Amber & Ice

Chapter 4: An alien attack on New Britain

That night, the campaign meeting was a heated affair. As the first meeting of the term, it would have been busy anyway, but recent events made it almost impossible to get a word in.

The room buzzed with voices suggesting theories as wild as they were varied. One boy suggested that the explosion had been rigged by smokers who were refusing to pay for their health care. Athena overheard another girl telling her friends that she had been reliably informed that it was the first phase of an alien attack on New Britain. Slightly more likely, but every bit as concerning, was the suggestion that it was linked to foreign terrorism. While others were still adamant that it had just been a freak accident.

One thing everyone agreed on, however, was that they had been robbed.

“We had this one in the bag.” Daphne was the leader of their Pop Campaign group. She stood before the assembled group of students in vibrant pink, orating passionately. “We cannot let anyone else make a mockery of our system like this. We need to send a strong message back to whoever it was by pushing this vote through - we want the results announced imminently and I want all of you to update the feeds now, demanding so.”

The room fell quiet for a moment, while the students updating the feeds with furious responses. They wouldn’t let all of their hard work go to waste.

“Why should we be paying for the Health Care of people putting themselves at risks? If smokers get sick because they smoke, they should be the ones paying for it.”

The crowd responded, grumbling their assent.

The Health Care vote had been the first national vote announced during the girls’ University careers. Its six months campaign time had made it particularly attractive. The other votes they had encountered in their first term had either been student votes; quick votes, which were usually on local or city affairs; or Pop votes on trivial, cultural topics, such as which bands should be played on the radio, which movies should be released and, of course, which colour everyone should be wearing for the foreseeable future. Pop votes were the only optional votes; not everyone chose to vote for all of them, although all of Athena’s friends did. Pop votes were an easy way of improving your influence, which was important if you wanted to start suggesting your own votes for the polls; the more influence you had, the more likely your idea was to be voted on.

The Health vote was as big and important as the girls could have hoped for. The only thing bigger than a National vote was a World one, and those were very rare. Even National votes would only come along every few months. Regional and Quick votes appeared every week and Pop votes daily.

One of the main obstacles direct democracy had come up against was voter apathy; what was the point in giving everyone the chance to vote, if only half of them did so? The system needed a way of publicly pressuring everyone to vote, so the lights had been invented. Regional and Quick votes triggered a violet light on the side of everyone’s feed-glasses, which only went out once a vote had been registered. National votes triggered a blue light and World votes an orange one. There was no light for Pop votes, since they were optional.

The system had been in place for long enough now that there was little need to use the lights, but they were kept none the less.

“Look at that!” Cress said quietly Athena, her eyes focused on the screen of her glasses.

Athena checked the feeds to see that the call for the health vote result was already the top topic. Not all of the credit for that could go to their group alone; all university campaign societies met at the same time each week, meaning that vote would get huge spikes in coverage.“We do not have a guest speaker this week,” Daphne continued to her crowd. “But we are hoping to have a representative from the Freedom Institute join us for the vote announcement. Until then, make sure that you keep updating the feeds. The result announcers will have to cave to public pressure - that’s the point of them!” She smiled before adding, “help yourselves to food and drink; we have the room for another half an hour, so please free-debate.”