Her team was tense when she stepped into the office.

"Let's do this. Same as last time, we'll watch it all the way through; take notes; on the second watch-through, stop it wherever."

Her first impression was that he looked very tired. "Hello world. A few months ago I told you that I was going to run for President of this country. You must all think me terribly lazy to make such a claim and then spend the next few months on a game show. I could argue that I have been busy, but those of my friends on board the Creator know that would be a lie. But I am very tired today, because my today is still yesterday. So without further ado I will release my code of conduct to the world."

He made a motion with his hand that was obviously a signal to his computer to execute a command. At the same time a web browser opened showing a URL. It took rather longer than she thought necessary to load. "I won't bore you by reading my slides. You will all have the chance to review these laws and edit them in whatever way you see fit. That being said, I have a few comments of an editorial nature that I would like to make now.

"There are two opposing principles that I have sought to reconcile: democracy and socialization. I grew up in a very liberal family. We went to what most of you would not consider a church and sat side-by-side with gay families and Wiccan practitioners. The story of my life outside of the home was one of education about values traditionally associated with conservatives.

"I learned about Libertarian economics from some family friends and my world changed forever. An obsession with Randian social policies led me to some cold conclusions, but I could never escape the belief that the government has a role to play protecting people from everything the world could throw at them except for themselves.

"As I developed into an entrepreneur I started worrying about how the people that my company served would be affected by the work I asked them to do. I came to understand that there is no way to govern people into happiness, so I did all that I could to let my people govern themselves. That democratic instinct is one which has served me well, and up to this point, has prevented any large-scale protests against the institutions that I started. As I said aboard the Creator, today's conflicts are within nations, and the only way to win such a war is with just action.

"At first I was tempted to suggest that if elected, I would just apply the forum rules to everyone under my jurisdiction, but there exist large bodies of data which suggest that would be a mistake.

"The fact at which I have arrived is very simple. There are no human acts that can be categorically condemned.

"I'll say that again. There are no human acts which can be categorically condemned.

"Slavery. I would sell myself into slavery for a chance to go to another star. Englishmen sold themselves into slavery for a chance at life in the new world. Inheritable slavery is a violation of everything decent in this world, but it should not be classified as an action; rather as an action under certain conditions.

"When you are talking about the law, you are fundamentally talking about semantics. Killing as an action cannot be categorically condemned; and killing in self-defense is certainly a legal act as the world is now. For every action, the conditions and circumstances under which it occurs are the factors relevant in determining the legality of the act.

"The conditions under which certain actions, such as killing, coercion, infliction of physical damage, and some others are would be illegal under my administration are codified in the document that accompanied this message."

On screen the document scrolled to a position where the heading was “Conditions under which major actions shall be considered crimes”. It was the first time the document scrolled and an eyeball calculation suggested to Altria that it could not be more than 3000 words in total. The gall of the man to try to remake the political world in such a small package! She was torn between admiration and outrage. He continued.

"Now these actions are not the only ones which some people will consider unacceptable. Indeed, these conditional actions are not the only ones that I consider unacceptable. However, these are the baseline at which I believe that the line must be drawn for the main body of our country.

"The legal system to implement these laws is something which I do not feel qualified to enact. Indeed, there are only a few comments which I feel obliged to make.

"There must exist a Supreme Court or a balance of courts.

"Next, there must exist a localized ability to add or subtract laws from this requirement. A family community might want to enact stricter regulations on driver behavior than a community of farmers or miners. I would define a Coventry as a group of people or local space where the laws are different from the laws of the country. The Coventries would have to petition the Supreme Courts for the rights to exist. They would further have to prove that no activities in their jurisdiction result in illegal acts outside of their jurisdiction.

"I imagine several scenarios for Coventries. There would be one where weapons could be tested. This would require a large degree of insulation from the majority of the country. There would also be Coventries wherein testing could occur for products with a potential to do either harm or good.

"Before you object, I recognize the potential for byzantine complexity inherent in a system this expansionary. The first proposals for Coventry status would be limited to five in number to test the feasibility of the idea.

"I would insist that the Court be partially elected and partially appointed."

He took a moment to look at some notes.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Let's leave that topic. I'm sure that when I return and look at the edits that you all have added to this document I am going to have a lot of explaining to do.

He gave one of his sighs. In viewing his film she felt that she had learned to interpret them fairly well, and this one told her that he had serious reservations about what was going to come next.

"Finally, I would enact a new branch of government that is legally entitled to enter into any market. There are several practical reasons for this and one philosophical one.

"I recognize the government's justifiable role as a regulator of industry. In my professional opinion, the most practical way for an entity to gain the knowledge necessary to regulate an industry is to gain the knowledge necessary to compete in it. Moreover, in the event that the government can affect a more valuable enterprise (i.e. product or service) than currently exists in the market, doing so benefits the consumer, and eventually the entire market. Moreover, it provides a much-needed source for legitimate government spending programs such as education, emergency services, and infrastructure.

