by Brad Oh
The Election
By Brad OH Inc.
Copyright 2015 Brad OH Inc.
The Election
A Short Story by Brad OH Inc.
I arrived at the fourth annual United Corporate Global Election promptly at 9:47am, and immediately began to regret the flask of whiskey I’d surreptitiously quaffed on the commuter shuttle over. The ride had been a full 45 minutes, and as I’d been rushed at high velocity over the rooftops of the lower Bronx in the tiny tin compartment, the decision had seemed entirely justified.
Now, matters had changed. Shuffling along the fully enclosed commuter pad, I only barely managed to get my Citizen Spending Registration Card hung around my neck as a mass of humanity encased and funnelled me through huge revolving doors. Quick flashes of red light dotted my chest, no doubt registering my number and assuring I had the appropriate Citizen Spending Credit rating for admittance.
It wouldn’t matter here. Just a proactive effort to speed things up at the registration booth further down—a precaution that seemed insufficient, as the line crawled along at a snail’s pace.
“Holy hell,” I muttered to myself, “it’s even worse than I imagined.”
The walls, the floors, and even the ceilings were glaring neon screens, all competing against one another in a mad frenzy to sell whatever confounded products the Six Super-Corporations had for us today. They would be successful, I knew.
I’d never been to one of these grand affairs before. When the Corporate Suffrage bill had passed I’d been in the midst of a frenetic bender in Laos, and the entire period was a bitter and scattered memory. Since then, I’d been rambling along, bouncing around tiny Caribbean islands and nations too impoverished to give a good god damn about meaningless international elections.
This lifestyle had afforded me no shortage of human interest stories to cover. But these were trivialities, and the entire time I knew in my heart that I was skirting the real issues; chasing them out of my mind with drink, and turning a blind eye to the worry lines creeping across my once enthusiastic countenance.
The elections were always a point of interest, but a freelance journalist is always on the move, and seldom do circumstances conspire to allow our ilk to write what we please.
A hopelessly trite job posting in the Big Apple had changed all that, however, and I’d jumped at the opportunity. Now I advanced one half-step at a time, thrilled with the prospect of reaching the heart of the corporate beast I’d been avoiding for the last four years—exposing it to the elements and the wild, and letting the flies do their work.
In all honesty, it’s a pretty good time to be a writer. People will eagerly devour anything that lights up their screens without a second thought. It makes for an active story market, and the truth is as good a story as any. Besides, someone’s gotta tell it.
“Scan your card.” The voice took me by surprise. I’d been lost in my ruminations, and had failed to perceive the registration booth finally close in. The man speaking sat in a big round chair. It wrapped around him as if the plastic itself was molded to his swollen form, and his words came from jiggling jowls of a sickly pallor.
“Scan your card,” he repeated monotonously.
I leaned into the porcelain counter and offered my host the most charming smile I could manage. “Duke O’Brady, here from ‘Citizens United E-Magazine’ to report on the election.”
The unbearable irony of the magazine’s name had always bothered me, but my lamentations had fallen on deaf ears during my single visit to the central office.
“Our name was designed to incite feelings of harmony and safety,” the young lady had told me as if from a placard held just behind my head.
“It always had been, that’s the damn problem,” I’d insisted, but I was getting nowhere fast, and I knew it.
“Scan your card,” the bloated man repeated once again. I couldn’t be sure whether he was unaware I’d been the same singular person the entire time, or if he simply lacked the training to alter his script even an iota. Furthermore, I didn’t care.
Scanning my card made a confirmatory beep, and the man waved me through.
“Finally,” I grumbled, filing along with the rest of the mob through a short glass hallway. Outside, trees stretched up tall and timeless, vines and bushes pressing against the glass as if nature itself conspired to return this world to its natural state.
“It’s beautiful,” a lady said to a tall, thin man beside her. But I’d overheard, and felt it my patriotic duty to get involved.
