Hokusai didn’t know what was wrong with this planet, or why it suddenly
needed her help. She made a point of staying out of its business, requesting
that Pribadium not bother her with such matters while they were working, or
visiting. She was worried, though, that someone had decided to use her
technology for evil, or maybe even just something misguided, which could
have similar negative results. Katica led her down the hallway, out of the
lab, across the way, and into the Capitol building.
Councilor Gangsta Dazzlemist was waiting for them in the lobby. “You were
right. She got here fast.”
“May I ask what this is about?” Hokusai looked around at the walls, as if
this were a trick, and the building would collapse in on her like something
out of a space war movie.
Gangsta breathed in deeply, and Hokusai wasn’t sure what he did with the
air, because it never seemed to come out. “I’m retiring from public
service.”
“Congratulations,” Hokusai said to him sincerely.
“We need a replacement,” he went on.
Hokusai nodded. Now, she was literally a genius, and her intellect wasn’t
limited to knowing how to calculate the Roche limit, or observational time
through relativistic speeds. She picked up on social cues much easier than
the average person, allowing her to tease out an individual’s subtext, and
know when someone was lying. So when Gangsta told her they were looking for
a replacement, she immediately understood he wasn’t just posting an update
about his life in person. His microexpressions, coupled with the fact that
they had lifted her exile, meant that she was here for a very specific
reason. They were asking her to be that replacement. She didn’t know why,
though. “I don’t know how I could do it. I live twenty-two parsecs away.”
He pointed at her with an upwards-facing palm. “Obviously not.”
“It’s this whole thing.”
“I understand,” Gangsta began, “that you did not simply stumble upon
dimensional gravity, Madam Gimura. No one has ever done anything like it.
They weren’t even looking for it. I don’t know what you are, and I don’t
know how many others there are like you. I don’t really care. You’ve given
us so much, and we gladly accept it. But please, do not think me a fool. I
know you’re more than just a scientist, and that your expertise goes far
beyond artificial gravity. I am in so much awe of you, and I will not tell
anyone what little I know of your secret, including your ability to teleport
between star systems.”
“It means a lot, hearing you say that,” she said, again, sincerely.
“You are not only my choice to replace me. You’re almost everybody’s.”
“How’s that?”
“Someone leaked your trial,” Katica explained. “They know who you are, and
what you’ve done for them.” Leak was a strong word. The governments decided
a long time ago that court cases should no longer have audiences. They were
still mostly public record—unless the transparency endangered lives—but
without the spectacle, those involved generally found the process to be
fairer. Still, the information didn’t need to be leaked. It just required
someone with the motives to raise their voice loud enough for people to hear
it. Combined with artificial intelligences, there were now tens of billions
of “people” in the stellar neighborhood. So being a loud voice was pretty
hard. A public figure with as many fans as the most famous on Earth in 2016
would be barely considered a local celebrity by today’s standards. Any rando
capable of getting a whole planet—even a low-populated colony—to listen was
impressive.
“They’re asking me to become a councilor?” Hokusai questioned. “Because they
think it was unfair that I was exiled? That’s a bit of a stretch.”
“It’s not because you were exiled, though that does help your popularity
factor,” Katica said. “It’s because they know what you did for them decades
ago. They know you’re responsible for artificial gravity, and for repairing
our habitats before the colony vessels arrived.”
“That wasn’t me; that was my friends, Leona and Eight Point Seven.” The
first human to set foot on Varkas Reflex was Leona Matic, when a mysterious
quantum force commandeered her ship, and brought her here to fix some
problems with the nanofactory.
“Close enough,” Katica contended. “You’re a hero, regardless, and the people
want you to lead them.”
“That’s not really my thing.”
“We know,” Gangsta said. “We think it should be, though.”
She sighed. “I don’t even like how you run the government. Don’t get me
wrong, to each their own, and I’ll gladly come back to live here, but it’s
too informal. I appreciate that you wanna be laid back, but you could be so
much more, if you were more motivated.” She repeated her point with an
exaggerated accent that a high school math teacher she once had used to get
his students interested in algebra, “motivaaation. Motivaaaaation.”
Gangsta smiled. “That’s what we’re counting on. The people aren’t looking
for a new councilor. They want you to be Superintendent.”
Hokusai caught half of a chuckle before it escaped her mouth, but couldn’t
stop the first half. The Superintendent was essentially the term choosing
ones used to describe God. It was more metaphysically complicated than that,
which was exactly why the word god was avoided in the first place. In this case,
Gangsta was referring to a governmental position for someone who possessed
questionable decision-making scope. A superintendent wasn’t responsible for
running the state, but for managing the people who were responsible for
running the state. They were staff managers, human resource representatives,
the occasional conflict mediators. On the surface, they appeared to have the
most power of all, since they were in charge of everyone, but they still
answered to the people, and they couldn’t just fire and hire other leaders
willy nilly. They had to remain reasonable, and accountable. Every colony
but Varkas Reflex started out with a superintendent, but most stepped down
after two or three full election cycles, because they were useful when
starting out, but usually obsolete once the engine got going. Only Earth
held onto their superintendent, because theirs was the highest populated
world. It was just funny that Varkas was finally deciding to get on board
with convention.
