It's My Party

What to try next? People! Where were the other lost members from the other Parties?! Mark typed eagerly on his keyboard. He found that his executive authority allowed him to query the location of any person by Citizen ID within any structure where he was physically present, and that the entire Great Hexagon was considered an integrated physical structure in this context. Within minutes Mark was querying all the lost IDs. The four lost members of Yellow Mall, Cindy, Alice, Eugene and Bridget, IDs 63, 64, 68, and 69, they were pinpointed immediately. They were together, in a building Fatima remembered once passing at a distance but never investigating. Farideh as Party #6 janitor organized a quick posse and they left immediately.

No other lost members were at the Great Hexagon. This was partially understandable. The eight lost people from Green Mall were scattered as two teams somewhere in the expanse of Africa. Finding them would still be a long-term mission. But what of the seventeen lost women of Blue Mall? They were still listed on the employment logs. Everyone's guess was that they had found a trapdoor sometime in the past year. The Blue Mall surface area would be the place to start looking, but the people would not be found there. The Society would need to change their objective and search the Blue Mall surface for trapdoors.

Next on the menu: Wobanakik! Did Mark have the authority to activate the elevator at the entrance rooms? Nothing was more important than to see. What followed was a fast trip, a quick jump to the White Mall lounge and then boarding the stair cats. With Emily and Suvarna as company, Mark arrived at the bottom of the great stairwell at 3 PM.

He gave a verbal command to activate the elevator and the keyboard came to life! For a moment the director and the two janitors felt bewildered. Could it possibly be this easy? After memorizing the new twenty-character code in the display, Mark typed the code for home. The three were back at the Red Mall library seconds later.

And seconds after that they jumped back to the entrance rooms of Wobanakik. Over their Leophones they told their friends at Manhattan the good news, and then there was a decision to make. Should the Manhattan people evacuate today?

It was 3:03 PM and Wobanakik was entering the fourth week of its nine-week autumn. The linear sun would set in two hours, not nearly enough time for Jada and her group to kayak the Missisquoi back to the entrance rooms. Should they risk a night journey? There would be some moonlight, a waxing crescent moon from 9 PM to 3 AM if the weather stayed fair. But in the end Jada decided not to push the issue. They had waited so long already, why not another day? Her team would leave Manhattan in the predawn twilight on Saturday, sometime after 7 AM. With luck they should be at the activated elevator well before noon.

Next on the agenda, Amber and her group trapped in Black Mall's surface area. Mark and the janitors spent hours studying new engineering data that Mark was able to access. Late Friday evening, they thought they had a solution. There should be executive controls on both the Pink and Green Towers that would allow Mark to freeze the foam and create a static return path for Amber and her group. Mark gave the credit to Emily and Aggie for planning the procedure. The control sequence wasn't obvious.

Just before dawn the next morning Mark, Emily, and Aggie traveled to the Pink Tower and successfully shut down the maze. The foam sank more than a dozen meters, revealing the narrow walkways to be the tops of curving ridgelines with shear vertical walls. At the other end of the maze at the Green Tower, Amber's group began their difficult journey back home, stopping occasionally went the wind blew too briskly. There were no guardrails at the edges of the 2.5 meter-wide walkways and a fall into the foam would be certain death. Amber's group came home one painfully slow and careful step at a time.

It was past eleven o'clock when Amber's group finally reached the Pink Tower, very shortly after Mark received word that Jada and her group had just jumped to the Black Mall lounge. Wobanakik was empty at last.

Mark smiled at the memory as he sat in the library now, admiring the sounds and fury of the snowstorm. Jessica! What a fascinating person she was, and so completely different from his expectations. Mark had heard complaints about Jessica for months from the former slaves of Party #5, and then he finally met her at the top of the Pink Tower. She was wiry, girlish looking really, playful, affectionate, and extremely trusting in her linking. She hugged Mark as soon as she stepped off the narrow walkway, shivering a bit not from the coolness of the day but from her fear of heights. Jessica offered to link with Mark as they were still hugging and offered to share her experiences with him.

