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Here's a reflective piece on yesterday, as well as a few other things. I'll be posting my hundredth article tomorrow, and that's a big landmark for me. I hope it will be for you as well, and I hope that you've enjoyed the ride so far. I thank you.



Election Day: Morning
It was a makeshift place, this command center. And old UIP Mobile Voting command, refitted as the general command center for the new coalition of 4 of the nations top parties. All gathered to take out the fifth.

They'd been successful in their strategy alright. The top number of states that looked lost had been around 40 by the time I was approached. "I think it's time to call a meeting." A dog had stumbled in to the Libertarian HQ where I was in the midst of sending out our midday voters, trying desperately for at least 7 states with Libertarians.Having had Claire leave the Elections Committee it'd been me who had been assigned to take up the slack. Days of planning and tactically placing our people and organizing our voters was now coming to bear, but it was a hard fighter, and we were losing.

I recognized the dog as being Cerb, the USWP organizer. "We need to pool resources," he barked.

"I know a place," I said. A room decorated in the old style of knights and justice, an old place but still new. We waited as the other party Elections Officers entered. When finally all but the Federalists had shown, we sat, and discussed. We all knew the gravity of the situation: iNCi was taking the country by storm, and unless we united, there would be no hope for any American victory. So we talked concessions, we discussed which states we would give up and which we desired. A list was formulated, and plans had begun to be drawn up. It was still early in the day, we had time to pull it together.

"Excuse me sir." A turk entered. "May I speak with you?" I nodded and, hopping off my high chair, I walked with him. He explained he was part of a foreign group willing to help vote, and that as long as I could grant them citizenship, he would help us vote. I asked him why he would do this. "Because we want to be American." After discussing it with his other members in a small off site room, I agree😛 they would provide voting support for us, and in return I would grant them citizenship.

Things seemed to be turning out well, I thought to myself. I returned to the room to continue discussions.

After a while, we had plans and a relative strategy, and were beginning to pool voters. I stepped out for an hour to clear my mind. Ever since iNCi had come it had been this quiet tension just building. Nobody had wanted to confront it, content to just hope that it didn't grow. Now the number 2 party in America, it was beginning to look like we all were about to begin learning Turkish.

Election Day: Afternoon
You could feel it from everyone. Fear. That hopelessness crawling around and speaking all the terrible things that would happen under foreign oppression. The winter air did little to calm my mind, but it was still a relief. I returned to the room.

The room was empty, the plans half there. I had begun wondering what had happened when Soren Nelson, the Federalist Party President walked in. An old friend, and much needed presence. "What are you still doing here? Come on."

Another corridor, another room. It was his private office at the top of the building. Gathered there was everyone: all the Election heads, all the Party Presidents such as Hadrian X and Justin, the Acting President himself Goalie, and the FEC chairs. It was a tight space for so many people, and the noise was hard to bear. "So what's the plan?" I asked, knowing that this was now the place where the plans would be made. Dennis McVicker, the USDP Representive, told me off for not knowing. We sparred for a few minutes as I tried to get a straight answer out of him. A small chaos erupted.

Dennis and I privately settled it. He got me up to date and, both of us apologizing, we returned to the room. Dennis was a old guy from the days of the Trade and Military Alliance now working with the USDP. He was a good guy.

Eventually settled, I learned that the FEC had decided what us Election Heads had already: that we must work together. New plans were set in motion, and we began work anew. The elections trackers had been down since yesterday. A new format had been introduced in our telecommunications lines and we had nothing prepared.

No Mass Messaging, no trackers, and half of our people still in jail from yesterday's Boston Wig Party. You could still smell the stench of burnt hair hanging about outside the building, like a perm gone too long on an old lady.

It was a perfect storm for iNCi to win. We were down on our ability to communicate and members, and they were using their numbers to manually get out messages. Rod and the FEC crew drew up new plans on the old FEC placement chart, marking priority states and using the plans the Elections Heads had drawn up to get numbers.

For hours we labore😛 carefully watching numbers, looking over how many voters we had, seeing which states could be saved and which couldn't. It was trying on our spirits as well as our work ethic. We had no way of knowing what iNCi was even doing. Preliminary reconnaissance into their command had proved fruitless but had forced them to move rooms. The FEC officers were frustrated, you could see the strain, and they called out to the room wondering if anyone knew Turkish.

Turkish, you see, is relatively similar to Arabic, a language I knew. I volunteered this information to her, and she pulled me aside asking me to get into that room and find out the information we needed.

My training in the old SEES Special Intelligence program was about to pay off.

I donned a disguise, and set about, traipsing with ease into the heart of the beast. None took notice, and I began taking down notes, furiously translating the broken dialect of a language which was relative to the one I knew. "CAN YOU HEAR ME?" The squeak of the earbud pierced the room. All eyes turned towards me. I smiled bleakly, then turned to answer.

