I'll start this one, anyone can add on...
The verser woke from his transition to dark, empty streets through which a winter blast howled, only letting up to assault from another direction. Wandering the streets between the great towers, he came to one spot of light and warmth. Entering he found it was a polling place.
He had arrived in some form of democracy or perhaps a republic.
They tried to get him to vote, but he desisted saying he knew nothing of the men. That did not bother them. Being vague, he hinted he was not from the area. Still, nothing deterred, they pressed him.
"Look, I'm from the Beyond, okay, pal." He snapped.
"Not a big deal. Here in the Windy City, even the dead vote."
With that the front doors opened, and the verser felt the hair on his neck rise even before he turned. Looking, he saw a line of zombies with bright No. 2 pencils freshly sharpenned queing up in the polling area. Plops of flesh falling off onto the linoleum flooring chased him outside where he saw the line of undead shamblers extended around the building.
Following it, he took himself to the back, across an intersection, and up another street to a graveyard. In front of the graveyard, he saw a man with a thick book and flashlight to illumine the book, clad in a heavy trenchcoat against the wind.
He was calling out names the verser realized as he got closer.
After each name, he spoke.
"You were a patron of the Machine in life, and now, in death, you still must pay your due. For one night, each year, your vote belongs to the Machine. Rise Undead-American, Rise!" The command roared out, and one more zombie was added to the file trudging to the polling place.
The verser got to the sorceror, and jerked the book from his hand and summoned his own magic. Fire burst through the book, and suddenly the zombies turned about and began making their way back to their graves with a sense of relief in their postures.
"Do you know what you've done?"
"I've freed the dead from your chains, sorceror." The verser spat.
"You've ensured the other side wins."
"So...that's not bad."
"They're demons and devils."
"Everyone thinks his enemies in politics are kinda evil, or misguided."
"No, these guys are literally Incarnate Demons."
But the verser saw the look in the dark sorceror's eyes. Many who deal with such magics are not that sound mentally to begin with, and a couple decades of listening to the shadowy words of the dead has cracked better brains than this mans.
"Perhaps. Or Perhaps you're just a dark sorceror who's crazy."
"Do you think I like working for a Minor Evil Deity like the Machine that runs politics in the Windy City? I don't, but you gotta do what you gotta do. And the Machine is not as bad as the other guys."
"Yeah, maybe I'm an idealist, but I'm looking for someone who is actually good to vote for. And in the meantime, the dead can rest, this business of voting is for the Republic of the Living."
"I heard you, friend," says the sadly-dressed unshaven man who at this moment picked himself up from his unseen position on the sidewalk. "But why would you vote for a good man? After all, if a man ain't ruin't before he gets inter office, he's ruin't when he gets out, and there ain' no sense ruinin' a good man."
"So, friend, will you vote for The Machine?"
"Naw, I never did care for The Machine."
"What if I gave you a hundred dollars?"
"Couldn't take it in good conscience."
The verser stares at him. "You look like you could use the money," he says. "The ballots are secret; why don't you just take the money and go vote for someone else? He would never know."
"Nope," he answers, "If I'm gonna sell my vote, the buyer's gonna get his deal. I wouldn't be dishonest about such a thing."
"Yes," the sorcerer says. "That's probably why you're in your present situation as it is. You've got to work with the system if you expect to get anywhere in life. The Machine would be glad to give you a job, if you vote for it. Otherwise, well, there are only so many jobs, you know, and a lot of voters willing to keep theirs by seeing what is to their benefit."
--M. J. Young
The sorcerer turns his eye back to you. "You, sir, have an odd notion of the way things ought to be. What is this idea of yours, that it should be a Republic of the Living? Such an oligarchy, such a tyranny, is manifestly unfair to the dead. They're affected, too, you know. Why, just last year there was a proposal to close several cemeteries and use the land for downtown parking. Where would the dead go? Why should they be uprooted from homes in which some of them have lain for centuries?"
--M. J. Young
The verser blinked, things were more complicated than he had expected. Stalling for time, he leaned back, still holding an enchanted dagger palmed in his left hand, just in case. So far, things had stayed relatively peaceful, and he liked that.
"You're an honest man." He said to the unshaven fellow. "I'd vote for you."
"And ruin..."
"I think you'd stand it."
