After the debate, especially the uncut special edition that kept getting pirated and put out on social media, my poll numbers went up. When asked about the program in large groups, people would form word clouds that were filled with words like ‘hit job’ and ‘farce.’ Axle came out of it looking inordinately weak. Unable to keep up in conversation, let alone accept the gravity of the times. The surety of collapse that we all faced.

A little fear did what it always did and drove views on the controversial media to market saturation heights. Suddenly soft, cozy trillionaires were concerned about their income streams, and were prepping their various bunkers again. I used a great deal of my own income stream to invest in the trends as they hit. It wasn’t hard; you see food spiking and buy shares in farmland.

I found my own orbital home on the market and bought it back, giving myself a place to live that was both outside of the world, and deeply connected to it. I could see the continents shift by beneath me in the gardens of my snow globe, which I claimed gave me special insight into their problems and issues while I stood in contemplation.

It was literally a snow globe too; I kept the climate settings at winter with a heavy snowfall. The machinery recycled the water, melting the bottom layer of it off the artificial lawn and refreezing it to make fresh snow. The effect made for better photos, with more obstruction and mystery. The orbital paparazzi kept drones outside of my house at all hours, so I leaned into it.

My rise seemed certain, Axle’s fall complete. All that was left was the election, so I gathered with Terna and the rest of my campaign staff at the orbital manor for an official event. For the special occasion, I set the weather to reflect a bright summer’s day outside, giving the press all the coverage they could use. Their various drones flitted about the outside of the dome, reminding me of curious ravens.

Justin Lee represented Midnight, his bright glowing eyes and oversized smile selling the attitude of the planet. Polite, restrained, but capable. His contributions to my campaign were the reason I could stand against Axle at all, when it came to ad buys, though in the last few days his fell off.

While I shared bottles of expensive champagne with my celebrity friends, including both of my recent exes, people on Nu-Earth signed into their super-secure, un-hackable voting app, on any device of their convenience. Dominance Voting controlled the app, and it was an associate of Silken Sands. The Knowle Leadership Council controlled the vote by hosting it every two years. It was kind of a social media event for the wealthy elites.

Everybody votes, and we see how much we all agree with one another.

Only this time a lot more people voted. As the night progressed, it became more and more clear that I would win the popular vote, by a margin not seen in Axle’s election since its inception. My gathered friends and the campaign staff present at my venue treated the evening with a party attitude, drinking and dancing to loud music in the manor and yard.

Axle arrived before midnight, surrounded as usual by his personal guard in power armor. My serving staff offered Axle champagne, but not his bodyguards. There was no point, it was well known they wouldn’t drink on duty.

My old friend approached me in the manor, eyes flashing at the celebration around him. He stepped up in front of me, blinked several times, then shrugged. “I’m here to concede,” he said.

I nodded. “Okay,” I replied. “What happens next for you?”

His mechanical eyes narrowed. “You know, a good portion of my Knowle Leadership Council is telling me to ignore the election. Some have even suggested you’ll have me killed.”

I frowned but nodded again. “I’m not surprised. Those in power are often paranoid, and often suffer from antisocial personality flaws. How do you feel about it?”

“We’ve had democratic elections for decades. It’s how our people feel like they have a hand in our affiliate decisions,” he replied. “But it’s never been serious before.”

“Well, you’ve conceded, so I can imagine what your conclusion on all of this was,” I said, cutting him off.

“What would you have done had I chosen not to honor this election?” he asked.

I grimaced and shook my head. “Waited and tried again,” I replied. “I meant that part too.”

“But things would have fallen apart, you claimed,” he countered.

I nodded again, slowly this time. “If I had to, I would have taken control of the situation,” I admitted. “Nonviolently if possible, but you know . . .”

“I do know,” he answered. “Please keep your word to me, old friend.”

I nodded. “As comfortable as you like, for as long as you like. Physically, anyway. I can't promise you’ll always enjoy my decisions about the affiliate. But it's not your problem anymore, I’m vetting candidates for a new operations manager as we speak. Silken Sands will never call on you again. You can rest.”

It was true too. I had a data collating company operating on my search parameters and compiling a list of potentials for me to go through.

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“Very well,” Axle said. He reached out and offered his paw to shake. I gripped his paw lightly, and my mind zoomed into the ad space. My reality had been replaced by a formal conference room, a long table of a dozen chairs, six to a side, filled with sapient beings in suits and ties. I sat at the one end of it, and Axle was on the other.

"Welcome to the formal merger-acquisition of Silken Sands, gentlemen," greeted a handsome hobb with slicked back hair. The walls pulsed around us once with his words, a sort of intaken breath that temporarily swirled golden data streams. One of the lawyers clapped his hands, and over the table between us a series of three-dimensional holographic displays appeared mid-air, each displaying visuals of Silken Sands’ most valuable assets while tallying numerical data about them on the right hand side.

"There is no need for the pomp, gentlemen," Axle said, standing from his chair. "Everything is to be ceded to Tyson Dawes. May his market decisions save us all." The Knowle vanished, and all of the lawyers turned towards me, their eyes stuck to my own. One of them, a human, stood and walked to my side.

