The 2024 Election

THE 2024 ELECTION

I went to the polls this past Wednesday to vote in the 2024 Election. 

I think we can all, regardless of our political beliefs, agree that this is the most important election of our lifetimes, perhaps in the entire history of our nation, even of the human race. Hence, I wanted to make sure to participate fully in the event by voting early.

The week before, I had received in the mail a missive from the pro-turnout Super-PAC "Democracy in Action." The ad featured a grainy photograph of me, taken apparently from across the street near my house, and pinned to an ordinary piece of lined paper. Above the photograph, scrawled in black marker, was the message: "IF YOU DO NOT VOTE WE WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY." 

Since the Pandemic, the roads I would ordinarily take to get to the polling site have been "Closed for Repair," blocked off with yellow tape and barbed wire and barricades and medical checkpoints. To get there now means a dangerous journey down the River; and as I lacked the requisite funds to hire the well-armored personnel transports that serve most voters in my generally upscale neighborhood, I had to make do with one of the "General Admission" voting ferries sponsored by Bain Capital, LP as part of a get-out-the-vote effort ultimately masterminded (according to Internet rumor) by Kamala Harris' husband's aunt's former accountant, now the CEO of an Albanian arms company with ties to the UAE. 

I set out just before dawn so as to arrive at the jetty in time for the scheduled 7:15 AM departure time; but as it turned out, the ferry was nearly three hours late, arriving just after 10 AM. When I first arrived at the jetty, there were only a few elderly women there, apparently Kamala Harris campaign volunteers, dressed in oversized, lime-green t-shirts worn down to their ankles, clustered around a large pot of stew stirring and adding herbs from fanny packs around their waists. One of them offered me a cup of soup, but as I had already eaten breakfast I refused. 

After about half an hour, a few apparent voters arrived, one an old man dressed in rags, barefoot, with a long grizzled beard, wearing a MAGA hat on his head; the other a tall, thin young woman bundled up to her eyes in blue-tinted furs, who (after eagerly accepting a cup of soup) eyed me suspiciously and sat crosslegged on the ground at the far end of the jetty. The morning was cool and dim, and fog shrouded the banks all around the jetty. From time to time, I pulled out and checked the sample ballot in my pocket, or sat and watched the huge, dark shapes moving in the water below. 

When the boat had still not arrived at 9:30, I found myself hungry once again, and belatedly approached the old women, who eyed me eagerly, licking their lips "C-could I have some soup please?" I stammered. 

The tallest of the old women, with rank, black hair that might have been dyed, dipped a cup of the soup out of the cast-iron pot, began handing it to me, then stopped, her eyes going dark, and hissing out of suddenly pressed lips: "Which side are you on?" I said nothing, and after another moment she smiled again and handed me the cup of soup. There was no spoon.

The soup had been cooking on an open flame for hours, and by this time had something of the consistency of glue--but its pungent flavors of sage and rosemary reminded me irresistibly of long summer evenings on the patio at Luigi's Pizza, and I wolfed down the whole cup in a matter of minutes. 

A few minutes after 10 o'clock, the jetty was abruptly flooded with passengers, all, male and female, clad in the loose brown tunics and smocks typical of peasants in the lowlands, many with campaign buttons pinned onto the smocks, and all bearing pilgrim's staves and large rucksacks. A few had led mules or donkeys, but all pointedly refused the old women's offer of soup. Some wandered sociably around the jetty from end to end, while others sat with their feet swinging off the end and throwing stones or pieces of bread from their rucksack into the water for the monsters below; but all talked loudly with each other about the election, the journey, and the latest poll forecasts and modeling from FiveThirtyEight. 

The young woman, meanwhile, had gotten up and fled to the old women, who spoke to her and stroked her hair comfortingly while (almost imperceptibly) pulling off small pieces of it to add to their pot. 

A few minutes later, when the ferry at last came into sight, the assembled passengers broke into raucous applause, cheering and throwing their rucksacks or bits of bread into the air. The day was cool, dark, and misty, so at first the yellow light streaming from the ferry was so overwhelming that I had to shield my face with my hand.