"The Machine is willing to consider your candidacy. A Reform effort every once in a while as long as certain fundamentals are not disturbed is acceptable." The sorceror piped in with his offer of compromise.
The unshaven man spat on the sidewalk.
"And so it begins." He snarls. "I meant what I said the first time. Now you stop wishing evil on me, fireworker." He shook a finger in admonishment at the verser who sighed.
"If good men do nothing, then evil wins." The verser said as if to the air.
"And if I trade my soul for a clean world, how is that to my benefit?" The unshaven man asked the air as well.
"Well, gentlemen, you seem to have reached an impasse. Luckily I have a backup book at my townhouse, paid for by the city government as a perk for my job as a mayoral aide as long as I show up four days a month for work. They will hold the polls open for me as they are special friends of mine."
And with that, the sorceror made to walk off, but the verser caught his arm first.
"Okay, I can see giving the dead the right to vote on cemeteries, but so much does not affect them. Why should they have the right to dictate what the living eat, for example?"
"One person, one vote." The sorceror said virtously with a smirk that spoiled the effect. He walked away whistling.
The verser stood there, and then he heard the unshaven man grunt.
"You look like you've got a crazy idea there. Not sure that's a good look."
"Perhaps, but I'm wondering how many sylphs of the air, and naiads of the lake live in the confines of the Windy City. How many gnomes dig under its soil, and how many aethren live in its electrical wires? Are these not people as well who deserve a vote?"
The unshaven man scratches the scraggles of his beard.
"Don't know as I've ever met any of 'em. I s'pose if one wanted to vote, well, first there would be a referendum, as they call it, a vote of those as can vote as to whether to allow that these others are also eligible to vote. Then when they lose that, they'll have to sue, so the courts can decide that the vote was invalid and that the rights of minorities outweigh the voting power of the majority."
"What do you mean, when they lose? Why would they lose?"
"Well, the ones who hasn't got the vote, they always lose, don't they? Because they can't vote for themselves. When it was black men, the vote was about whether white men wanted to let black men, who in some places outnumbered them several times over, have the power to take control of government by electing black men to all the offices that white men once held. Then when it was about women, the question was put to men whether they wanted suddenly to stop being two groups fighting over control and suddenly let there be just as many voters who weren't men 'tall, an' might just take all the cushy jobs from the men who had them and give 'em to women instead. Then when it was about kids--I remember a friend of mine in high school was campaigning for the eighteen year old vote, an' he said that some lady asked him who he would have voted for in '72. He said in fact he'd 'a' voted for McGovern, and the woman said she would never support the eighteen year old vote acause all those kids woulda voted for McGovern. Said he'd learned a lesson that day, that he shouldn' answer who he'd 'a' voted for, but simply say that's not the point. But that's the min'set, see? If you give a vote to someone else, after that your own vote is worth that much less. So no one ever votes to give the vote to more people unless they think those more people are going to agree with them about everything that matters and help them win; and since those as are winning don't need more votes to win they won't risk giving votes to people who might vote against 'em, and since those who are losing don't have enough votes to win anyway their votes don't matter.
"So it has to go to the courts, and the justices have to decide that the law is wrong and the majority doesn't matter, because the minority that's been excluded has to be included.
"An' that means what you needs for yerself is a bona fide Test Case--someone who has tried to register to vote an' been turned away, so's they can sue."
"You seem to know a lot about this," the verser says.
"Yeah, well, I have a Ph.D. in political science. Why do you think I stay out of it? Anyone who understands how it really works wouldn't want to be anywhere near it."
--M. J. Young
The verser cast his mind back, and recalled standing with the suffragettes in another world, a steampunk verse. They got the vote mostly because men thought it just to give it to them, and because the women had charmed the men courting them, or sitting across from them at the dinner table. Of course, that world did not have evil patron deities of cities like the Machine either. What a difference to freedom and justice is made by a lack of virtue.
He frowned. One way to fix things would be to reestablish virtue. Another way would be as the Ph.d. said to fight a presumably long court battle against heavy odds. Both methods would take a very long time. Or one could remember the First Rule of an English Gentleman: When to stop being a gentleman.
"If I was going to cheat, and I mean cheat on a scale that would make our friend the sorceror puke, just how would I go about it?" The verser asked with a predatory smile.
