Voting Day

“Well, for one thing, it’s your civic duty.”

Mal’s face showed no trace of mockery, but it bore little sign of anything else, either.

“Civic duty- do you actually hear yourself when you speak?”

Mal answered with silence. Caleb sighed.

“Setting aside the question of how one incurs a duty merely by existing, how can there be a duty to do a thing which has no consequence?”

“You have to choose,” Mal intoned.

“I am choosing. Option C. The excluded middle. None of the above. The binary is completely artificial.”

Mal sniffed. Caleb knew this was not an invitation to continue, but neither was it a refusal to listen. The irony made him smile.

“Look, the whole game- it’s about measuring preferences, right? Well, preferences aren’t always strict. There is such a thing as indifference. Especially when comparing two identical outcomes.”

“That’s how I know you’re full of shit, Caleb. Identical? They couldn’t be more different.”

“Couldn’t they?”

Mal snorted. “I know what you’re going to say, but that would be outside the system. You can’t ask for what’s outside the system.”

Caleb smiled. “I know. That’s why I’m not asking. I’m not saying anything at all.”

“You can’t do that!” Mal wheezed. Caleb watched Mal’s growing anger with detachment. A fascinating specimen, this anger. Self-righteous but fragile, growing in inverse proportion to the logic and the self-esteem of the man expressing it. The frantic edge just beginning to show, the first unwilling step toward desperation and hysteria. Leading ultimately to understanding? Perhaps.

“That’s not really what you mean,” Caleb replied evenly. The anger receded as engagement entered Mal’s eyes. “Of course I can. What you mean is that you wouldn’t.”

“You have to.”

“Or what?”

Silence.

“Or what, Mal?”

“You know or what!” Mal snapped.

“Yes, I do. And that is my choice. That’s Option C.”

“You’re not supposed to choose ‘Option C,’” Mal groaned.

“That’s true. The system doesn’t work if everyone chooses C.”

Mal stared at Caleb, fear and budding understanding entirely replacing anger now. He breathed carefully, and, like all men trying to appear normal, became all the more visibly agitated as a result. His eyes darted around the small room, as if seeking out hidden cameras. A pointless habit carried along in the generational current by mindless evolutionary forces. The cameras they don’t bother to hide- those are the dangerous ones. They had both learned that painful lesson.

“How- how can you be sure? How do you guarantee-“

“You don’t guarantee. You don’t know. You can’t be sure. I’m actually fairly certain it will mostly go the other way.”

“Then you’ll…”

“Yes.”

Mal stood with his arms folded, burning a hole into the corner of the room with his glare. Caleb continued to sit and calmly traced the lines etched into the table, presumably by former occupants, with a lazy but precise finger. He avoided the mad, animalistic gashes near the edges, choosing to follow a series of spiraling arabesques whose trajectory and soft edges suggested a left-handed carver had occupied Caleb’s seat not long ago.

“It’s a piece of shit system,” Mal blurted as he turned his burning stare on Caleb.

“Yes.”

“Why do we do it?”

“What was it you were saying earlier about duty?”

Mal grimaced. “You know it’s not going to make a difference. Your ‘choice.’”

“Yes and no,” said Caleb. “It won’t stop what’s about to happen. It won’t save any lives today. But the participation- the sanction. It matters to them.”

“How could it matter to those…” Mal’s eyes unwillingly sought the cameras again.

Caleb’s finger reached the last curve, a whimsical little flourish that made him smile, despite what he knew was coming. Despite what he knew had already occurred for that left-handed artist. He folded his hands on the desk and met Mal’s stare.

“It matters to them because, at the end of the day, or the year, or the decade, they want to be told that they were right. That they had the consent of the governed. The system is what allows them to sleep at night. It protects them against their mistakes. Whatever awful things they did, it was alright, because we consented. We either approved them directly through the system or indirectly by accepting the system. Everyone needs to be able to think of himself as a good person. Everyone. How do you do that when you hold a gun to the head of the entire human race? By convincing yourself that they asked you for it.”

Mal licked his lips, which Caleb knew meant a part of him (the part that did things out of civic duty) wanted Caleb to shut up. But Mal didn’t say anything, so Caleb continued.

“Have you ever asked yourself why every horrible regime in history has felt compelled to present itself as a paradise? It doesn’t help keep the masses oppressed. The masses know the truth. They live it. It doesn’t prevent other countries from sending in liberating armies. Flaunting your nation’s wealth and happiness invites more conquest, not less. It’s not some wild hope that wishing will make it so, like paper currency. It’s not an opiate for the masses. It’s an opiate for the leaders.”

Caleb’s eyes, brown and calm, continued to gaze steadily into Mal’s, which widened until Caleb could see more white than blue in them. Mal was very afraid, Caleb knew. He’d felt that fear himself, once. He went on:

“Rarely is there a man who can accept the raw truth of the horrors unleashed by governments. How much rarer is the man who can accept moral blame for those horrors. I’d wager none has ever lived. His psyche would collapse. His brain would unravel. His soul would evaporate rather than admit that burden. Yet our leaders endure, living into old age and sleeping, perhaps not like babies, but certainly not like people responsible for the murder of countless millions of their fellow man.

“The charade is for them. The fading starlet who happily reads manufactured fan mail, the philanthropist who abandons facts in favor of enthusiasm for her chosen cause, the priest whose god lets him pretend he isn’t threatening his congregation with torture in order to separate them from their wealth- and the politician who looks to the voters for moral absolution. They need us to pretend for them.

“Which is why I’m doing what I’m doing. I’m done pretending.”

Caleb watched his words take their effect. Mal’s body shook as Caleb’s reasoning beat against him, tearing into his brain, draining his strength and his anger. Eventually the tremors subsided. Mal appeared calm and resolute. Caleb waited, relaxed as ever, to learn whether he’d made an ally or an enemy.

The door opened.

“Time to go,” said the guard.

Caleb stood, moving with such confidence that the guard was compelled to confirm the readings on the neural restraints. All appeared to be in order. Both prisoners moved to the door and awaited the order to proceed into the hallway. Mal’s face revealed nothing about his choice, but his tranquil gaze and easy posture showed Caleb he had made one.

“So,” said Mal, as the guard turned away to receive his orders.

“So,” said Caleb, “you’ve decided.”

A smile flitted behind Mal’s eyes. “Let’s just say I know my options.” He turned to look at his brother.

“All three of them.”