For most of the passengers of the Airbus A2070, the trauma created by the mars approach, deceleration, and orbital entry would haunt them for decades. Milly Wong, the CNN journalist was pivotal in creating and maintaining the hysteria. Sophie slept through all of it like a baby.
The attendant who had given her the sedative worried in silence. Once in a while, the woman would pretend to adjust her pillow but in fact, checked her pulse. Sophie was no ordinary person; others cared deeply for her. She cared.
Pushed by the laser, the Airbus slowed for hours until it reached three thousand kilometers per hour. It was then rotated on its x-axis, relative to the planet, to face the weak atmosphere for re-entry. The Light Drive reflector was folded back into the stern of the ship. Slowly some weightlessness returned inside the ship.
Wang made his way back to the cockpit from the engine room with his eye bandaged. The sight of passengers applauding the hero made for great television. He stumbled to get back. Judy would make fun of him for the rest of his life. He failed at doing nothing and would be a national hero for naming himself.
Outside, the long wings on the Airbus bent up slightly as the ship entered the low-density Martian atmosphere, plunging toward Olympus Mons. On the side in orbit floated a large laser and a deformed moon. The other was not visible yet.
With all the commotion and precaution, the A2070 was five hours late at reentry. The speed at which the ship dropped in the sky was surprising to most. In less than thirty minutes, the Airbus rolled in on the landing strip at the base of Olympus Mons. This wasn’t a light glide down, instead the trajectory felt like a rock falling from the sky.
The landing reception, initially scheduled was postponed. Normally the priority would have been the dead passenger or the wounded engineer, but instead the true priority of why these people had travelled millions of miles returned: Electoral 2072.
There was something much more important going on, a game set up by the Electoral game system called the Presidential Challenge. Ordinarily, there were scheduled interviews before the game. The passengers gladly gave up their televised arrivals for some peaceful time in their luxurious rooms. There would be time to climb to the hotel lobby once the Presidential Challenge was over. Each person had family members playing the Challenge, all others were watching tens of simulations of loved ones. Yes, a game played over the Internet was the number one importance. The national obsession had returned.
Electoral's broadcast, even in the wake of a life and death situation remained so compelling that the world paused to watch. The Presidential Challenge, played and organized by the Electoral 2072 software, would be epic. President Emilio Sanchez, a two-time winner, was preparing himself in his Berlin office for his performance. This was by far the largest fund-raising simulation ever held in the world. The passengers and remaining competitors were not allowed to participate.
Two security guards walked into the ship and took the sleeping girl from seat 1A. Judy wanted to object, but her authority had stopped with the Airbus. The men ignored the Captain and took the girl from her seat with the kindness of a parent. Sophie was a big girl, figured the Captain. Judy hoped the young princess would be alright.
“Where are you taking her?” she asked.
“Jail,” shamefully replied the large man. He was unable to even look the Captain in the eyes.
CNN News
The Internet
The two news anchors were beyond excited. This would be the largest audience ever recorded in human history. It came in the wake of the breathtaking rescue of the Airbus A2070 a few hours ago. "The timing could not be any better," remarked the female anchor, as she began reading from the prompter located inside of her contact lenses.
"Yes, indeed," replied her male co-anchor, reading from the same script in his own contact lens. It was easy to see the two were cute puppets in the skillful hands of their producers. As was the channel's custom, the two would keep alternating line after line as they read the script on the air. CNN was not about putting recognized stars on, each journalist was unknown and merely a piece of the greater puzzle. Milly, the journalist who had been sent to Mars with the contestants, would get a lot of airtime and some personal exposure, a rarely for the network.
"How hard has it been to go two weeks without an Electoral 2072 simulation? We are in a well-needed break as the remaining a hundred twenty-seven players, sorry make that twenty-six players, make their way to their rooms in the luxury hotel on mars. A new president will be elected in just seven more rounds. The 64 losers of the next round will earn the job of Senator, not a bad job to have if you ask me. The next 32 out of the competition will get cabinet positions. Each round half are disqualified until we are left on November 21 with two people fighting for the jobs of President and Vice-President of the United Nations."
"Electoral, what a great system, is a merit-based election. Most countries still have the old, corrupt system of favoritism and nepotism, where the richest and most influential family wins, irrespective of any skill he or she may have. How humans ever managed to use this system for so long is beyond me."
"Insane,” agreed the co-anchor.
"I feel strange repeating, to you the viewer, what is going to happen today. Everyone has been talking about this simulation for weeks. True! True! Today's amazing rescue took over the headlines and had us forget about the Electoral game for a couple of hours."
Stolen novel; please report.
"We have been glued to our screens for hours now as the true heroism of Judy Arrigoni and Engineer Wang. Both saved that spaceship from assured destruction. Let’s send Laurent some well needed positive energy, let’s hope he is fine."
The screen behind the anchors was playing images of Wang on the Mars landing pad, patch on his eye, leaving the ship with a medical escort. The passengers on the ship could not stop cheering for him. The engineer seemed uneasy, almost humble. Milly's live coverage of the events was equally amazing. She asked him the question on everyone's mind. "Wang, the creator of the drive himself said it could not be done. You single-handedly saved the ship. How do you feel?"