For everyone else, let me mention that this is an open game here--everyone can play. Eric and I have not colluded as to where we're going or how we're going to get there. You're input and redirection is welcome. Just remember the freestyle roleplaying and improv acting rule, "Yes, and", and it should go well.
He raises an eyebrow, and then a jagged-toothed grin emerges. "You mean, corrupt means to a noble end? There's a question that vexes philosophers, isn't it? Can ends justify means or do means corrupt ends? And if you achieve a good end by bad means, do you then set a precedent which can be followed by your successor? After all, many well-intentioned military coups were followed by generations of totalitarian regimes. Trotsky might have been able to bring Russia into a democratic socialist economy, but Lenin eliminated him and eventually handed the reins to Stalin. Castro might genuine love the people of Cuba, but his associates probably are more fond of their own creature comforts and clever enough to meet their own wishes before the needs of others. The same techniques that brought independence to India and equality to Afro-Americans also brought household status to homosexuals. Release the djinn of Constitutional relevance and it may prove to be an effrit you can't rebottle when it starts serving your adversaries.
"So, did you have an particular nefarious means in mind?"
--M. J. Young
"And if you worry too much about long-range problems, you won't have a short-term to survive to the long-term." The verser shrugged. "I'm probably a bit more anarchic than you are. Sometimes, I just want to burn it all down. But I do have a plan."
And with that the verser showed the unshaven man a basic spell for creating fairy gold. Changing the inputs of the spell according to Delano's Principles of Spell Subsititution, and instead of one real coin, you need one real vote pad, and instead of a pile of copper coins, you need a pile of empty vote pads.
These were easily gotten at the polling place with the first being attained for the asking, and the second requiring the unshaven man to loan the verser a local to this universe Five Mark Federal Coin. The verser bribed the pollwatcher.
After that, the two of them took a seat across the polling place, and the verser cast his spell as the zombies started to come into the polling place once again. Evidently the sorceror was back on the job.
"Not to be a downer, but you have perhaps a hundred votes, and one real vote there on the table. That's not even going to make a dent." The unshaven man said.
"But, there are eighty polling districts you told me."
"Ye-es. Actually eighty-two."
"Right. Well, have you heard of a spell named Saltgrinder's Making?"
"From the tale of the saltgrinder that turned the oceans to salt."
"Yes."
"We don't have such a spell around here." The unshaven man said looking closely at the verser. "I thought you were just a fireworker."
"I dabble. But I need to be very careful to max out the spell at times ten thousand or maybe more. Otherwise the spell would keep making paper copies in each of the ballot boxes until the boxes explode."
"Ah." The unshaven man looked sideways at the zombies who were trailing by the table, and at the cheekily smiling verser. "That means you plan on 'creating' at least a million votes."
"Something like that."
the cake is a lie
Brock,
??????
the cake is a lie
"Which cake is that?" the Ph.D. asks the new arrival, apparently a poll worker on a smoking break. "Do you mean that you can't have your cake or eat it either, because there ultimately is no cake? Or do you mean that there's no sense talking about how to share the cake, or maybe that should be the pie, because there's nothing to share?"
"Yeah, that cake," he says. "Everyone thinks that if they vote for the right person they'll get their fair share, but there is nothing to share. Every poor schmuck pays his taxes and thinks the government is going to do something with his money that will help him; but the government wants the money to pay the salaries of bureaucrats whose only real job is to keep taxpayers from figuring out where the money goes. Sure, sometimes a street gets fixed, but only so someone can say that they're doing everything they can to fix the streets; and sometimes a streetlight is replaced, but only so someone can point to it to justify his existence. You can bet that every dime that goes to helping people outside the government only gets there because it slipped through the fingers of some bureaucrat who couldn't figure out how to hold onto it for himself."
"So, what's your answer?" the verser asks.
"Simple," the poll worker answers. "I intend to become one of the bureaucrats. I can see a good scam, and if money is moving from the pockets of one group to the bank accounts of another, I want to be in the group on the downstream end of that flow."
"But you said there was no cake," the verser questions.
"Yeah, that's the futility of it. Even those getting the money are forced to pay it out again. I thought it was going to the people at the top, but it turns out they don't know where it goes either. A lot of money leaves the hands of a lot of people, but who gets it in the end?"
