“Hey Boss. You’re really want to spend your last day on this planet watching the news? Come play pool with us.”

Drev was only half-joking. If this election didn’t go their way, it would mean a complete shutdown of all nuclear reactors across the continent. For a uranium mining town, it threatened nothing less than doom.

Korlaf’s eyes remained fixed on a small TV behind the bar, next to long rows of bottles, the only colorful décor in the shadowy bar of northern Mouisae.

The supercontinent Mouisae is shaped like a bitten donut, with “the bite,” as its informally called, located in the northwest. Democracy evolved in the southeast, and spread like an invasive species to the south, west, and lastly, the north, toppling kings and statues as it went. Dynasties that had seemed eternal turned to dust at the promise of free healthcare. But now, the northern regions which had once so viciously resisted it from behind its vast mountain ranges now had a serious chance of finding representation on the man-made island of Teloira at the very center of the gulf, the capital of the bureaucratic nanny state that had engulfed all land above sea level.

“I am not about to miss the season finale of news just to lose at pool again,” said Korlaf. “Besides, I think they will renew it for another season anyway.” He lifted a shot of hard liquor to his grizzly beard, the chiseled lines on his face scrunching deeper as he consumed it.

“Please.” Drev spoke with an uncharacteristic sharpness that demanded eye contact.

Korlaf dropped the shot glass with a low thud, and his hulking body shifted on the stool to face his employee of ten years, who was leaning on the pool cue as though his whole sanity were pressed into it. “Of course,” he answered, nodding. “Ten minutes. Just until the commercial break. I’ll order us more sliders.” Defused, Drev smiled and returned to his favorite sport.

“My daughter,” chuckling under his breath with a mixture of pride and disbelief. “President of all Mouisae.” Just then, his phone rang. It was the default, centuries-old ringtone that he had felt no need to customize.

“Speak of the Devil,” he answered with a smile.

“Very funny,” said Avoniya. Her opponents gave her the nickname on the campaign trail, and in a stroke of either political genius or insanity depending on who you ask, she embraced it. No Avoniya rally was complete without pyrotechnics. It seemed to work. This was the first time her party was polling at higher than 40% in decades. The whole continent was exhausted from the deadly pain of a debt-spiral presided over almost exclusively by one regime, and the public was becoming desperate for whatever could frame itself as the opposite.

“Are you enjoying your apocalypse-party?” she asked.

“Your generation always think it’s the end of the world.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Touché. Feels like it really has been the end of the world for a long time now. Still, you young people are prone to catastrophizing. ”

“I’m not so young anymore, dad.”

“You are to me. You’d understand if you were a parent. Even ascending to the Presidency, I still worry. Like when we were waiting for the results of your University applications.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me of their schooling system. Those were dark times,” said Avoniya. “How’s the crew holding up?”

Korlaf surveyed the motley bunch of disgruntled uranium miners. One of them mouthed to him, “Is that Madame President?!” Korlaf shook his head. “The optics aren’t great, as usual.” he said. “Did you want to rile them up even more?”

Avoniya laughed. “No, they’ve heard enough speeches for now. It’s all action from here.”

“That’s what worries me,” said Korlaf.

“Although, I could use your fatherly advice for the big speech.”

“Oh?”

“Should I call it out? I know it’s in our platform, but should we mention digi-coin by name tonight?

Korlaf gestured for another shot, knowing that any unintended consequences, at this stage of adoption, in this political environment, could tilt the whole planet on its axis, but he had an answer prepared.

“If you win, no. Just make sure it stays legal and say nice things every now and then. The community will take care of it from there. I don’t want it too closely associated with whatever they’re going to smear you with. Digi-coin is for anyone.”

“But not for everyone, I hear,” said Avoniya.

Korlaf sighed. “True enough. And if you lose,”

“No retreat,” Avoniya nudged him with the campaign slogan.

“If you lose,” Korlaf continued, “then yes, call it out. You retire from politics, and you bring your skills to the private sector. Rayelov will help you with the details of the speech. Then you come straight home, right away. ”

“Yes,” said Avoniya, “I’ll be coming home either way.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Korlaf.

“The best we could come up with, right?” said Avoniya. “I love you, dad.”

“I love you, too, Madame President.”

While most of the staff surrounded the TV as the election results tricked in, Korlaf and Drev took turns missing, waiting for fate to set them up for easier shots. Korlaf had always been too busy to practice, and Drev was now too drunk to shoot straight.

“You guys found some way to rig it right?” asked Drev. “Please tell me you cheated any way you can. God knows they did.”

“We did nothing of the kind,” answered Korlaf, who held his liquor like it was iced tea. “We ran a good, clean, legal campaign.

Drev groaned. “It’s over.” He sank an even-numbered ball. He had one left now, the two-ball, which he missed.”

“What happened to you, Drev? I remember when I could pick you up with one finger, when you first came to work in the mines. From Kaliera. Did you forget you were born there? In the birthplace of Democracy? That your mother was a fish-kissing Green? That you were as well?” Korlaf sank two odd-numbered balls before missing.

“That’s different,” muttered Drev, missing.

“Oh?” Korlaf lazily missed an impossible shot.