"It is not a free market if the government has no right to enter it."

He gave no more arguments, which was just as well; her head was ringing from the clarity of the last statement. While she was still reeling, he wished everyone "luck in all your efforts. I wanted to leave you with a bit more of the history of the Paerophites, but I find that my voice is gone. Soon, I promise."

It was done. The time-stamp showed that an hour had passed since he signed off. She felt as though it had been a day.

****

The blow-by-blow second watch-through revealed nothing terribly new. The stress level that he exhibited in this third was slightly elevated from the second speech, and significantly less than the first. They concluded that his behavior was consistent with what they knew of his personality and conditions. It was not a fake.

"Alright people, let's get to work. Overall impressions."

No one spoke.

"Fine, let's characterize the behavior he exhibited."

Again a pregnant pause cut short this time by Callissa's outburst. "He's insane."

Travis snorted. "He's terribly sane, that is part of the problem. Nothing that he says seems unreasonable because of his reputation and record. The world is going to receive that message with more love than he expects. There was something for everyone in it."

"Except the current power structure." Montgomery commented. "A re-codification of the law would make it easier to regulate industry and prevent corruption at least in the short term. The current power structure exists in part because no one can argue effectively that established powers are breaking the law. Since they lobbied to write most of the laws, in all but a few cases they are not. If the laws are simple enough for people to understand, then there will be less insulation between corrupt acts and legal retaliation for those acts."

Altria nodded agreement. "We might have to worry about our client's safety. This is certainly a threat to many power brokers of the current system, but not too great a threat. My instinct is that this plan will not win approval during the election, too much conservatism exists."

"But it will win approval from the 'Streamers, and not just the radicals. It will be the first time that the members of the Internet generation who understand the value of the socialization of information are pitted against the old power structure." Calli sounded chilled as she said it.

"The old guard still holds the power of the state, and they will not give it up without a fight. It is going to be the sixties all over again. Except this time the progressives will have more confidence. There are only two or three rockets capable of hitting Paine’s ship in the whole world, and with the mobility that is built into the inertial propulsion engine, even if they got a payload to him, that is no guarantee that it could make contact."

"Personally," she continued, "I would be more concerned about violence against people closer to home, on both sides of the potential conflict."

Montgomery raised his hand. We all looked at him and prepared ourselves for the worst. The last time he had broken into a conversation this way we had spent the next eight months trying to prepare to extract a Russian billionaire from his job at the KGB.

"Do you remember asking me to put eyes on his vessel and keep them there? Well, I did and some of the results are worth sharing. For one, there is a receiving antenna on the ship that has changed position multiple times. Next, based on the specifications for the vessel that he took and the conservative estimates for the amount of food and liquid that he would have to eat for the four days that he has been isolated, there should have been a waste dump by now."

I tried to take in what he said without trying to get ahead of him. "So he's got a waste-processing unit on his ship and he retrofitted a receiving antenna to increase the power of his transmissions."

"Maybe the latter is true; but if he did then he did it in record time. You know how much space the waste processing takes up on board the Creator? Six floors. Every spacecraft made before this one shot its shit into the atmosphere. If that glorified escape pod can grind its own shit than he has been keeping more secrets than we thought. Footage from the Governance indicates that there has been no time for him to accomplish that kind of research." Monty concluded.

"You think it unlikely that the missing footage from his sick-bed has something to do with it?" That had been a headache from another meeting. They hadn't been able to determine why they had lost access to that 43-minute window. They could identify the five people in the room and suspected that something fairly important had transpired. Their theories as to what that event had been all had a very low likelihood.

"No. It is possible that some project was activated that had the effect of preparing the ship, but they couldn't have miniaturized waste-treatment in that time. For God's sake, he had just woken up from a coma.” He threw up his hands. “No one is that good. The other thing that struck me as odd: the food choices that he made are unlike him. In every recorded meal he has eaten there have only been 19 identical repeats. Your analysis of his dietary habits noted a huge tendency for maximizing diversity."

She was starting to think she knew where he was headed, but three years of working with her team had taught her to let them do things their way. "What dietary choices did he make for this trip?"

"Of the 20 available types of pre-packaged meals he took exactly five.”

"It was a choice dictated by speed."

"Footage from the Creator indicated that packing for the trip was done a full 28 minutes before he got on board the testing craft. That time would have been adequate to access all of the places where food was stored on the craft."

"OK, he made atypical food choices for his four month trip; the ship's antennae aren't behaving the way we would expect; and the toilet's acting up. Have you created a hypothesis to explain these observations?"

"I have."

"What is it?"

"Julius Paine is still on board the Creator."

The room resonated with the strength of the idea. "I have to take this to the bosses. Find out where that receiver is pointing. And generate some ways that we can test your hypothesis. I'll be back in an hour."