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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Macbeth" data-source="post: 2583842" data-attributes="member: 11259">Electionby Sage, a.k.a. MacBeth, for Round one, Match oneJamis watched the audition for the next President of the United States of America from the front row of an abandoned theatre. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22226" target="_blank">A bloated homeless woman, probably carrying a menagerie of diseases, stretched in front of the Powers That Be, the people that she was auditioning for. The Powers sat behind her, as they always did, watching not the candidate, but the reaction the crowd gave the candidate.</a>Jamis thought this woman was one of the worst he had seen yet. Even with the reworking, the coat of polish, that the Powers gave the winner, it seemed unlikely that she could be anything but a Cabinet member.Half of the people auditioning were crazy. Jamis probably was too, the only difference was he knew he was crazy. The others were still in denial. Jamis always thought of his insanity like an addiction: the first step is admitting you have a problem. Jamis had never heard the second step.The audition happened every four years: word went around the street people, the beggars, the crazies, that some people would be auditioning for a new President of the United States. Nobody sane, or at least half sane, would come. But the street people would come, try to be presidential, then spend the next four years swearing that they knew the President before he was famous. That the most powerful man in the free world, the King of the democracy, they would claim that he hadn't actually gone to Yale or that he hadn't been a governor. The governor had been another man, the records were all false. The man in the oval office, they would say, had picked cans out of the 7-11 dumpster with them.These homeless people, they would claim they had stepped in the president's vomit that one night he had tried to drink mouthwash.Jamis just sat there. He hadn't auditioned yet, so he watched as the Powers sat silently, occasionally laughing at some of the worse auditions. Behind them a small golden cone poured smoke onto the stage.The rumors among the shifting crowd that had formed to try out for the role of the most powerful man in the free world said that the gold cone was how the winner was chose. Not by a popular vote, not by a vote of the Powers, not by the edict of one ruler, but by the shapes the smoke made as it poured out of the cone.This, Jamis decided, was Democracy at it's best: the popular opinion of the people, judged by an elite few, and then disregarded by some unknown mechanism that poured smoke into a deserted theatre.********************Most of the people, the homeless, the future Presidents of the United States, they were there because they were crazy. Jamis was there because he was part of the MUMU, which was a lot like being crazy.The MUMU was the Mankind Unity Multinational Union. They were the greatest political scientists to ever eat leftovers out of a Denny’s dumpster, and they were hoping that their man, Jamis, would be the next President.The name for the group had been the subject of much debate. Kevin had suggested something that involved the word League, while Henry wanted to work Revolutionary into the name. David would work with any words, as long as they had alliteration. Jules wanted to include the word Club.Needless to say, Club is not a serious enough word for an organization like MUMU, so Jules was shot for insubordination, then declared a martyr for the cause of the MUMU.*********************The auditions had been going for hours now, and it was Jamis’ turn.“Next we’ll have… Jamis Stevens” came the voice from one of the Powers That Be.Jamis stepped up onto the stage, watching for the water damaged corner that had almost killed another potential President. Taking a seat at center stage, with the powers behind him, he began his speech. The MUMU had been working on it non-stop for weeks, and now all the back-alley schemes would pay off, if Jamis could appear sane (or insane) enough to be the next President.“My fellow homeless people:” Jamis began, in his most presidential voice. “We are gathered here today for free shelter, for a chance to be the biggest pain in the rear in the world, and to live up to the American Dream. What is the American Dream, you ask?” Nobody had asked. “The American Dream, my friends, is to live in a way that is showy, annoying, and impersonal as possible. We want to live places that look like they’ve neverbeen lived in. We want food untouched by human hands. And this, my fellow hobos, is what I intend to give you: the American Dream.”For a few moments the crowd was silent, until suddenly cheers of joy broke out from the back of the theatre, and spread forward. Jamis thought his speech had gone over well, the crowd though they had found a full bottle of vodka beneath some seats.Regardless of the reason for the crowd’s reaction, Jamis heard a voice from over his shoulder. “Good job. Come back tomorrow.”*******************Jamis left the theatre and walked to the nearest bus stop, caught a ride as far is he could go, and then kept walking, pass the center of town, past the suburbs, until, somewhere in the middle of the morning, he reached the headquarters of MUMU.Walking down the sides of the pit that held the (literally) underground headquarters of MUMU, Jamis pondered the events of the day, and planned for the next day. He had seen a number of other possible Presidents called back for the next day, and he wondered what they would be put through. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22225" target="_blank">His mind wandered as he trudged through the collapsing walls of the old quarry, down to the headquarters of MUMU.</a>Jamis was very happy with the headquarters of MUMU. He had always been disappointed that there wasn’t actually a tunnel with trains in it bringing slaves out of the South, or a cave with French resistance fighters in it. In his opinion, if you were going to be an underground organization, you might as well be really underground.Hoping into the hole beneath the digging machine that still languished in the quarry like a forgotten corpse, Jamis squeezed himself through the hole that lead into the grand gallery of the MUMU.The grand gallery was about 10 feet on a side. So it goes. Really grand rooms are hard to get underneath a quarry.The mascot of the MUMU sat in the center of the room. The MUMU equivalent of the proud Donkey of the Democrats or the bold Elephant of the republicans was <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22223" target="_blank">a lazy white crocodile. He stood for everything that MUMU stood for: sitting around all day, being lazy, being cold blooded, and pretending to be a log to catch food.</a> Jamis patted the croc on the head. “Good job watching the door, Snaps.” The croc made a half-hearted attempt to eat Jamis’ hand, but it had long ago grown tired of the stagnant taste of homeless people.“Anybody else home?” Jamis called, his voice echoing around the small chambers of the underground base.After a few minutes with no answer, Jamis decided to lie down and sleep in the grand hall, next to Snaps. After having lived homeless, he had never been comfortable sleeping in a bed, or in his own room, again.*************The next day, back at the theatre, Jamis sat down in the front row. The theatre was maybe a quarter as full as it had been the last day, with only the grubbiest, the most insane, the most charismatic of the hobos left. From the looks of it, many of the applicants had slept on the grime-encrusted floor of the theatre over night.The gold cone was still smoking at center stage. Jamis thought that, just maybe, he could make out the shape of words in the smoke. Seeing things that most likely weren’t there made Jamis feel comfortably insane.After a few minutes of talk among the congregation of the homeless that sat around the theatre, the Powers That Be stepped back on stage. They stood there, eyed the crowd, and then one of them turned to the gold cone. Another one of the powers spoke:“This, my dear citizens, is how we will decide. When I finish speaking, my friend will drop a small ball into that cone. After that, the smoke will tell us it’s recommendation for the Next President of the United Sates of America.”As soon as the last words had left his mouth, the other Power dropped the ball in, and <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22224" target="_blank">the cone began to smoke more heavily. Jamis was sure he could see words in the clouds now, but nothing he could actually read. The smoke swirled for a minute, as if mulling over it’s choice</a>, and then a word appeared: “Jamis.”The Powers That Be immediately left the stage, grabbed Jamis, and walked away. The rest of the crowd followed, hoping that they might get another chance, or maybe a shot at Vice President, or at least an Intern position.As the theatre emptied, nobody noticed the next word to form in the smoke still pouring from the censer: “is.”And, a few seconds later, another word “not.”Then “fit.”And “to.”Followed by “be.”Then “President.”“of”“the”“United”“Sates”Then a few minute’s pause.Then:“Seriously,”“this”“is”“a”“really”“bad”“decision.”Then a another pause, and, perhaps, some comprehension in the swirling smoke.“Damnit”“They”“Never”“Listen”Then, nothing, for another four years.</blockquote>

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