“Tyson, the transfer of authority over Silken Sands is proceeding. Such a large merger can take time. However, with an upgrade to our Premium Deluxe package, one which you can now well afford, this can be done rather instantaneously. Especially given the lack of negotiations.”

He didn't bother to hide his predatory grin. Everyone knew what was what here, and the artificial delays and barriers built in to make acquisition a nightmare.

“Let me guess. A billion morties?” I asked. He nodded. "Do it. I can afford it, and the affiliate can't wait."

The lawyer gestured, and a cascade of data appeared above the table, all of the assets, debts, accounts and other innards of both affiliates zipping together until they were one. I scanned it once, saw nothing amiss, and snapped my fingers. A lawyer of my own scanned over it, before nodding at me and flashing out of existence.

“You understand that in this acquisition, you are assuming ownership of 97% of Silken Sands assets, with the remaining distributed among independent MortBlocks that are inalienable under Knowle Leadership Council protocols,” the human lawyer asked, his head cocked.

I nodded. “Yeah. There's always something. Let's just get this done with.”

Over the table, the data flashed, replaced by the symbol of Silken Sands, as the lawyers all stood and bowed in my direction. The human lawyer stayed behind, watching them impassively as they zipped out of the system.

“Congratulations, Windowpuncher. Silken Sands is yours,” he said, reaching out his hand. I shook it, and disappeared back to real space.

Axle had given me ownership of the affiliate back, ceding his own power over it in the same act. I promptly removed his name from the affiliate entirely and turned back to my party. Silken Sands was massive, covering hundreds of millions of direct associates. It was going to take me some time to wrap my head around, and I didn’t need to start right then and there.

Of course, a small part of my brain started working on the problem right away. Imagining possibilities and wondering about capabilities all at the same time. While I focused on my friends and guests, the back of my head swarmed with questions. Eventually I pulled up the affiliate page and interacted with people through it as they came and went.

Eventually Terna noticed and raised an eyebrow at me. She had come to the event in a cocktail dress with one armored pauldron. The message was clear, and before the news was even finished calling the election for me, BlueCleave was pulling out of Terna’s World.

Her own revolutionary forces went from waging a guerilla war of attrition to managing the daily security concerns of the affiliate within hours. The transition wasn’t seamless, and she had to return home to manage a thousand growing crises before the night was through, but it was hers again. I made sure to detach our affiliates, removing her associate status beneath Silken Sands. It was the first step to getting BuyMort off her world once more.

She had run a shrunken affiliate apparatus intentionally, back when I first met her. For a planetoid body the size of Terna’s World, the affiliate was quite small. Now that she was free of Silken Sands dominion, she would be able to slowly return to that. Sharecropper affiliates would slowly dissolve as land rights were passed on to those who operated it once more. Terna showed me her plan for my return, and I signed off on it without any notes.

I trusted her to do what was right. She and I also shared a common goal we didn’t want the public to know about; BuyMort’s eventual demise. Her world ship would be a critical ally in that process, and nobody knew better how to implement it.

Once my party was over, and the news of my victory and return to power had spread, I went to work. The tower in Prescott was still where Axle made his home, so I respected the top floor and allowed the penthouse to be an independent MortBlock. The rest of it I kept, including the roof and armored insulation in the ceiling above his penthouse.

My MortBlock was something I spent some time studying over the next few days. I owned the planet, the space elevator, and the space station above us. The moon was also mine, but everywhere I looked I saw independent MortBlocks carved out of it. Buildings, entire cities, and in one case, an entire crater on the dark side.

Beneath Silken Sands blanket ownership, tens of thousands of associates operated their own MortBlocks by their own rules. One of the first things I did as leader of Silken Sands was to restore our old standards and practices regarding employee MortBlocks. Lockers, shelves, rooms, and buildings started to become available to individuals once more as I consolidated overbearing affiliate holdings for myself.

Within two days of my ‘election,’ the homelessness problem in Los Angeles was down by fifty percent. MortBlock reform scared most of the associates operating under my umbrella into lowering rent prices. Those who refused were quickly targeted by Silken Sands parent affiliate realtors for aggressive MortBlock acquisition.

The Knowle Leadership council met a single time in the wake of the election and then disbanded. They just didn’t matter anymore, once I took my affiliate back, and they seemed to know it.

I couldn’t be cowed by tradition, bought by corruption, nor made vulnerable personally or professionally. My mastery of the media only grew the more they paid attention to me. Anytime I needed an affiliate conflict settled in my favor, and the opposite party was holding strong, I took it public and warped the narrative to my favor.

While those first weeks poured by, violence against me was common. A great deal of my own affiliate heads began to fear my sweeping changes, particularly when threatened financially. Fortunately, my friends were all well-protected, and distant enough from me that they weren’t good leverage if threatened.

Which meant all the ideology-based violence landed on me personally. I funneled it toward me when I saw it coming and made sure I traveled light to avoid BlueCleave casualties. The early days were the most violent, when agents from inside my own affiliate, equipped by great wealth and influence, made their attempts on my life.