"The Machine," says the Ph.D. "The money feeds the Machine."
--M. J. Young
"Hmmm." Said the verser getting a thoughtful look, and he smiled. "Well, Mr. Ph.D. there's no reason for you not to practise what I just showed you. The Faerie Gold spell."
"Magic by me?" The Ph.D. scoffed. "I assume that you're doing this to taint the money supply that is supporting the Machine."
"You have a very good grasp of the magic for someone who claims he doesn't want to do magic. And Mr. Poll Worker, let me point out that the Faerie Gold spell is a great way to pay one's bar tab in an unfamilar part of the City."
The Poll Worker grinned and the Ph.D. sighed acceptance. With that, the trio began the making of piles of Federal Marks. Soon enough, a policeman came in to stop them. The Verser smiled and agreed with the cop that it was a dreadful thing to do, and so perhaps if the cop took one of the piles with him, to spend tonight, before the dawn, why it would not be so terrible. And if he had some friends who could come by...
Soon, a dozen cops were on the take. And then the Poll Worker got a few of his friends. And when the local precinct captain came storming in, the operation had moved down the street forewarned by the cops on the take. An hour later, and there were two more operatons in neighboring precincts.
"Either this is going to make a major diversion, or its going to seriously hurt the Machine. In any case, I don't want to be around here when the Machine gets mobilized with its third line of defense. Let's go." The Verser said taking his companions with him, and leaving the money-making racket behind him.
"So, now what?" Asked the Ph.D. once they were outside in the street.
"Up for a walk? Eight-two ballot boxes don't stuff them by themselves." The Verser gave the Ph.D. a mocking smile. "And, Mr. Poll Worker, you're welcome to come along. There is a chance in it for some long-term cash."
The trio voted, and then left to find the next polling station. Without the subway, it would have been impossible. But they began to hit polling place after polling place. None of them questioned his right to vote, or asked if he had voted already, or sought any form of identification or password. People could have driven in from out of state, and voted, and voted, and voted again until their fingers were ready to fall off. There was nothing to stop them which the Ph.D. said was the point.
"If the people with the power to change things are not to an obvious problem, you have to ask yourself why?"
"They say its to keep the barriers low so anyone, even the poor and destitute can vote." The Poll Worker said. The other two stared at him in unison, and he laughed.
"I didn't say I believed it. That's just the official line."
They walked in to the twenty-fifth poll place, and the sorceror was there waiting for them with arms crossed and hands hidden. Suddenly the verser palmed his enchanted dagger again.
"What do you think you're doing?" He snapped.
"The Machine's bidding. Vote early and often." The Verser said with a smile while the Ph.D. chuckled and the Poll Worker tried to look invisible.
"Listen, smart-mouth..." The sorceror began.
"No, you listen. The Machine has a sweet deal here. But Others want in."
"Others?" Everyone could clearly hear the capital in that question.
"Others." The verser smiled smugly.
"This is the Machine's town. We have men, and the press is bought, and the judges..."
The Verser laughed, not unkindly.
"Do you know what my Master told the Great Khan to say. 'You must have done something wicked for God to send me against you.' the Great Khan said, and then he destroyed the town so that not one block stood upon another." The Verser said.
"Old Powers, not the modern, thin-blooded sort, are walking and waking tonight." The Ph.D. added with a grim smile.
"This is the Machine's town. And he will fight for it." The sorceror said.
"We respect that view, my Masters do, and after the Machine is gone, my Masters may have use for someone of proven loyalty. The question for you, is are you going to get out of my way now?" The Verser walked forward and the Sorceror fell back/.
"I need instructions." He said and fled the polling place.
As the trio leaves, their job done again, the poll worker says, "By the way, I know we're voting against the Machine, but does anyone know who we're voting for? Ultimately aren't all the candidates the same, lackeys for the same corporations and businesses and powers? The problem isn't usually that someone is running against the Machine; it's usually that the Machine owns all the major candidates and simply has preferences as to which one to support. So who are we voting for?"
At that moment, a face splashes on a television screen in a window, apparently a late-breaking bulletin with text scrawl. It seems that the lead candidate opposing the Machine suffered a heart attack moments ago and is not expected to survive. In fairness, all votes for him will be discarded in the count.