Mark was struck by her great capacity to trust. A few seconds of linking gave them several minutes of subjective time. First Jessica projected her growing love for Doug, and their times together since Ricardo's death. She then asked Mark to find the time to share her most frightful moments. Jessica knew her membership in the Society was still being debated and she wanted Mark to know the full story. Mark promised her some quiet time together.

The Bee Park was still in the last week of its winter cycle, but there was ample food in the storage bins there and first priority was to boost all their new members. The Society decided to boost alternating groups of three and four, pushing the Bee Park's population up to seven. The four new rescues from Party #6 went first, and Eugene, Cindy, Alice, and Bridget entered the Park on November 2nd, followed four days later by Jada, Thara, and Lynn. On the morning of November 10th, Charles, Mandy, Obit, and Oona pledged lifelong commitments to each other in a triple marriage ceremony just before becoming the new junior boost team. Mandy jokingly referred to the Bee Park as their honeymoon location, stressing the word honey.

Later that afternoon, the Society had another great find. Satellite imagery had detected a human presence in the southern hemisphere of Africa. Tom and Carla volunteered to take the six stair cats and investigate. They returned late on November 13th with Kelly's lost team. The Society now had a population of sixty people, with Laura's team of four in northern Africa and all seventeen women survivors of Blue Mall the only remaining missing members of the human species.

Lucia had added a small, sad bit of knowledge to their understanding of Blue Mall. By mapping the recorded history of the census counter with their current understanding of Party populations, Emily had calculated that the sole male member of Party #3 had died on Christmas Eve. Emily's comment caused Lucia to use her boosted memory abilities to return to the tunnel on December 21st, and there in her dream Lucia recognized a man she knew as Warren, someone she knew to be a diabetic. Without access and the knowledge to use the autodocs, he had no chance to survive.

The arrival of Kelly's group from Africa allowed the Society to postpone a stressful decision. Jessica and Diego had still not been allowed to boost, and with the large crowd of people boosting it was never clear whether they were just waiting in line or if this would be a permanent decision. Kelly's group of four entered the Bee Park on November 14th, meeting Jada, Thara, and Lynn on the way out. By this time the Bee Park was finishing the first week of its three week spring and the flowering fields and orchards were about to burst with new life. Kelly's group would not have to use the food in the storage bins for long.

Fatima thought that one month of interaction and linking was long enough for the Society to decide on Doug's and Jessica's membership, and she brought the issue up for resolution on December 2nd. She was firm on one principle. There would be no partial acceptance, no second-class citizens. The Society's choice was either to banish them to Africa without boosting or grant full membership. Kelly's group had found several very livable campsites on the southern shore.

They held meeting at 8 PM in the multi-media room of Black Mall, fifty-two people attending in person and the two boost teams there by Leophone. Fatima gave a brief introduction on the purpose of the meeting and then said that Kiyoko would speak next. Fatima went to her chair and Kiyoko came up and stood on the small stage. In her hand she carried a large and heavy wooden paddle. She then made a hand signal for Jessica and Diego to join her. They quickly complied, and with their backs to the audience, they both knelt on all fours and then lowered their heads to the ground, leaving their rumps positioned up in the air. Diego looked very solemn and Jessica had tears in her eyes.

Kiyoko started to speak while Amber passed out random numbers from 1 to 58 within the crowd. Kiyoko reminded everybody of the importance of the decision they were about to make, and how in keeping with their Society's tradition the vote ahead of them would not be done by secret ballot. People had to assume social responsibility for the decisions they made.

Kiyoko asked them to vote their true conscience and to make their decisions by what they thought would be best for their Society. Everyone had had ample opportunity to link with Jessica and Doug in the past month, even the people now in the Bee Park. It was time to decide, and except for Kiyoko going first to describe the process, the vote would be in random order. People in the Bee Park were asked to name a friend present in the room who would execute their vote by proxy.