When my eyes adjusted, I realized that the ferry was in fact a fully functional McDonalds restaurant, set somehow to float on the river, moving soundlessly and deliberately towards the jetty with no visible means of propulsion. As it drew near, the glass door slowly opened, and the passengers began boarding, leaping over the small gap left between the jetty and the door, several falling into the water, and crowding into the interior, filling the booths, the tables, the bathrooms, and the kitchen, with several even climbing onto the counter to stand or sit. 

By the time I boarded, I was forced to cram myself up against the wall next to the door, beside the old man in the MAGA hat; as the ferry pulled away, I stared out the glass wall at the passengers swimming desperately after us in the water below and the old women beginning to dance around their cooking pot, silhouetted by the sunshine through the mist and the flames beneath.

"Do you want anything to eat?" I jumped; a tall blonde woman wearing a headset and a Cheeto's-branded orange jumpsuit had appeared noiselessly at my elbow. She was holding a silver tray covered in wrapped paper parcels roughly the size and shape of hamburgers. The soup had been less filling than I had expected, so after a brief hesitation I nodded. The woman smiled broadly and handed me one of the parcels, then disappeared into the crowd again. 

I carefully unwrapped the wax paper surrounding my meal, only to find that the entire parcel was in fact a series of political ads wrapped over each other and generously salted. At the center of the parcel, an old man with a curled wig, dressed in ermine furs and wearing a crown on his head, glared at me from a wrinkled paper bearing the legend "LIES LIES LIES." 

I dropped the parcel in disappointment, and looked down just in time to a see a brown-clad hand snatch it away. I hope they enjoyed it.

"Young man..." I looked up to see the old man stroking his beard, watching me with a pensive smile on his face. I smiled encouragingly at him. "I'm sure you won't mind me asking...I know it's a sensitive question, and believe me, no one has more respect for civil discourse than I...but I'm so impressed to see a young man like you valuing the civic process so much." He paused expectantly, still stroking his beard. "Who are you planning to vote for?"

"Oh," I said, "I'm planning to write in a third party candidate."

I turned back towards the interior of the restaurant, where the passengers were beginning to pull ketchup and mustard packets off the shelves and boxes behind the counter, throwing them into the air and catching them in their mouths. I thus missed the crucial moment when the old man pulled a knife from and lunged at my chest. 

Luckily, the McDonalds rocked at that moment; as the entire structure turned over, I caught just a glimpse of a smooth, dark bulk moving in the water beneath, and then of the old man, thrown off balance, missing his thrust by a foot and tumbling straight into the crowd of tunic-clad passengers. A second more, and he had disappeared in a forest of hands and brown robes without a sound. 

I drew a deep breath, and turned to look out the now righted glass wall by my head. The sun was fully risen now, but the day had dawned grey and cold and misty; fog rose from the surface of the water on every side, yellow-tinged from the McDonald's sign and lights, blocking any view of land.

"I can't believe it." With a start, I realized that the fur-clad woman from the jetty was now standing by my ear. Her head was covered with a fur hat down below her brows, and her fur coat was pulled above her nose, so all I could see of her face were her brilliant green eyes. 

"I'm sorry," I said. "Believe what?"

She looked at me impassively. "What they're planning to do to us if they win." She shivered despite her furs. "I'm just so afraid, you know? All the time. Of them."

I shook my head in confusion. "Who are you talking about?"

"Them." Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You're not one of them, are you?"

"Of course not," I said. 

She looked relieved. "Good." She looked out the window pensively at the grey sunlight and the mist rising from the river. "You can't be too careful these days."

I nodded, and for a second we looked out the window in silence. In the misty dark, I caught a glimpse of a sudden, brilliant orange light. Then, a moment later, there was another one; then another. 

"Did you see that? What are those? Fires?" I asked, speaking out loud more to carry on the conversation than anything else.