--M. J. Young
"Primarily lackeys for the public sector unions, the trial lawyers, the bueraucrats and secondarily for the businesses and corporations." The Ph.D. said raising a lecturing finger. "The business fat cats get all the blame, but most of the actual harm is done by regulators looking to scare a bizman into a bribe and the garbageman's union and the other government unions."
"Hmmmph. You're saying that people like me cause most of the problem." The Poll Worker snorts.
"Let's just agree that the public gets last place in any case." The Verser shrugged trying to spread oil on the water. The other two accepted it with varying degrees of grace. "And Mr. Poll Worker, there is always someone who is cranky, idealistic, unskilled, and looking to Fight for Truth, Justice, and Righteousness." He reached over and tapped the ballot.
Then he muttered a few words.
A grain of sand drifted over one name.
The Verser smiled, and lifted his phone and called the man.
"Hello, sir."
"Yes."
"I have a message for you from the Machine. You need to get out of the race right now..."
"Listen, you piece of slime, I'm running, I'm winning, and you can tell the Machine to kiss my big, fat, toe!"
The Verser hung up with a smile.
"I do believe we've found our candidate. He's completely unskilled, a real Tilt at the Windmill hardcore idealist who would never win in a million years."
"You do know that this Candidate Windmill is basically the equivalent of a bull in a china shop, right?" The Ph.D. asked rolling his eyes.
"Yup." The Verser said as the Poll Worker burst out laughing.
"You guys are nuts." The Poll Worker said.
"But you still want to ride along for the fun of it." The Ph.D. said shrewdly.
"Yeah, I guess I do. I wonder why." The Poll Worker said.
"Its boring being evil." The Verser replied.
I want to say thanks for starting this; it was an enjoyable diversion. I'm not exactly bowing out; I've been thrown by a few of your twists (the Ph.D. and the poll worker becoming so polarized (I tend to see most people in the middle), the poll worker who stepped out for a break winding up taking the rest of election day to wander the city), and I wasn't at all sure where the story could reasonably go next. So I'm sort of waiting to see what anyone else decides to do with this so I can figure out where the track might be.
--M. J. Young
OOC: I thought the Ph.D. being so against getting involved made him fairly extreme.
"Am I still getting that money?" The Poll Worker asked.
"Already know how to make some, don't you?" The Verser replied.
"I think he wants more than that." The Ph.D. said.
"He will get it, just in a surprising way." The verser said.
The Poll Worker considered. Truth be told, it was boring sitting around waiting for his 'duty' to ratify the Machine's candidate. And now he knew a spell that would let him drink his fill in a bar when he was travelling so long as he used a fake name, and got out of town the next day. This played out on his face and the Ph.D. laughed to himself in surprise. Three hours ago, and he would have said the power of the Machine to corrupt or destroy was invincible, but in a world where everyone knew what was going to happen, nobody cared. Boredom had brought down empires before.
"What then?" The Ph.D. said itching his beard.
The Verser moved a pencil on a card, and the infectious spell was triggered. In the space of seconds, Candidate Windmill, who had 0.4% of the vote suddenly had 22% of the vote.
"You do know that they're going to kill him?" The Poll Worker said.
"Or corrupt him." The Ph.D. said.
"Right. Time to use some of that Faerie Gold, and buy us about twenty pounds of salt. Need to make a protective circle." The Verser said.
Writers' Conference?
I think that someone can take an extreme anti-involvement policy while being politically centrist. My view of the Ph.D. has him seeing both ends of the spectrum as reactionary and unworkable, and the center as unmalleable and stagnant. If you vote for the left or the right, you get chaos; if you vote for the center, you get perpetuation of the intolerable.
In other words, the Ph.D. thinks there are no good answers. All choices are bad, and to participate is to encourage one of the bad answers.
The poll worker by contrast sees the entire process as irrelevant. It doesn't matter who wins or who loses, as long as he has a job; whichever side promises him the job, that's who he supports. Policies are just so much smoke and mirrors; it doesn't matter whether you raise or cut taxes, increase or decrease spending, tighten or loosen regulations--the world does not change, and one should not be concerned about changing the world, only about ensuring one's own security within it.