And the vote would be taken by the paddle and the hand, and in this Jessica and Doug were completely agreeable. Members were encourage to stand and explain their feelings first and then to vote. To strike with the paddle would be a vote to reject and to banish, and to pet would be a vote for acceptance. Kiyoko then turned and stood between Doug and Jessica. She faced the audience and spent several graphic minutes describing her rapes by both Diego and Jessica, and then her time with them afterwards after Ricardo's death.

At the end of her speech, she turned to Doug and bent down and caressed his rump, a single slow pet down the length of his left butt cheek over his pants and then another down his right cheek. Then she turned and petted Jessica in a similar manner, caressing the wool skirt that covered Jessica's thin rump. The vote for forgiveness cast, Kiyoko left the paddle on the floor between Doug and Jessica and returned to her seat.

Holly was holding the number 2 in her hand and with shaking steps she went next. She went on stage and picked up the paddle, facing the audience and just staring for a moment, the pregnancy in her womb visible for all to see. Holly said she was not one of Diego's rape victims, that the muchachos picked her so often Diego never got a chance to rape her. But she saw him running the pussy barn as chief gatekeeper, and he would often ogle her as she was led to her nightly horrors.

Holly then described how she lived in terror of her hoof-pussy procurement assignments. She remembered the awful catcalls the frat boys would make as she was led out of the barn wearing only a bra and panties, and then she would work a brutally hard day pulling sleds knowing that before she could rest, Jessica's slimy fingers would be sliding around inside her rectum.

With tears in her eyes, Holly then spoke briefly of what she felt from her linkages now with Doug and Jessica with the power relationships reversed. It was powerful boosted mind to vulnerable unboosted mind. Holly finished by saying she knew she had only one vote that would count but she was going to vote twice anyway, once on her own and once to represent the child within her. She then turned to Jessica and caressed her with four long strokes, two on each of her butt cheeks. Holly turned to Doug and expressed a similar double vote for forgiveness.

The third person to vote was Lynn, who had just returned from the Bee Park two days ago. She announced that she would also be voting for Oona later in the ceremony. Lynn then spoke briefly of her own decision, and then turned to caress the two kneeling people beside her.

And the voting continued. Fatima gulped when Eugene came up as the fifth person. Would this be the first rejection? Eugene stroked Jessica's rump with a smile on his face and then picked up the paddle and stared at Doug with a hard frown. The room was absolutely silent.

Eugene turned and looked at his girlfriend Cindy across the room. She just shrugged. Eugene gave his head a quick shake as if to say, "That's not good enough!", and then he tilted his head in the customary way for offering to link.

Fatima was astounded. Cindy and Eugene were linking while standing about eight meters apart. No one had ever managed to link across such a distance, but this couple was clearly doing it. A moment later Eugene returned to objective time. He sighed deeply and bent down and gave two light taps on Doug's rump with the back of his hand. The paddle would remain unused.

After the tenth vote, Jessica began to wail unashamedly as she lay on the floor. By this time both she and Doug had collapsed and were lying prone, collapsing not from the physical effort of kneeling but from the emotional stress of accepting forgiveness. So far no one had condemned them.

The ceremony lasted almost to midnight. People took the time to air their grievances and their decision processes. The final tally was fifty-eight to zero. Jessica and Doug entered the Bee Park on December 4th, the final two Society members in need of boosting.

And now it was three days later. Mark smiled a bit as he noticed the wind shifting to blow from the east. That usually meant a quick clearing. And Kelly's group were scheduled to leave the Bee Park tomorrow, leaving Jessica and Doug alone for the final four days of their boost. Each of the four women had asked for a different man to help with their post boosting adjustments. Jordan had asked for Mark, and he was looking forward to it. Mark sighed and got back to the work at hand. Earlier this morning he had discovered how to trace executive priority threads within the interface's decision loops. The work was revealing some fascinating stuff.

An hour later…

Jada walked into the quiet library a few minutes after solar noon. She was carrying a lunch tray with two sandwiches, chips and drinks and she gave Mark a big smile as she place the tray near him. "Husband," she said with a bow while taking one of the sandwiches.

"Wife," Mark grinned and bowed likewise as he took the other. He took a big bite. "Wow! You make the best sandwiches!" he attempted to say with a big mouthful.