He waited a moment before answering. "All of the merit goes to the Captain. She made the call. All I did was follow her plan. That's what engineers do." The words were not convincing. The contestants refused to stop clapping. Humility was rare and valuable in 2072.
"Take a look!" pointed Milly at a wall screen next to his stretcher. There stood the image of Wang's mother. The stern Korean woman was in tears. She was sitting on her couch in her home back in Vancouver, Canada. The feed was live with a long fifteen second delay. The engineer knew he was millions of miles away from Earth, now on a different planet, yet there was his mother on the wall. He had almost forgotten that a billion strangers were watching their meeting.
"Ms. Wang, I have your son here with me, what do you want to tell him?"
The journalist knew the answer would take seconds to return with the delay, so as a large timer counted down, she kept talking. Finally, the woman replied. "Milly, I am so proud of you, of him, I always knew my son was going to save the world one day!" The journalist wanted emotion, and she was getting tons of it.
"She is no tiger mom!" joked Milly. "Want to say a word? We are live,” a flying camera the size of a fly got closer.
The feed returned to the CNN news studio. "John, isn't this incredible? We are only minutes away from the start of the Presidential Challenge, and we still have not wrapped our heads around the rescue of the ship that just took place." The screen was, as usual, filled with scrolling tickers and ads.
"Yes, Debbie, this is amazing. For once Electoral has nothing to do with this amazing news."
"Not so fast! She is the reason why everyone is on that ship. She built the hotel and is going to run the Presidential Challenge in a couple of minutes."
"If Electoral doesn't overheat today, with well over seven hundred million people connected to the system around the world, this will be the most amazing virtual-reality game ever played. If she pulls this off, she will prove what many already believe, that she is now of limitless power." The woman continued. "Half of you are using Orbison glasses, the other half can afford Screenlenzes. A few lucky ones have secured a spot in the few 3D chambers approved for use by Marilyn. For once, the game is open to any technology."
"Just in case a viewer living in a cave just bought his first television today, can you remind him what the Presidential Challenge is all about?" She was reading the script.
"I sure can." News editors rarely strayed from the obvious. "Today everyone will be playing Loric the wizard, by far the most powerful character ever used in Electoral's fantasy setting. I hope you all watched this year's round 7, the one Emilio won by using a single spell. But to make this more fun, everyone should be starting the game with hundreds of magical points, then kaboom! This will be epic!"
"John, remind us of today's incredible prizes!"
"First, no one gets any qualification points. All the remaining players are on mars. Of all the players, only the President will be taking part in the simulation, and he is not playing for points. The Challenge is not part of the election, let's make that clear for the viewers." He touched his earbud. "I was told the players just landed on Mars and are waiting until after the Challenge to discover the beautiful Holiday Inn Mars, house of the century-old sundae." The man was used to making shameless plugs for sponsors.
"We also have several reports from Nancy, our journalist already on Mars. The welcoming ceremony has been postponed to allow the mars workers and staff to play the Presidential Challenge."
"Well-needed low gravity rest for the finalists. The'll sleep for days like babies. I was told Sophie is still sleeping. She missed the entire landing."
"Great for her."
"We have one-on-one interviews with famous players, and much more immediately after the Challenge."
"Signing up to the Challenge costs only 100 credits, quite a reasonable price for an hour of exhilarating virtual simulation. You can't get a decent cup of coffee these days with 100 credits. No game on the market offers the realism of Electoral."
"Nothing even comes close."
"Access to the Electoral interface is well guarded. She is always very careful about preventing players from entering the interface. She wants to make sure the rich are not favored in her election through extra practice that the poor can't afford. Today is a rare opportunity for anyone who may be thinking of running for office in four years to test the system. They will test their skills, and play with the magical interface."
"God knows how Electoral will have evolved by 2077. Her interface today, in 2072, looks and feels nothing like the Electoral 2067 interface."
"True."
"The money collected today, estimated at over 70 billion credits, will be split evenly among the designated charities of the top-scoring ten thousand contestants. That's a maximum of seven million credits per each winning player's charity. The Red Cross has over half a million participants playing on its behalf. Can you imagine the possible payday for that organization?"
"This is by far the largest fund-raising event in the history of mankind. One way or another, seventy billion credits will go to charity today!"
"What about Emilio? John, tell us why this is called the Presidential Challenge."
"My pleasure. Emilio is playing for the Tsunami Relief Fund, an international charity without physical borders. It rebuilds entire countries when tsunamis ravage them. This charity will get the money of all of the contestants President Sanchez manages to beat. But don't feel bad. A minimum of one million credits will still go to the charity of each of the winning contestants even if Emilio beats them."
"Wow, that means if the President wins, sixty billion credits would go to this single charity."
"If our President were not unnaturally gifted at this game, I would say his odds are not great, but the charity already has reserved a room in the Presidential Tower in Berlin. If Emilio does well, it will be an amazing party, I am told."
"The President always dominates the fantasy simulations, but the number of players . . . ." The anchorwoman touched her earpiece and said, "Okay, the producer tells me we are ready to send the feed to Electoral. Take it away Marilyn!"
The neural cortex of every player connected to the game flared in mental waves. Endorphins were being produced around the world. Electoral was a rush stronger than any drug. Marilyn sucked in higher brain waves as fuel for her game.