"Those are the ads," she explained. "If you listen closely, you can hear them." She pressed her ear, still covered by fur, to the wall, and after a second I did the same. It took me nearly a minute, but slowly, as if from a great distance, I heard the whispering voices:

"...taxes crime war taxes crime war taxes crime..."

"...punished punished must all be punished we must all be punished punished punished..."

"...economics expertise knowledge science..."

"...only an expert can deal with the problem and only an expert can deal with the problem and..."

"...radical extremist populist radical extreme popular extremism radicals..."

"...fallen, fallen, and become the abode of..."

"...open borders closed borders open borders closed borders open borders closed..."

"...kill them all kill them now kill them before they kill you kill them it's alright I'll let you do it I'll do it for you kill kill kill..."

With a low hum, the lights in the McDonalds dimmed, and I looked up in surprise. 

All this time, it seemed, a circular table had been hanging over our heads, suspended by steel cables from the ceiling. Around this table, a few dozen men and women in dark suits sat in chairs attached to the table by their armrests, their faces occluded; and in the center of the table was a projector pointed straight at the ceiling, partly blocked by the table but mostly visible from my vantage point.

The slideshow was flickering almost too fast to follow, but appeared to consist of a series of maps with lines and arrows of various colors moving and shifting in animated motions, accompanied by satellite imagery of destroyed towns and cities, graphs with lines in numerous colors, and pictures of dead men and women and dying and dead children lying on the ground or surrounded by rubble. A voice, or perhaps several voices, narrated in a low, rapid murmuring monotone:

"...existential threat to democracy existential threat to democracy existential threat to democracy existential threat to democracy existential threat to democracy existential threat to democracy existential threat to democracy existential..."

Then there was an odd electrical noise, and the slideshow and all the lights in the McDonalds both cut out abruptly; and for a moment all that could be seen were the distant pinprick lights of fires along the banks of the river, coming from every side through the glass walls; and inside, only a dim melee of figures. Something large and dark moved outside; and then in a moment we were surrounded by roaring lights and fires, motor boats racing by filled with men clad in armor or stripped naked and painted, all roaring at the tops of their voices.

The woman at my side screamed. "Oh no," she said. "They found us."

Then the sound of roaring and motors receded in the distance, the lights flickered on again, and I found that we had arrived at our destination. I was pushed out onto the shore by the pressing mass of voters before I had even taken stock of our location.

The early voting site for my province, it turned out, was a Panera Bread inside an abandoned indoor shopping mall near the Interstate Exit. The entrance to the mall featured shattered glass doors, outside of which a motley crowd of about a hundred voters, protesters, and campaigners were gathered. Three camouflage-clothed soldiers carrying rifles guarded the doorway, checking IDs and admitting people one by one through the doors. 

As I waited my turn, a man dressed all in black ran to me and whispered in my ear, "Don't believe what they told you," then raced away again. Another man handed me a blank white piece of paper. To my right, a man in long white robes shouted through a megaphone, again and again, "Fleeting fragile temporary corruptible fleeting fragile temporary corruptible fleeting fragile temporary corruptible fleeting fragile...Then I was pushed forward by a voter behind me, my ID in my hand, and the soldier gestured me through without a glance.

The line for the polls stretched from the doors through the darkened interior of the mall, lined on each side by empty storefronts and torn ads. I was crammed between the young woman in furs, who was humming an ad jingle to herself, and a young man with a peasant's smock and an odd, feathered hat. Behind us, on the wall, a torn advertisement showed a young crew-cut man smiling next to a woman in a bikini, both several times our height. The line did not appear to be moving, but the young woman turned to me encouragingly.

"Really," she said, "it's a privilege to be able to do our civic duty."

I nodded, but did not respond; and after a few minutes of expectant waiting she turned to the man in front of her. A few minutes more, and they were deep into an animated conversation on historical polling errors, their heads bent together, whispering loudly and shooting occasional glances at me. I turned away.

It was only then that I first consciously noticed the dim figures moving in the darkness inside the empty shop beside us. I started; and heard a strange low, humming noise thrumming through the walls and ceiling. I turned to the man and woman; but they were still deep in conversation, and after a moment's hesitation, I turned out of the line and walked to the shattered door of what had once been a Victoria's Secret, and stepped inside.