The sorcerer, whom we left offstage working his nefarious counterschemes, might or might not have a political view. It seems likely that at some point in the past he aligned himself with The Machine because he embraced some concepts The Machine espoused, and so he leans in whichever direction that is. He is thus initially political, but corrupted by the fact that The Machine employs him, and thus it is in his interest that The Machine win because it assures his income, pushing him closer to the poll worker.
The problem we have with The Machine is it has been a bit ill-defined. Initially I had a view of this as Chicago, with a left-wing labor-driven political machine; but as it became apparent that The Machine didn't have any interest in the common worker that suggested a right-wing corporate power machine a la Carnegie and Rockefeller. But you seem to be pushing the machine toward the left while at the same time denying it its connection to its power base (the masses of the poor and the labor class), so I can't figure out just what this Machine uses as its rhetoric.
That is, granted that The Machine doesn't care about anyone except those who run the machine, what political rhetoric do they use to persuade people to support them? It might be that I don't really care about the poor but I talk about what is going to be done to help them; or that I hate unions but state my support for them; or that I have no interest in big business but court their support by promising return on their investment?
Or is this the underlying joke? It isn't just that The Machine doesn't care about anyone, its that it actually doesn't voice any policy at all--that it tells everyone that it is in his individual best interest to vote for The Machine, because The Machine will support big business by reducing corporate taxes and regulations and crushing the unions, and will support labor by supporting the unions and lowering individual taxes, and will support the poor by creating non-union jobs and spending more on public welfare--and everyone believes that he will benefit from this perversely self-contradictory hype, because The Machine also controls all the newspapers and media outlets and so figures out what to say where? (Washington Week in Review and The Newshour report The Machine's support of business, CNN tells its working-class audience of the support for labor, and the word in the soup kitchens is that it's really going to make a difference to the homeless, and there are no programs with hosts of opposing viewpoints.)
The other problem, though, is if that's the "platform" of the machine, how do we structure the platform of the opposition? The machine pretends to favor everyone and supports no one; the opposition can't fight that because it can't genuinely favor everyone and if it pretends to do so it can't be distinguished from The Machine, but if it picks one group to favor, the others will vote against it.
I'm having trouble working out the reality of the political landscape here.
--M. J. Young
Well, how I see Chicago is that they would 1)Loudly blame the rich and the big business while taxing them, and punishing them, but giving some favors back.
If the business grows, regulate it; if its strong, tax it; if it dies, subsidize it....Reagan said something like that.
The advantage of this where you steal and give back is that the governing class skims off a little in each transaction. You also corrupt the big business you choose to be your special friends into your loyal supporters. The entrepreneurs are largely toast, but that is a future unseen, and thus not much mourned. The big businessmen get the advantage of having their future competitors regulated out of existence...which means the BB get flabby and arrogant.
2) The primary expense is the unionized workers like in California who form a powerful voting bloc who vote and make a lot of noise to support the expansion of government and the raise in their salaries and pensions.
3)The homeless are bought off with by packs of cigarrettes and food on voting day.
I know this is not directly answering your questions, but perhaps it does in a round-about way as I found it a bit confusing to answer as you asked.
The political rhetoric is 'You poor victim, need our help in life, as you've been abused by those nasty rich people'.
As to the platform of the opposition...
1. You are not a victim. You are a Citizen with rights and responsibilities.
2. The governing class is the problem. The corrupt...judges, media, big businessmen, and union workers are the problem.
3. Once we FREE the People from the chains of government, peoplle will be able to do so much better on their own.
Second...
The first and only real joke I had was how the dead vote in Chicago. I had hoped for some more to come, but its not a big deal.
Just yesterday, I read the blog run by Baldilocks. She explained that Congressman J.C. Watts statement that the Republican Party should be doing more to attract black votes was totally wrong. Both are black and Republican.
She argued that he was saying that the R's should do more like the Dems in treating the blacks as a collective entity, and create more programs to help them. But Conservatism is about treating each person as a person, and all people equally. Givng special favors to a group is antithetical to our very nature.
This is a very idealistic stance built upon human dignity.
I think this is part of the Ph.D.'s problem. He stands against what he imagines the Right to be instead of what it is at heart.
the cake is a lie: your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator. google the phrase the cake is a lie if you are interested in the internet meme it originates from.
I was merely dropping a cryptic phrase in to see where you went with it. I am quite satisfied with the result. =)