"Yes," I whispered, "I can. I'll get you the numbers as soon as I can." The next 6 hours proved trying. Their dialect was somewhere between Turkish and Orcish, and it was difficult to translate the idiosyncrasies of a language I didn't fully know. Still, numbers were gained, and I transmitted them back to Soren's office, where the FEC officers and Soren, with Rod now departed, were leveling directions to Justin McCravok who had been put in charge of overall organization of the groups. Cerb was still running about, his dog tail wagging. All was a bustle.

Hours passed. It felt like days we had been in there. I stepped out again. The Turks trusted me, and so no one noticed when I shimmied out of my corner. I got some ice cream, and talked with friends. The day of work seemed long, and there was still a while left. How had it come to this?

I remembered the Haliman Administration, the huge banners waving all along the land welcoming the Turks. Friends and allies they'd been called. They worked hard, fought hard, and were totally loyal to America. I had had my doubts then, and even expressed so much to Haliman himself. "No worries my friend," he'd assured, "I've got this."

So I'd trusted. And I had seen iNCi grow, and grow. I tried accepting, even let their people in, granted citizenship. If you know them, you can learn to like them. But they never sat well with me. Today, the election, stood as a testament to that distrust, to all that hesitation I had felt. I felt vindicated, but the "I told you so's" would have to be for another day. I walked back along the lonely roads to the building, lights still blazing, people still bustling through windows.

It was going to be a long night.

Election Day: Evening
I slipped back into the iNCi room, none taking notice. Hours again passed, until it was roughly an hour before the final hour. "Time to group the snipers," I transmitted back to the Soren's office. I placed a bug on one of the stuffed owls littered around iNCi's office, and I left.

The Turks from the morning I had contacted had proved most helpful and were being deployed. My contact from them assured me that I would vote. They did, however, have one request in addition: gold. We bargained and talked, and in the end I ended up giving them all my gold, calling in the transfer in front of them to prove my dedication. This small faction could mean the difference between victory and defeat, and I was willing to do whatever I could to do that.

"Do you think they're worth it?" I asked Rod, walking back to Soren's office. He chewed on the thought, and said something indecisive. Ever the man of few words.

Soren's office was less crowded now. Justin McCravok was jumping up and down, his large nose bouncing along. "We should use the UIP room! We should use it! We should use it!" Bounce, bounce, bounce. That large nose. Soren gave me a look, the FEC folks were in the corner just rolling their eyes. I shrugged, and we moved to the UIP room.

Justin had said it was rarely used. That was an understatement. The walls were bare, the carpet not even there. It was an empty husk, yet it was packed with the four parties sniper teams, all huddled in corners. People I hadn't seen in a while were in there: over in the corner ArcNox and the remained of the SEES snipers were huddled with our few Libs Snipers, DanielCD and Marxus sitting quitely in another corner, the David Landon and the Feds discussing Zooey in one corner, the UIP dominating the majority of the room. It seems Justin had taken most of the initiative. Squads were being divided.

I sent word to the small Turkish and Lithuanian faction to deploy, and received word back that they had. I watched as our numbers shot up. People discussed how fortunate this was. I just smiled to myself. Votes had come in from our other allies as well. All senators were rushing about each room, trying to send out as many citizenship grants as they could for our long standing allies from places like Greece and Croatia. Our true friends show their colors.

The squeal of my earbud rang, as more recorded numbers came in. I began giving the numbers and destinations of iNCi's MV's to the room at large. It was loud. Several people approached me. "Ath, where do we go? We need orders." Justin, busy over his organizing, was indisposed, so I began handing orders.

"You two, they're sending 5 to Chongqing, we need you there to buffer. You two over there, get ready to head out t-"

"What do you think you're doing?!" A roar above the crowd. Ssomo pushed through the room. Sudden silence. "We were doing just fine before YOU came in here. We don't need you and your 'organization' so how about you pipe down?"

We stared at each other. The room was very still, but pulsing with baited breath. Ssomo, the man who'd beaten me last month in the UIP election, the Party President of the UIP. I hadn't talked to the UIP in weeks. And here they were, in my face. I couldn't handle it.
I tore the earbud out, and threw it on the ground, eyes dead-set on Ssomo. His gaze faltered for a moment; I turned and rushed out, slamming the door.

"JUST WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?" I slammed into Soren's office. People scattered before me, Cerb, tail between his legs, coming up to look at me with those puppy eyes. "I've been sitting here for hours translating and working and laboring and slaving for this country, and he has the GALL TO SAY THAT TO ME? WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING!? I'M DONE!"

A chair thrown across the room. People began to try and calm me down. The curses and hate spewing forth from my mouth were tangible things, flames burning everyone's mood. Here was hopelessness, here was an anger long kept burning, now bursting forth in the midst of a crisis. People comforted me, told me to calm down.