“Everyone is a fish-kisser when they’re a little kid,” said Drev. “It’s cute then. It’s not cute when they don’t grow out of it. The ones who are voting age are spoiled brats.”

“Hm…” said Korlaf, missing the one-ball again, the last he needed to sink.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Drev, aiming for the two-ball in what was nearly a straight line to the corner.

A voice from behind them interrupted, along with cheers. “She flipped Jialessi!”

“What?” Drev ran to the TV, dumbstruck. Jialessi was a Green stronghold. It would be a landslide for the Reds from there.

Korlaf removed a cardboard tile from the table leg, thinking gravity would be sure to end this game if Drev couldn’t.

Drev returned after taking another shot. “Where were we.” He lined up the shot, slowly, carefully, and missed. “That’s impossible,” he said, raising an eyebrow, then checked under the table leg. He looked at Korlaf. “Hm…”

“Sliders?” asked the waitress.

“Leave them for fatty” said Drev, walking outside, and vomiting.

Korlaf walked behind the bar to see his whole staff celebrating, cheering, drinking, and firing weapons at the sky, with the exception of Drev, who was only drinking.

“Forgive you,”(1) said Drev without looking up.

“Slider?” asked Korlaf.

Drev accepted it, eyes still fixed on the snow beneath them.

“I’m sorry,” said Korlaf. “I meant for it to help you win. I didn’t know you were adjusting for it.”

“I know,” said Drev. “I know you don’t have any attachment to the outcome of a pool game. I don’t know why I do.” He finished the slider, then looked at Korlaf listlessly. “Poverty would be one thing. It’s the creeping decay from comfortable, to struggling, to destitute, to somehow worse, that’s driving me crazy.”

“Well, I think the bottom is in,” assured Korlaf, sitting down next to him.

“It really wasn’t rigged?” Drev asked.

“No. I sat in on the meetings, sometimes. The surveillance is too advanced, the counting process too refined. There were plenty like you who demanded they win by any means necessary. But, by the time she won the party’s nomination, everyone close to the action agreed they would have to rely on popular opinion alone.”

“We won’t get any credit for it,” said Drev.

“No,” agreed Korlaf, “we won’t.”

They watched the northern lights dance in the sky. One worker carried a flamethrower to the edge of the cliffs, and it seemed that even the lights retreated as he delivered a fresh warmth for which the whole gathering was grateful.

“I’m scared, Boss,” Drev confessed.

Korlaf gave Drev a firm pat on the back. “There is nothing to be scared of. We can always figure something out. Look at Brotz there. What would they have done? Who is going to fly in on a jet from Teloira and walk up to Brotz with a clipboard to inform him that all the mines and refineries have to be shut down because they offended a crab?”

Drev laughed. “I know Brotz will fight. It’s Natskiya I’m worried about. I don’t know what I could have offered her, if we had lost. Even now, I just don’t know if I have enough work left in me, or how much it’s worth.”

“Ah,” said Korlaf. They absorbed the sounds of the galvanized workers for a while, as though their obscenities and gunshots were the crackles and pops of a campfire. “I remember when you introduced me to her. Quiet girl. But silence can be good strategy. I’m sure Natskiya would understand. You have your Self to give her. That is all she asks for. That will be enough.”

“Do you think so?”

“Someday, when you manage people like I do (not while you work for me, mind you), then you will understand. She will fight with you, through whatever pain comes.” Korlaf stroked his beard philosophically. “There is more of Brotz in her than you realize.”

Drev winced. “There has to be a better way to phrase that.”

“And,” Korlaf continued, “I think there is more of your mother in you than you realize.”

Drev smiled, and gave Korlaf a thumbs up. “Don’t forgive you.”(2)

Korlaf laughed. “Show me your wallet… Not that one, the real one, the digital one.”

Drev’s eyes widened. “What’s this?”

“Your bonus,” said Korlaf. “Don’t tell the others yet. They’ll get it by direct deposit next week.”

Drev grinned. “You did rig it! You cheated them out of everything!”

Korlaf raised his hand in objection. “No, there was no cheating,” he clarified. “We promised to supply Jialessi with cheap energy, but that’s a campaign promise to constituents, all above-board. Everything after that: the tax credits, the subsidies, the regulations, all the stuff we’re legally in charge of now, that’s not cheating either.” Korlaf handed him a pistol. “Go celebrate, but don’t hurt yourself. You still have a job, you know.”

Drev accepted the pistol and joined his comrades to shout expletives across the gulf, as the northern lights shifted to an ancient, long-forgotten color. Far in the distance, he could see Teloira, and the great metal tower built on top of it that had turned the entire continent into a panopticon, that had grown larger every year, that he and his family and friends had been made to obey all his life, that he had always assumed would demand his obedience forever.

Burning.

Place Names: Mouisae – 莫以薩俄 Teloira – 特樓以拉 Jialessi – 加樂西 Kaliera – 卡李爾拉

Person Names: Drev – 德雷伏 Korlaf – 高爾拉夫 Avoniya – 阿文妮婭 Brotz – 步洛刺 Natskiya – 娜塔斯吉雅 Rayelov – 賴耶洛伏