Jada just smiled. "Oh, I bet you tell that to all the girls you marry!" And then she looked at his monitor with a critical eye. "Looks like you've been having a productive morning."

"Yeah, sure have. Take a look at this." Mark typed and also gave a few verbal commands between bites. A moment later a new diagram filled his screen. "This is the very top level of the employment attributes matrix. Take a look at the time coordinates."

Jada studied the display for a moment. "According to this, executive positions were absolutely not supposed to open up until… Am I reading this right? We were supposed to wait six years after coming here?"

"Yep, exactly right, and we'll still have to wait that long for the others. Now look at this thread for the position of Acting Director of Astronomy."

Jada studied the screen and frowned. "Where did this come from? It's not part of the original matrix. Some kind of add-on?"

Mark nodded. "That was my impression too. And here's something really fascinating. I can take the origin point of the thread and cross reference its ID with interface decision logs. I've converted the internal clock to our calendar. Take a look at the time index."

Jada stared and then shivered. "My God!" she exclaimed. She was staring at a time stamp of Sunday, October 3, 2019 1:46:53 PM. "That's about an hour before Ricardo died, isn't it?"

Mark nodded. "I talked with Jessica about this a half hour ago. We have it nailed down. Jessica's thinks the time stamp might be seconds away from when all the doors on her bathroom artwork popped open."

"Wow…" whispered Jada deep in thought. "The plot thickens. I guess a critical question is, was it the interface that did this or some other entity?"

Mark sighed. "I'm not sure, but if I had to guess, I'd say not the interface. Look at these control matrixes. Look at the decision flows. They are absolutely not designed to accept these kinds of modifications. Look at what the added thread did. There are massive amounts of damage here, here, and… here."

"So it was a hack job?"

Mark frowned and then shrugged. "That doesn't seem right either. For the modifications to work, the designer would need…" Mark paused deep in thought. "What am I saying? Jada, it would take me a lifetime of study before writing something like this. I don't get it. But I think it does rule out the possibility of human intervention."

Jada nodded. "That's a major piece of information. Congratulations Mark. And nobody else could have discovered this, right?"

Mark nodded with a touch of sincere sadness. "I wish I could delegate executive authority but I can't."

Jada sighed. "I know, and it does you credit that you're not happy about keeping your godlike powers all to yourself." She then gave him a small grin. "But maybe this shows Fatima had a point about keeping you on your leash."

Mark suddenly looked a bit worried. "I hope this isn't giving you ideas."

Jada grinned again and shook her head no. She was referring to their leader's decision to prohibit Mark from investigating the Blue Mall area, and without a Blue Mall janitor, the search teams were currently unable to explore large sections of the surface. Mark's authority of course was much greater than a janitor's, but Fatima decreed that his executive ability was so priceless she would not risk him on away missions. Fatima though would not be leader forever. Her term as ruler would expire in eight days, on the sunless noon of January 1, 2020.

The Society had been hammering out the construction of a new provisional government for the last two months. The next leader would have almost as much power as Fatima and be elected for three years (72 weeks), and he or she would have the momentous job of overseeing the creation of the Society's permanent government. The vote would be taken in five days, the evening after Doug and Jessica returned from the Bee Park, and Jada was running for the office. She had been campaigning ever since her release from Wobanakik, campaigning even from the Bee Park, and there was such widespread support for her that so far she was unopposed.

Two nights ago on their scheduled night together, Jada and Mark had linked after coitus. Their thoughts turned to the coming elections and Mark's desire to explore. "I remember a quote from Joseph Stalin," Jada thought within their link. "The graveyard is full of indispensible people."

Mark projected the construct of raising his eyebrows at the thought.

"We all have our unique contributions to make. I'm not Fatima Mark. I won't keep you on a leash. That is, of course," She batted her mental eyebrows playfully, "if you'll vote for me!"

"Think you can handle the pressure for three years?" Mark thought back, only half in jest. "Fatima had the job for one year, and she is really looking forward to being an ordinary citizen again."