The party I hated most was sitting there telling me that I was a useless asset. I couldn't believe it. I was fed up with their self-righteousness. They could all go t-

A hand on my shoulder. A nose nuzzling my balled fists. I looked up through the angry tears. Soren was gazing back down on me, that look of determination in his eyes. Cerb's muzzle rested on my legs.

"It's okay. You've done great. We just need a little more. We're winning." They smiled at me, or Cerb tried. He ended up just doing that grimace most dogs get with gas.

I wiped away the tears, still hot, nodded my head. "You're right." I stood up, and as suddenly as I had entered, I left. People rushed up the corridor to me, bearing messages from Justin and Ssomo in the Voter Command Center, begging me to return and apologizing. Ssomo himself apologized even. I told him it could wait. We had work to do. I marched on, down the long hall. I entered.

Eyes turned. I took a deep breath, set my shoulders, reached down, and put my earbud back in. "Let's do it."

Election Day: The Final Minutes
20 minutes left.

We worked for an hour, the last minute of elections drawing nearer. The noise was tumultuous. FEC officers were sending orders in the ATO room down the hall, throwing iNCi out simultaneousness who were screaming insults and cat calls. The building was chaos, but in that unfurnished room, we worked. The sniper teams assembled their gear and boarded the jets; they were ready to drop.

10 minutes left.

We finalized the orders, Justin asking me where they were sending. Iowa and Oregon were their main focuses from the chatter I was gathering. We sent extra snipers there, all of them madly rushing to get to the states. All of us on edge. A tangible fear, a vague hope.

7 minutes left.

The sniper teams had their orders. Each was in it's place. I barked out the last numbers iNCi was sending.

5 minutes left.

"I hope this works."

3 minutes left.

The room was still. We all looked at the wall monitor that had been brought in, counting down the seconds. The sniper teams radioed in their confirmations. We all stared at that monitor or our watches.

"30 SECONDS!" Dan Heylin shouted the time. Tension rippled through the nation, the screams of the Turks through my earbud deafening. It all came down to this, if we could just win these states...

And then it hit. 2 minutes left. I looked at Justin. A slow nod, as if traveling far through time.

"GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! ALL TEAMS ARE A GO!"

Silence. An eternal quiet.

And then.

Green lights popped up on the monitor in Oregon. "OREGON SQUAD CONFIRMING SIR!" Green lights in Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, all the others. We still had time to spare. Could we actually do it?

And then the clock struck midnight.

The noise was absolute. Screams from my earbud, outrage and incomprehension. This I ignored. The shouts and smiles from the room, people cheering. This I took in.

I took my earbud out, placed it on the center table. I sat down in a chair. The nation had won. You could feel it in the air, in this room, all down the corridor.

We'd done it. The long fight was finally over. Soren was throwing his hands up in triumph, Cerb barking at the top of his lungs, tail waging. Justin doing a strange dance, kicking out his legs. Everyone hugging, everyone smiles.

This is what success felt like.

They congratulated Soren, Justin, Cerb. They were heroes, the people who saved America, wrenching her from the grasp of evil. Champagne flowed in every room. Their names, shouted throughout the building. I quietly made my way down the corridor, hearing those names shouted again and again in triumph. I smiled to myself. They'd be long remembered as those that had done our country a service. The one's who had prevailed. The triumphant heroes.

On the city streets, their names went up in bolder colors on the TV's in the shop windows. Chucky Norris's speech still was being channeled through every loud speaker. He had rallied the people earlier in the day, and now those words of defiance, of hope, had become reality. People danced in the streets. A sword stabbing an owl. That symbol was everyone, on hastily drawn up posters, in car windows. It was a national celebration.

Soren.

Justin.

Cerb.

36 states won. A complete reversal.

The Unstoppable Team.

I got back to my apartment, keeping the lights off. I went to my room, changed for bed, and laid there, just feeling, resting. It'd been a long day. No one could have known we'd had such success. But there we had. For one hour, for one night, we were happy.

Election Day: Epilogue
Our world is a vast construct, a place where everything and yet nothing is possible. It is a separate realm from the real, and yet the work, the emotion, the feeling we put into it makes it more real than we can often experience in life.

Time changes a lot of things: memories, friendships, feelings. The one thing it does not change is action. Action is eternal, a boulder in the river that you can look back on and say with certainty that it happened.

Some actions will be forgotten, stones sliding down the creek. Not for lack of interest, not for lack of importance, but just because of the march of time.

People are actions in their own right, left to become great, to be forgotten, to grow, change, and experience this thing we call life. In this, our world, it's the people that mean most. And that is what makes it all worthwhile.

The only fun in history is making it.





Stay frosty.