The large, empty room had been emptied of shelves and carefully stripped of all advertisements; lingerie and ads and other merchandise of many kinds, gathered seemingly from all across the mall, had been piled into a large heap in the center of the room and was burning slowly and smokelessly, casting a flickering yellow light across the walls and the dark figures surrounding the fire on every side. They were standing still with lowered heads and eyes and chanting in low voices in alternating strophes:

“Usquequo iudicabitis inique
et facies peccatorum sumetis?

Iudicate egeno et pupillo,
humilem et pauperem iustificate.

Eripite pauperem
et egenum de manu peccatoris liberate.

Nescierunt neque intellexerunt, in tenebris ambulant;
movebuntur omnia fundamenta terrae."

I watched for several minutes, transfixed despite myself; then I belatedly remembered myself and, turning, realized that the line had moved; the woman I had been standing with was now nowhere in sight. I stepped to the door, but now found my way blocked by a tall, cleanshaven man with a tonsured head, dressed all in black.

"I'm sorry," I said, a note of panic in my voice. "I have to get back in line. I'm voting today."

The man looked at me sadly, bowed his head, and whispered in my ear. "Dilexi iustitiam et odivi iniquitatem; propterea morior in exilio." I brushed past him and tried to return to the line.

There was now no one in sight; and, filled with sudden panic, I began running through the darkened mall, tripping several times over the abandoned signs and shopping carts, falling onto piles of dusty, rotted clothes, slipping on garbage swarming with cockroaches, cutting my left hand on broken glass. In the darkened mall, the Panera Bread was the only thing illuminated; it shone through the darkness from a great distance, luminous and ethereal. I ran to it, babbling incoherently in open fear, tripped once more, and fell inside.

The space was much larger than I had expected; but that may have been in part an illusion caused by the fact that it had been entirely partitioned into a maze-like series of corridors and cubicles that effectively blocked my vision of both the walls and the ceiling. About a foot from the front entrance, an old woman with short hair dressed in a long brown robe and holding a loaf of bread painted with a human face smoked impassively and stared down at an iPad in her hand.

"You here to vote?" she asked, without looking up.

"Yes," I said. I hesitated. "Should I...?"

She pressed a button on her iPad, and all the lights in the Panera Bread flickered off. A second more, and a series of small red lights, a bit like an airplane runway, had flickered on in the floor beneath my feet.

"Follow the path," she said, her face illuminated from below in red and by the orange glow of her cigarette tip. "Thank you for voting." She stroked the bread idly with one finger.

I looked at her in silence for a moment, then set out into the maze, my head lowered, following the red lights in the floor. Every five feet or so, I passed the closed door of what was apparently a separate cubicle; inside each one, I could hear whispering, the clanking of iron, and occasionally a low, scratching noise like a tree branch rubbing against the window. As it turned out, however, I was destined for no such cubicle, but for a narrow, dark slice of counter separated by grey dividers, presumably part of the original Panera Bread. 

As I approached the darkened counter, a green-hooded lamp turned on, and I saw an impassive, thin man in a black suit standing next to a black-painted iron machine with a wide mouth leading down into a chute behind the counter. As I stepped forward, he reached behind the counter, drew out a sheet of paper, and put it in front of me. After another second, he handed me a pen.

I looked down at the first page of the ballot. It read:

(1) In your considered opinion, how much purity should the steel-derived carbides used in the neck flanges of Model E-67-Bs evince?

(a) 15% (b) 23% (c) 92% (d) 152%

(2) Should Line 6 of Paragraph 8726b of Regulation J12B65 of the Code be altered from "the overall framework" to "in case of emergency"?

(a) Yes (b) No (c) Maybe

(3) Which of the following Experts should decide whether you and your loved ones achieve happiness or suffer eternal pain?

(a) Donald Rogers (b) Rogers Donald (c) Mary Smith (d) Name Withheld

(4) Who would you prefer to die this year?