“You’ve been in your head for a good long while,” Katica pointed out. “Do
you have a response?”
“My initial thought is no,” Hokusai answered.
“That makes sense,” Katica said. “It sounds like you. But you’re the one who
hates how they run the government. What better way to fix it than to be the
one in charge of coming up with a new one?”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Hokusai admitted. “While I believe what
you’re doing now is not sustainable, I know that you don’t want to convert
to a full mediatorial tetracameral legislature, and that’s the only one I
know, because it’s the most common.” This type of government was composed of
four parts. The population representative congress was there to speak for
the needs of the civilians. They expressed their grievances to the two
delegators, who met with separate advisory boards in order to come to
decisions. Much like separate arbitration panels in the adjudicative system,
the idea was, if both delegation boards came to the same conclusion, without
talking to each other about it, it was probably the right one. The
delegators then delegated the implementation of their decision to whichever
administrators were in charge of whatever this change impacted.
This was all really complicated by design. Complexity often equaled more
exploitable weakness, but also greater overall resilience. Maybe you could
bribe one delegator to do what you wanted, but the other? Even if you did
that, their irrational behavior would alert the mediator between them, so
you would have to convince them to fall in line as well. Even so, the
advisors would question why the delegators and mediator weren’t heeding
their advice. The administrators would question their orders, and finally,
the people would rise up against the injustice. And those people had the
power to make swift changes to leadership personnel. It was practically
impossible in Hokusai’s time to impeach a president, let alone remove them
from office. Here, not so hard. If they wanted someone gone, they were gone.
No one was entitled to power, and no one was entitled to maintain that
power, once it was granted. These changes were positively unavoidable in
modern times. No matter how good a leader was, there was too much risk of
their control growing, well...out of control, over time. When accounting for
immortality, this control could theoretically last for literal aeons, and
that was probably not a good idea.
“You’re in your head again,” Katica warned her.
“Sorry, I was just going over what I would do if I were superintendent, and
it always ends in disaster.”
“I don’t believe that,” Gangsta argued. “We’re not asking you to have all
the answers today. Nor are the citizens. We just want you to get the process
started. We all have immense faith in your ability to be fair, thoughtful,
and sensitive to this planet’s unique needs.”
“Of course you may decline,” Katica started to add. “I urge you to give it
some thought, though. Remember what happened the last time you made a rash
decision, without knowing the consequences.”
Hokusai had never asked Katica to take responsibility for her own
involvement in the memory wipe that was accidental from Hokusai’s side, but
not from Katica’s. She glared at her now to remind her of this truth
telepathically.
“Someone has to take care of us, and I can’t be the one to do it. Nature
abhors a vacuum,” Gangsta quipped.
“Why do people always say that?” Hokusai questioned. “Nature loves a vacuum.
It’s called entropy, and it’s kind of where everything in the universe is
trying to get to.”
“Just think about it,” Katica requested. “In the meantime, you’re expected on
the balcony.”
“The balcony?” Hokusai didn’t know what she was talking about. “Who’s on the
balcony?”
“No one,” she answered. “You’re the one who’s expected. They’re waiting for
your fence speech.”
“What the hell is a fence speech?” Hokusai asked.
“You’re on the fence, right?” Gangsta asked her.
Not really, but Katica was right that she should at least think about it.
“You want me to go out there, and tell people I might consider maybe
starting to almost kind of theoretically think about one day possibly
entertaining the idea of hypothetically accepting a potential offer to
perhaps, perchance, try to run for Superintendent?”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but yeah, I guess,” Gangsta
confirmed. “As I said, they’re expecting you.”
“You shouldn’t have told them I would be here.”
“We didn’t,” Katica said. “Like we’ve been trying to explain, it wasn’t our
idea; it was theirs. They have been waiting for you.”
“Demanding, even,” Gangsta corrected.
“Yes.”
Hokusai massaged the bridge of her nose. “They’re expecting a...fence
speech?”
“Yes,” Katica confirmed. “They are not anticipating that you will announce
your intention to run today. If you go out there, and humor them for five
minutes, they’ll finally go away, and move on with their lives. They will
want you to make a final decision within the week, though, so keep that in
mind.”
“Fine. I’ll go talk to them, but I promise nothing.”
“That’s all we ask,” Katica said gratefully.
“If it’s a five-minute speech, I will need ten minutes to write it.”
“That’s okay,” Gangsta said with glee. “I’ll go back out and stall them with
another attempt at playing the gravity organ.”
By the time Hokusai finished delivering her fifteen-minute long speech, she
had already decided to run. She did so unopposed, and obviously won.