“It’s fake,” I explained matter-of-factly. I was too old and experienced to muster any false sympathy. “Just projections playing across the screens. They want you to feel optimistic, you didn’t see a damn forest when you walked in, did you?”
The woman frowned, shaking her head; a sorrowful Christian in the presence of an unbaptized street-urchin.
Patriotism had never gotten me anywhere.
Thinking back, it wasn’t fair to blame my drinking on the horrendous conditions of the commuter shuttle. Not entirely. It had been partially motivated by the nagging fear that whatever I was going to experience here would be such a terrible shock that it might be too much for my strained mental constitution, and cause me to crumble into a chattering mess. Then I’d most likely be scooped up by the nearest corporate rep and put on display like some atavistic half-man; mad with the overbearing weight of its own twisted reality.
Stepping out of the bright green passage-way, I knew immediately I’d under-estimated the state of affairs.
The space was massive beyond my wildest imagination. Certainly it had seemed gargantuan through the tiny stained windows as I’d swept over on my way to the commuter pad, but standing inside now was entirely overwhelming.
The United Corporate Global Election Center had been erected for the first event of its kind in 2023. Construction had started a full 7 months before the passing of the Corporate Suffrage bill, but this fact didn’t seem to interest many people these days.
Just as it was in the lobby, every visible surface was alight with propaganda. These were not political endorsements, nor were they scathing intellectual attacks on political opponents. Those were relics of the past which none but our most seasoned readers will recall.
“Feeling tired?” one screen chirped as I passed by. The screen dimmed noticeably as it spoke the words, and I could see the shoulders of everyone in its vicinity slouch with the change. “Get yourself an energy boosting ‘Super-Slam’, available at any G&E solicitations table.” With this, the screen and surrounding environment brightened, and all around me people straightened up. The most ambitious stood on trembling tip-toes, craning their necks and smiling broadly upon catching sight of a glaring G&E logo in the distance.
Then they were gone.
“Mother of misfortune,” I muttered absently, deciding immediately that I’d need another drink as soon as possible.
“Feeling worn thin? Get yourself a refreshing ‘Whiskey Wake-Up’, available at any Viacom solicitations table.”
I silently cursed the Big Six, and then shuffled off towards the gigantic orange ‘Viacom’ logo in the distance.
A hundred thousand clinking metallic voices were chirping from all around. The outer walls of the room were lined with the voting stations proper, their lengths segregated into equal portions for each of the six Core Corporations: G&E, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.
Once approved for voter eligibility—a simple process involving scanning your Citizen Spending Registration Card to prove you’d spent at least a little bit of money on one of the Big Six over the past year—a citizen was welcome to approach the booths at their leisure, allotting any of the dollars they’d spent towards whatever Leadership Traits that particul
ar corporation offered.
A hollow feminine voice spoke from one of the booths to my right. “Many voters appreciate a Lead Citizen who wears Nike clothing!” The woman standing at the booth tapped the screen excitedly. “You’ve chosen the Leadership Trait: ‘Wears Nike’, if this is correct, press 1,” the voice rattled, and the woman jumped up and down in her stupor.
“Must be one of the preferred choices,” I spoke sidelong to a lanky old man shuffling along beside me, hoping he’d share my reticence.
“Do you know at which booth I can vote for a sharply dressed leader?” he asked me with a distinguished accent, “preferably Versace?”
“Get out of here you fucking animal!” I shouted, and sent him scampering off to find his own way amid the squealing machines and pacified voters.
Among the Big Six, you could vote for just about any leadership trait you could dream of—they owned them all anyway. As long as you had Citizen Spending Credits to allot, you could design whatever sort of a leader you wanted.
Of course, there were pre-determined traits suggested as ‘Preferred Choices’. These were agreed upon by the Big Six in advance, and the little automated machines would spit out their trendy tips as if sharing hot insider information.
Half of me half-expected to find a curtain somewhere in the fray, ready to be pulled back at the end of the day revealing the new Lead Citizen of the United