(a) Your elderly white Democratic-leaning neighbor who served in the Marines during Operation Desert Storm and after that worked as a hairdresser (b) Your middle-aged African-American libertarian bridge partner (c) A complete stranger of indeterminate ethnicity who has just cut you off on the highway (d) Your spouse

(5) There is an infant ON MY PROPERTY. May I kill it?

(a) Yes (b) Sometimes (c) Only by means of a fully licensed technical expert following a lengthy pre-approval process (d) 34%

(6) Which of the following actions in your opinion constitute war crimes? (YOU MAY SELECT MORE THAN ONE OPTION)

(a) Dropping a single 2000-pound bomb on a school containing 500 children and 3 terrorists (b) Dropping 16 500-pound bombs with attached white phosphorous payloads on an open field containing 13 terrorists, 13 adult male civilians, 11 adult women civilians, 23 children, 3 dogs, 1 cat, 1 church, 1 mosque, and one computer containing detailed plans for a terrorist attack. (c) Annihilating one minor ethnic group and/or religion in its entirety (consisting of NO MORE THAN 1 million persons) and in so doing bringing a permanent end to an Existential Threat to your people, nation, ethnicity, religion, and/or Way of Life, (d) A pervasive sanctions regime enacted against a small "rogue nation," leading indirectly to the deaths of approximately 1 million people from starvation, malnutrition, and/or untreated disease. (d) A fully AI-piloted drone with a complete, legally valid liability contract flown into an office building with a payload of 50 pounds of TNT, reducing the overall Threat Level from Orange to Green. (e) Detonating a 500 megaton tactical nuclear device on a crowded subway at rush hour in the capital city of our nation's foremost geopolitical adversary, giving us a 'significant advantage' (e) Destroying with fire from heaven everyone in a great city containing 5 just persons.

(7) What is the problem?

(a) Them (b) The Others (c) Us (d) You

(8) Please sign the below statement, preferably in blood: "I solemnly swear by whatever gods or masters I possess that I fully consent to and agree with and identify with and take absolute moral responsibility for all actions undertaken by 'My Government and Duly Authorized Representatives' for 4 years from the present date, with the exception of any action taken by my duly registered 'Other Side.'"

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS BALLOT CONTINUES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS PAGE

I duly filled in the bubbles and signed the paper, then turned the ballot over. The other side read simply:

How many must die so that you may live?

I pondered for a moment, wrote down "5," and handed the ballot to the man, who stamped it and placed it into the mouth of the machine. 

"Wait," I said. "What about the presidential election? Where can I vote for that?"

The man only smiled, and the lights went out again, and the red lights illuminated a pathway to my left, past the counter and into the rear of the restaurant. There was a door in front of me; I turned the handle, and opened onto a small, carpeted storeroom lit by a single fluorescent light on the ceiling. I stepped in, and the door shut. I heard the lock click behind me.

There were three figures in the room; and it was only after several seconds had gone by that I realized they were all animatronics, remaining completely still without breath and whirring slightly as their heads followed my movements. One depicted Joe Biden, slumped over, his eyes closed, dressed in red robes and seated in a striped beach chair; there was a brilliant golden ring on his right hand. The other two were facsimiles of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, wearing identical blue pantsuits and watching me with bright smiles on their faces. Trump was the first to speak:

"Well, young man," he said. "It's time to decide."

"Decide what?" I asked.

"Why, which of us you want to have the power, of course," Kamala said, reassuringly. "What unites is so much greater than what divides us."

"I'm sorry, what power?" I asked, panic creeping into my voice.. "What power am I giving you?"

Neither Trump nor Kamala spoke; but after a second, the supine figure on the beach chair stirred and opened one of its eyes feebly. "Son," it said. "It's the power to destroy the world. Whenever we want. For any reason at all. Nuclear fire. The end. Et cetera. Bunch of malarkey if you ask me; but someone's gotta do it."

Trump's smile widened, but the rest of his plasticine face did not alter. "Take the ring off his hand and give it to me. I'm fighting for you."

