Cargill shook his head a little. "Incredible," he whispered, unable to think of anything else.
"Let me show you a typical one," she said, "Just so you know what we're dealing with here." She looked at the ceiling, where the computer voice recognition microphone was installed. "Computer, load and play one of the emails received in the last hour. Select randomly."
"Loading," the computer's voice said.
A moment later the screen cleared and showed a scruffy, thug-like young man in his late teens. The text on the bottom identified the sender as: Jeffrey Creek, Age 19. Creek was taking a puff on a cheap marijuana pipe that had been fashioned from discarded food containers. He held the smoke for a moment and then blew it directly onto the camera lens, momentarily blurring the image. When it cleared, he began to talk. "Check it, fuckface. The name's Jeff Creek and I'm one of your constituents here in this shithole known as Helvetia Heights. I ain't never voted for nothing or no one before but you can bet your ass that if you start fucking around and trying to impeach Laura Whiting, I'll be the first motherfucker to sign a petition to kick your ass out of office. And then once that petition is all signed and legal and they ask us to vote to get rid of you, I'll be signing on to do that shit too. Don't fuck with Whiting, my man. Don't even think of fucking with her. That's all." The image blinked off and the computer informed them that the recording was at an end.
"How uncouth," Vic said, disgusted. "Do they really expect me to take that kind of thing seriously?"
"That's a pretty typical recording," Linda said. "I've looked at several hundred of them myself and his sentiments are basically what they're saying."
"Who really cares what those ignorant vermin are saying?" Vic asked. "So they figured out how to log onto the email program and send mail. What of it? You don't really think they'd actually be able to mount a recall campaign against me, do you?"
"I didn't think so at first," she said. "But now... now that two hundred and ninety-six thousand of them have sent email saying the same thing, I'm not so sure."
"What?"
"More than a quarter of a million and counting," she said. "All of them angry, embittered shouts by the people you represent. Whiting told them that they have a constitutional right to vote you out of office and they've apparently locked onto that thought and embraced it. Surely among quarter of a million there are a few with the drive and the intelligence to organize petition drives and to rouse up others to go collect signatures."
"I hardly think so," he said. "That requires work, something that the vermin avoid like the plague."
She shook her head. "Don't underestimate them, Vic," she said. "They may be unemployed but they are not ignorant. They're frustrated with the system and they blame the politicians and the corporations for keeping them where they are."
"That's ridiculous," he said, automatically spouting the company line.
"Ridiculous or not," she said. "It's what they believe. They will be watching the assembly on Monday morning. They'll be watching and when the Lieutenant Governor asks the legislature to open hearings into Laura Whiting, they will take note of how you vote. It is all public record under the constitution. And if you vote to impeach her, I have no doubt that by the time the day is over there will be hundreds if not thousands of vermin out in the Heights getting fingerprints on petition screens. Within a matter of days your recall will be on the ballet and they will vote you out. They can have you back in the private sector in less than a month."
Vic's mouth was wide as he listened to her. What she was saying was so bizarre, so unheard of. "How can I tell my sponsor that I'm not going to vote the way they want? How can I tell them that? If I don't do what they tell me to, they'll withdraw their funding for my campaigns and they'll find someone else to give it to."
She shrugged. "Which action will kill you first?" she asked. "You can at least rest assured that you're not going through this alone. From what I hear all of the other reps are getting email in even bigger numbers."
Barbara Garcia was a two term representative from the Shiloh Park section of Eden. Her constituents were a mixture of working class Martians that lived in the northern part of the district and welfare class that lived in the southern. She had grown up the daughter of an agricultural worker and she was — thanks to her intelligence and frightfully high placement scores — the first in eight generations to attend college. With her degree in political theory from the University of Mars at Eden, she had gone on to law school and the Eden city council, the usual stepping-stone for a career in Martian politics. From there her popularity with her main sponsor — Agricorp — had made her a shoe-in for the Planetary Legislature.
Barbara had always played the game well during her career, knowing that it was the only game in town and that in order to succeed she would have to follow the established rules. She had taken campaign contributions from Agricorp and others ever since her first run at the city council. She had gone on the all expenses paid space cruises to Saturn and Neptune and Mercury, riding in luxury cabins and being pampered to her heart's delight. She had even taken unreported contributions when they were offered, contributions that had swollen her net worth to well over two million dollars. But despite these "perks of the job", as they were called when they were discussed at all, she had always felt more than a little disgusted with herself. She knew that politics was not supposed to be this way, that she was part of a perversion that had gone on for centuries now. There had been a time when she had tried to tell herself that she was only staying in the game for the good of the people she represented but those naïve thoughts had long since died within her.
Except now Laura Whiting had reawakened them. What Whiting had done the night before had been incredible, outrageous, the most shocking thing imaginable and Barbara could not help but feel a strong surge of respect for the woman. She was trying to change the game! After all of these years, after all of the lies and back dealing and jerking off of the public, someone was actually trying to make a difference! Amazing.
Granted, Barbara had initially had every intention of doing exactly what her sponsors wished of her and voting for an impeachment investigation of the new governor. After all, though she respected Whiting for her stand, political survival was still the most important thing in her life. She was qualified to do nothing else in this life but serve in the legislature. As much as she found herself admiring Whiting and her views, she knew that Whiting was as good as gone and the game would then go on as it always had and as it always would. She had planned to have a drink in Whiting's honor the next time she tipped a glass but also to vote as was required and to even deride the governor in the media if reporters asked her questions.
And then the emails had started to roll in. An incredible three hundred thousand of them were sent to her staff in the first three hours following Whiting's speech. Another one hundred and eighty thousand had come in since. Nearly half of her constituents, including a good portion of the welfare class, had taken the time to compose messages to her and according to the computer scans all of the messages, every last one said the same thing: vote to open an investigation into Whiting and you're gone. Had someone told her two days before that something like this would happen, she would have thought them insane. Martians never got involved in politics, especially not the welfare class. They rarely voted, they rarely protested anything in an organized fashion, and they never tried to recall their representatives. But now they were threatening just that, and in no uncertain terms either. Barbara and her chief of staff were both of the opinion that these were not idle threats either. Whiting had really riled the people up.