Chapter 222

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
—John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of The United States

IT WAS GOOD to reconnect with our families back home. We tried not to overwhelm any one family with all of us showing up at once but we all wanted to see everyone. So, Donna, Cindy, Desi, and Brittany descending on Livy’s parents for an hour without Livy was as natural as Livy, Rachel, and me showing up at Rachel’s house.

And I got to visit with Pod Two for a while. The past six months since we left on our first Grand Loop tour had been so tightly packed with what was happening in our pod and in the service that we weren’t expecting the dramatic changes that occurred in our younger siblings and their relationships.

They’d all be teenagers this year and their development really showed. Donnie, Livy’s brother and the youngest in Pod Two, would be thirteen this year and his voice had dropped so dramatically I hardly recognized it. Glued to his side was Kate, nearly two years older, still very shy, but absolutely beautiful. If Donnie ever had fantasies about his sister, I could see immediately why he was attracted to Kate. She was tall and thin, not athletic like Livy, but with a lithe body that seemed to be able to wrap itself around Donnie in any position. Those two could steam up a room.

Donnie’s sister Barb was nearly as stuck on Rachel’s brother Richard and both would be fifteen this year. Barb did not get any of the height Livy got, but she seemed to get all the boobs in the family. Her clothes weren’t cut quite as low as Desi was known to wear in high school, but she made sure cleavage was apparent.

And then there was the trio. Brittany’s sister Lisa had her quinceañera this fall and I don’t think it took her and Cindy’s brother Luke long to pop her cherry. And I was sure Lisa’s youngest sister, Joyce, wasn’t waiting for her fifteenth to enjoy her sister and their boyfriend. The seven in the pod were as casual about their relationship as we had ever been, touching and kissing easily. They had their serious side, too.

“This is model X-17, nicknamed Vampire Bunny,” Donnie explained in his deep voice. “She’ll get her first tryout in the cage next month. She has a few little surprises in store for the competition.”

“So, you send the robot into the cage with another robot and see which can destroy the other?” I asked.

“That’s Battlebots,” Lisa said. “We can’t compete there because we’re all minors and at the very least you have to have one adult in service or over the age of twenty-one to compete in that. We compete in a robotics competition that defines a course the robot has to negotiate.”

“Up through last year’s competition, the size of the robot and course were referred to as ‘tabletop’ models. The course was four feet by eight feet and the bot had to be able to get from one place to another without knocking things over. It really restricted the design,” Kate said. Donnie had an arm around her waist and gave her a squeeze. She turned and kissed him before continuing. “This year, ‘the cage’ is a twelve by twelve room in which the robot has to complete six tasks while moving around various obstacles to get to the next checkpoint.”

“What’s the surprise in store?”

“Vampire Bunny hops,” Joyce said. “The course includes low obstacles that need to be crossed. The most common means of negotiating them is to have a track system that will roll over an object or to extend legs that let the bot step over it. Bunny can hop over or onto obstacles.”

“You guys are remarkable,” I said. “I can’t believe you came up with all this on your own. And this stuff isn’t cheap.”

“We have a sponsor,” Donnie said. “He encourages us to try things and provides lots of neato technology for us to incorporate. Bunny can negotiate the course in any configuration if we use a transmission device that says where the next waypoint is. Of course, other competitors aren’t at that stage, so the courses are predefined and once the bot is set loose, it follows the exact path every time.”

“Who sponsors you?” I asked. They all started giggling.

“Your wife’s father,” Barb said. “Ray Long and Design Intelligence in Chicago supply all our component parts and a lot of design ideas. They let us come up with all the concepts and designs, though. They specialize in the computer components and we specialize in the mechanical components. Pretty neat.”

Well, that explained a lot. I wondered if Amanda had any parts the crew had invented. I watched the demonstration, including seeing Bunny hop over a six-inch obstruction. The kids were doing great.

Friday, Ray and Debbie came down from Chicago to help celebrate Joan’s twenty-second birthday. Sharon Long held the celebration at her house and the people flowed in and out all afternoon. Giggling like the teenager she no longer was, Joan grabbed my hand during a lull in the party and dragged me to her old room. She was no more than in it when we were naked and screwing on her bed. I sucked and chewed on her nipples as she came, then I pounded deep inside her until my seed erupted. I continued to play with her oversensitive nips until she pushed my hands away.

“More later. It’s too much now and there’s a party going on! You can’t expect me to spend all afternoon coming on your cock in my pussy. I have guests! Yes! Push once more!”

We managed to get ourselves parted, dressed, and back to the party. We’d only been gone fifteen minutes but Beca immediately grabbed us to sniff and grin.

