It had been over six hours since Nigel received the message from Collective Systems. The message would be expiring soon.

“Mom? Ralphie?” Good, no one home. Need to sideload the app on the phone, then confirm the assignment, Nigel thought.

Nigel got to the bedroom he shared with his brother Ralphie and emptied the bottom desk drawer to pull out the laptop hidden there. He plugged his phone into the laptop, which made it possible for him to install apps without the overwatch of the app store. The process was quite arduous and required specialized knowledge and software, but finally it worked.

“There, done,” Nigel said.

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“What’s done?” Ralphie said.

Ralphie must have sneaked up on him during the sideloading process.

“Nothing, just updating my phone.”

“Oh, I think my phone needs to be updated, too. I got all these texts asking me to vote.”

“You got a phone? How?”

“Dad got it for me for my birthday.”

“Let me see it.”

Ralphie tossed his phone to Nigel. There were hundreds of text messages reminding Ralphie to vote. Each message was sent from a unique reply address, which made a mess of sifting through all the messages. However, the message that caught his eye referenced mobile voting.

“That’s strange. You are way too young to vote.”

“Tell me about it. The texts keep interrupting my game.”

“Turn on your ‘do not disturb’ feature; it will stop the text notifications.”

Nigel tossed the phone back to Ralphie as he continued to fiddle with his own phone project.