Feast

Chapter 2 - Presemt Day, 2026

Carol Sealander walked up to the microphone. She never got tired of the hushed sound of everyone's conversations stopping and the warm feeling that having every eye on her gave her. Congress was her happy place. She knew that was a little pathetic, but she couldn't help that this was where she felt the most at home. She had done more than anyone could've imagined to earn her place here, she finally had all eyes on her.
'Ladies, welcome,' she began. 'Please allow me to take the time to thank all of you for joining us today. We have a lot of work to get done.'
Congress hadn't met in a month. The holiday season had just finished and this was the first meeting of the New Year. It was January 3rd, 2026. The meetings always began with an update on the state of things. The economy was on track for its ninth consecutive growth year. Despite backless threats from the bankers back in 2016 as they packed up their offices and were forced out, Wall Street did just fine. There had even been forecasts of doing much better without corruption and insider trading weighing it down, which turned out to be true.
By throwing out old economic layouts of political parties, Honor Westin had gathered a task force of financiers who were willing to look at all of the best and worst moves in economics around the world since the 1980s. And by not being too patriotic to refuse to copy other countries, and willing to admit massive mistakes her own country had made, the 45th president was able to devise a plan for the economy to finally benefit the people first, and the economy itself, second, without leaving space to benefit the largest private networks wanting a piece of the pie.
To the new administration's relief, the economy that benefited the public first supported itself quite well, with its citizens consistently able to put money back into the economy, and without tax loopholes for the wealthiest to put more weight on the working class. And to everyone's relief, the wealthy were just fine, albeit slightly less wealthy than before.
As Carol Sealander continued, the room full of women learned that taxes would be decreased for the third consecutive year. While this wasn't a promise to continue forever, it was certainly met with great appreciation from the citizens.
Honor Westin had combined several functions of Congress and the Supreme Court. Though even members of her own party were thrown at first by this move, Honor was adamant about bringing together an entire system that functioned together and was aware of the ongoings of the other. Being the two most powerful entities in the country, aside from Honor Westin herself, she felt they should be a cohesive machine, changing the country together.
The Supreme Court was made up of nine women of outstanding ethical and moral standing, who were all so well-versed in the law, each of them could be mistaken for the one who wrote it. Of course, some of them had, as so many laws had been presented by the women to Honor who knew the law best, knew how to forge it to work for its citizens and were willing to amend the very amendments that needed amending.
One of those women stood out early on to Honor, and she quickly became the figurehead of the Supreme Court. That figurehead, Judge Gomez, was a force to be reckoned with. She even intimidated some of the women she worked with, but she was by far the one anyone would be relieved to have on their side if things went sour.
'I'll let Judge Gomez go over some of the larger court cases we have coming up, then we'll break for lunch,' Carol stepped aside to make room for the Supreme Court Justice to pass by her, slightly bowing her head in the presence of someone as formidable as Judge Gomez.
Judge Gomez approached the podium. She garnered nearly as much respect as Carol Sealander did. It was immediately obvious how intelligent she was before she even spoke. She had a certain look to her that showed anyone watching that she was sharp and paid attention to everything around her. She calmly moved her long black hair behind her shoulder and cleared her throat.
'It goes without saying that repeat offenders have lessened greatly since Honor's presidency. However, we are seeing several of the same men in for similar offenses and frankly, it's becoming a waste of our resources to hold court cases for them every time the season changes. We can mull this over, but I propose putting the consequence of sterilization closer to them. I'm happy to hear other suggestions, but we need to act swiftly before they realize exactly what I've already noticed.'
'That could be years,' Congresswoman Marcia Dominski offered under her breath, yet loud enough for the whole room to appreciate it.
Judge Gomez chuckled into the microphone. Everyone, even the stern judge, enjoyed a sly dig at the men. Easy target or not, it didn't get old.
'Right, well either way we don't want to let this carry on. Let's continue to be proactive, ladies, and have a plan for tightening things up,' Judge Gomez returned to her serious expression, which everyone copied. She gave a curt bow of her head, which was her classic sign that she was finished talking as she stepped down from the podium.
Carol resumed her spot at the front of the room. 'Thank you, Judge Gomez, we'll have a think tank with Guiders on that and will be voting on options next month. With the prospect of more budget savings, we'll also be looking at a new number for our excess funds we'll want to allocate. I think it's safe to say that enough has been reinvested into profitable projects that we're set for the next decade or so.'
This was met with a polite round of applause. It had been Honor Westin's obsession at the start of her second term to be economically driven, not to benefit the government but rather the people. And it had worked, better than anyone had expected.
'We'll need the Guiders to find out what charitable causes are most meaningful to women at the moment,' Honor gave a nod to Liane and Eliza, who weren't actually members of Congress, but attended all major meetings to keep the gap between the government and the women of the Nation nicely bridged.
Carol dismissed the women for lunch and the afternoon was spent making plans for allocating more excess funds. The amount of revenue fueling the economy was sometimes hard to believe. Military spending had been reduced to almost nothing, which alone had generated trillions of dollars of savings. And for all the money the military put back into the country, it had been spending double that, so there really wasn't a financial loss at all.
Jokes had bounced around for years about what would happen if women were in charge of the most powerful countries of the world. That rather than wars and threats of nuclear destruction, there would just be a bunch of countries talking behind each other's backs. Although sexist, it turned out there was some truth to this. Disagreements that Honor Westin, and now Carol Sealander, had with other countries were never escalated to threats of violence, but rather talked out and mediated until some middle ground could be found. Whether or not a country's ideals aligned with their own, the women in charge didn't feel that violence would fix the issue, as it nearly never had. At least not at the cost of countless civilian lives and long term destruction, which the women felt was not worth it when peaceful discourse existed.
Initially, after Honor Westin took office, half of the seats in Congress and the Supreme Court were intended to be reserved for men, until it had been argued that there shouldn't be any seats required to be handed to men; they had never done the same for women after all. The people should choose who they wish to have representing them and the new Nation. Now that the voting population had been cut in half and men's occupations were limited, both Congress and the Supreme Court were without a single man, exactly the opposite of how it started.
How, might one ask, did men lose every seat in government and the right to vote? With a sexist remark and a poor agenda.