, however, is a greater risk than anything my unclean blood could know. You need me to give your act the public legitimacy you require.”
His eye twitch returned with vigor. Many of the executives in the room turned their attention from the brutal punishment of the errant men and focused on me and the executive that brought me here. He calmed himself, and spoke slowly. He ignored what I had said and spoke to me again as to a child.
“All we need you to do, is pull the lever of the machine. Everything else has been decided for you. The votes are in place. We just need your DNA on that lever so the system will see that you voted and will count your vote. Now, be a good girl and pull that lever.”
I turned and faced the brutalized men. “Do I? Or don’t I?” They whimpered. “Do I? Or don’t I?”, I asked again. “Do I justify your rape? Or do I increase it?”
The sudden silence choked the room. The second man trembled in fear. He was beyond speech. The first man was unable to view my face, but he heard my voice. “Do it.” I could barely hear him, his voice was almost destroyed from screaming. “Do it, because it will leave a trail. Chink the dam. Do it.” A highly polished genuine leather shoe crushed the first man’s face. The brutality increased, to such extent that I will not record it here.
But I will not forget it.
And I will not forget I did nothing to stop it.
I grabbed the lever and noted a thousand little needles pricked into the palm of my hand. Even if I don’t pull the lever after all, it will always be recorded that I was here. I pulled the lever. The machine whirred and flashed its lights. The sound silenced the room once more except for the sobbing men. A bright light glowed green on the device. “Your vote has been accepted.”, came from the machine in a smooth human female voice. A voice that never existed outside of algorithms.
The commotion in the main hall stopped, all was silent, and then cheers erupted from the floor. My vote was the last that was required. The executives gained what they wanted.
Removing my hand from the lever was not easy. I felt like I had gripped a cactus. When I was finally able to pull my hand away from the needled surface my hand was bloody. Blood dripped onto the machine and the dossiers. Blood dripped on the table. The executives were very careful to avoid having any of my blood dripping on them. A plastic bag was wrapped around the hand and taped with duct tape, sealing it and making it completely useless.
“I’ll see you out, lest you stumble across things you are not meant to see. Thank you for your support. Spend your money well.” He was quick to lead me away.
“Give it back to you, you mean. And I eventually will. I know who you are. I know those in there. I know there was nothing I could have done for those two men, or at least that’s the lie I’m telling myself so I don’t explode in here. I know there are powers over me, and that there is jacque shitte democratic about the country and culture I live in. I have lost my innocence over that a long time ago.”
“Now, that’s not what we teach you in school, is it.” His smirk returned.
“Look at the pronoun you used. ‘We’. You’re not even trying to hide it anymore. You’re going to pat yourself on the back when you return, and use my minority status to prove to your detractors that you include minorities in all levels of your organization. My blood is one stain on a dam that dwarfs the Three Gorges. By the time you sleep with your scheduled mistress tonight, you will be laughing at my inability to move forward in life. By the time she finishes sucking you off, you will forget all about today.”
There was now one door left between me and the outside world. I paused before passing through it. “Your organization is crumbling, however. If history proves right, you’ll be replaced by another organization just as evil and brutal as you. But it won’t be you. The end comes to all things, and your tower is starting to shake. ‘Chink the dam’, he said. There are holes large enough for peoples to sneak through. And they are.”
He grabbed me from the door and slammed me into the wall. Shoving his body against mine, he mimed a sexual act. “I can take you. Right here. Right now. And there is nothing you can do about it. Nothing anyone can do about it. No one cares. You are all my property, and I can do what I god damn well please to you. And no one will care.” He patted my purse. “After all, a well paid whore does everything she’s bought for. Right? Don’t forget to vote this upcoming election. Every vote counts, after all.”
He backed away from me and started laughing. Barely holding back tears and feeling very ashamed for my complacency and impotence, I pushed away from the wall and left the building and the dream.