Kamala's animatronic face seemed designed only to smile, but her AI-generated voice darkened noticeably. "It's time to turn the page. Move forward. Give it to me."

Biden whimpered, loud and high-pitched, and clutched feebly at his head. "Please...don't take it way from me. It's all I have...please."

I stepped to him and reached for his hand; he tried to pull away, but his skin was like chalk and the animatronic hand could barely lift itself, let alone resist my grip. I pulled the ring off his finger; and with a final, grinding noise the animatronic collapsed into plastic and paper and cardboard and dust at my feet.

I stepped back in shock, staring at the ring in my hand. 

"Very good!" Kamala said, her smile and face still precisely the same, her lips not moving. "We don't shy away from robust debate--robust debate. In fact, we like a good debate, don't we? We like a good debate."

"We will do something; we want it so badly. We're going to do something." Trump explained, his neck swiveling to stare at the ring in my hand.

“It is time to stop pointing fingers," Kamala added. Her hand was reaching, slowly, towards my own. "We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America.”

I looked down at the ring; and after a second, dropped it on the floor. The light in the room went off; and after a second, I heard the door unlocking behind me. When I went back out into the corridor, the lights in the floor were off; but I could see the light under the door leading apparently out of the restaurant. I stepped through it. 

As I came outside, I found, to my surprise, that the trash-covered field by the highway had been filled with soldiers, dressed in camouflage, armed, and standing in ranks, blocking a milling crowd of voters from reaching the path back to the ferry. On the river, a military transport had pulled alongside the McDonalds and the interior was now filled with uniformed figures.

In the center of the field, carefully guarded by the soldiers, was the small group of two- or three-dozen men and women, dressed in identical black suits, that had been seated at the round table aboard the ferry. They were now standing, their arms crossed, surrounding on either side two effigies, made of straw and crudely painted to resemble Trump and Kamala, and talking to one another in low voices. As I watched, however, their conversation seemed to reach a breaking point; one or two, and then more of the suited men and women were raising their fists and shouting names at each other, and after a minute I realized that they were shouting "Trump" and "Kamala." As I watched, they began dividing into two groups, surrounding the two effigies, clothing them in purple curtains, putting Burger King crowns on their heads and sunglasses on their faces, and lifting them high over their heads, continuing to shout all the while.

A second later, and the field had erupted into a violent melee, the suited people leaping at each other, beating and kicking, biting and gouging, writhing on the ground. Then the soldiers opened fire; and in an instant the field was full of people screaming, stampeding, running in every direction, stumbling over each other to get away. I saw the Kamala effigy go up in flames, its paper crown melting and charring; the Trump effigy was hit by a bullet, its head flying off to land amid the gather bodies. Then a voter loomed at me out of the darkness, bleeding from the head; and all went black.

I saw a great hill, set over a plain, silhouetted against the dark sky as shooting star after shooting star descended in flames. On the brow of the hill, a man dressed in white, with a heavy iron cross around his neck, was speaking loudly in a foreign language, shaking his fists at the sky, surrounded on every side by golden boxes painted with the faces of men and women. Below him, thousands of dark faces roared their approval.

I awoke to find myself lying painfully on the ground in a field filled with bodies and bullets and shells. The Panera Bread had been leveled by some kind of incendiary device, and shreds of burned and torn paper filled the air and covered the ground everywhere. I got painfully to my feet and headed home.

The ferry was nowhere to be seen, so in the end I elected to travel by aquarickshaw; but my confidence in having done my civic duty made the journey easy. 

I have since received a Voter Participation Award in the mail from Democracy in Action, a piece of golden plasticine paper entitling me to one free Starbucks Coffee at participating locations. I am now waiting eagerly for Election Day, when I intend to gather at the sacred bonfire while the wolves howl in the darkness around us and our Pundit throws bones and tells us of the movements of spirits and souls and cosmic powers that determine the fates of those on earth.

Oh yes; there is one more thing I almost forgot to say. While I was unconscious, there came into my mind, with absolute certainty, the name of the person who will win the election. But I can't tell you that yet.