We headed back to DC on Monday the second of January. It was a new year and a new congress. They were scheduled to convene on Tuesday the third according to law. The items of business that day would be election of the Speaker of the House, the Senate Leader, and swearing in of representatives and senators. Then they would recess for organization until the following Monday. During that time, people would be running around the halls of congress, trying to find housing, brokering committee appointments, and preparing for the votes that would be taken in both houses on Monday.

Senator Jeffries had been re-elected by a narrow margin in Virginia but it looked like he no longer had the votes to continue as Senate Leader.

We were all happy to get back to our home and plan for the first week of school after the break, but also had a kind of wistful look back at spending a week at the farm in Indiana. Donna’s house there was truly our home and we all looked forward to the day when we’d move out of Washington and back to the farm.

I had a stack of email messages I’d ignored over the break. I had been on an officially recognized vacation and didn’t check work email once from the time Remas and I left until we all returned. Maybe that was a mistake. It looked like I had an engagement this week. I showed Rachel and she went to work confirming what I saw. The Reformist Party was holding a national convention in Baltimore over the first weekend of January and I was invited to attend. Only the invitation made it sound a little more like I was expected to attend. Maybe demanded.

“I have an agenda,” Rachel said. “Creating and organizing a political party with twenty-four hours’ notice seems to have left a few holes to be filled. Like determining who the party leadership is or even who belongs to the party and is eligible to attend. So, they are starting from the supposition that those listed as candidates and supporters on the party website are the current members and have been invited indiscriminately to the convention. If they can afford to be in Baltimore this week, they have a seat in the convention.”

“Isn’t that going to unfairly weight attendance to the East Coast?” I asked.

“It might. But I don’t think we’ll have to worry too much regarding the formation convention.”

“So, why am I supposed to be there?” I asked.

“You, my love, are the official delegate of the National Service, appointed by Will Forsythe himself.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“And that’s not all.”

“Rachel? Don’t tell me we’re supposed to perform as well.”

“Not musically. You are listed as the convention keynote speaker on Thursday night. Better take Amanda and start pulling together your notes,” Rachel said.

“Keynote speaker?”

“And founder.”

There were nearly five thousand names of candidates and supporters listed in the Reformist website. All had signed the pledge to support the six-plank platform. That included all our pod, of course, so everyone intended to attend as much of the convention as possible. Except Cindy. Despite being emancipated, married to the pod, and a member of the National Service, she was still only seventeen and not eligible to vote. That sucked.

“Are you kidding?” she squeaked. “I get to attend classes and practice my flute while you are all pretending to be politicians. I win.” I agreed.

“Who’s paying for this?” I asked Amanda.

“The Reformist Party incorporated just after the 2022 National Elections. Prior to that time, individual state organizations had been incorporated. The state-level parties that received political contributions prior to the election were invited to join the National Party. Membership dues in the National Party and direct political contributions have funded all aspects of the organization, including this convention. Current assets of the Reformist Party come to just under $500,000 and the convention is being paid for from that general fund. All delegates to the convention are responsible for their own travel and attendance expenses,” Amanda said in her calm and mature voice. I was thankful for that. Not only had I started a political party, apparently, I’d started a big business.

“So is the party a non-profit organization?” I was answered by silence. Eventually, Amanda hummed back to life.

“This is not a defined term.”

Crap! I’d stepped in it again. Non-profit organizations were a V1 concept. In my V3 reality, all businesses were deemed to have equal footing. If a business didn’t make a profit, it wasn’t a business. Churches, schools, charitable organizations of all sorts, were expected to be self-funding and offer something of value. Granted, some organizations received funding from the government for providing what would once have been considered charitable operations like food shelves, homeless shelters, and special services for the handicapped. But they provided a product that the government paid for from our tax dollars. It was one of the fundamental aspects of the abuses in the National Service. The agribusinesses were selling services to the government that weren’t being delivered, or were buying labor from the government at steeply discounted prices. Reform. It’s why we exist.

Those of us enrolled at the National School and Beca at George Washington University, all went to school Tuesday to start our classes as the House and Senate convened the 119th Congress. I guess it was a real zoo. In the House, the Chief Administrative Officer opened the floor to nominations for Speaker and had fourteen people nominated. Usually, the nominating was pre-arranged by a committee that kept things under control. With over half the House being freshman congressmen, there was a strong undercurrent of rebellion. There were six roll-call votes before two leading candidates rose to the top and on the seventh vote, Representative Damien Travis, a Reformist from Texas, became Speaker of the House. He was sworn in and in turn finished swearing in the 435 members of Congress about midnight that night.