Telly pushes the elevator-like doors apart and the three of us head inside. It’s about the width and length of a basketball gymnasium in here, squared off, and I’m struck by the color—faux-wooden floors like in Telly’s house, ring-shaped bridgeways up above in alternating green and orange paints, with safety railings. The bridgeways appear to be the upper floors of the pagoda, and I can see them from the middle of it all, through the square in the middle of each one. It’s a column of empty air, rising through each floor...and there aren’t any stairs. Each of the four walls of the palace have a set of doors, but they’re just like the ones I just entered through, so those second-to-fifth floors rising above us have no elevator. They’re simply fake. There’s no way to walk up there.

  The ground floor is more interesting. In the center, there’s a great cylindrical plinth plastered over with curved, wraparound television screens, all displaying the same information in that block format and red text: Day 999 Election. Each face, each static headshot, has its name printed next to it in its spot in the two-by-five grid; I’m at the bottom, and for some reason, my name doesn’t show up. It’s just blank. Fark’s box is lit up in green instead of gray.

  Around the central screens, there are no places to sit, but plenty of places to lean—over a dozen steel podiums that remind me of the standalone grills that one finds in abandoned campsites or public parks. They have one spindly leg and a squat, flat steel box at the top, scratched over like a cutting board. The scribble on one of them has been carved, physically chipped away at by something, to work it into a label that I can actually read: VOTING BOOTH. There are two entrances to each box—a pair of side-by-side circular openings, about big enough for a person’s hands to get through and plug up, to reach whatever is inside.

  And I can finally put faces to bodies. I could never learn large numbers of people at once well, so I’m almost sure I’m going to have to detangle names and faces and temperaments later, but now is a time where I can’t tune anyone out—and they’re all here, leaning on booths or standing around. Orbora, the black statue woman, is coming up right behind me, and Adol and Telly are approaching the group, which leaves five of them to get to know. Fark stands with the confidence of a tired man after a job well-done, leaning one waxy-white elbow on the top of his voting booth. Ernie reminds me of Orbora in size, but his colors stand out more than anyone here—he’s a barrel chest of yellow stone, the air around him wavering like a heat mirage, verdant spots shining over his blue creases like pinpoints of mold on a dirty dish. He stands without leaning, upright and his posture perfect, like a soldier—okay, fine. His eyes are turning towards me, his jaw angled from testosterone. There’s also an older man—glass and smoke, a statue of fired sand that has been frosted into the illusion of a solid surface, and he’s draped in well-worn remains of a high-visibility vest and pleated black slacks. He has a wide nose, round face, a grandfatherly smile, and a beard that I’d describe as ‘well-groomed’ if it weren’t made from a cloud of steel blue smoke. His hair is equally ephemeral, including his eyebrows and a thin wisp-layer along his arms, the backs of his hands (which rest folded on his booth), and what I can see of his chest behind the vest. ‘North’, according to the television.

  “Here you are! Met the Adversary, did ya?” asks the last member, ‘Cieze’. The man is a flowing, liquid assembly of metallic gold in a Hawaiian print shirt and red swimming trunks. His face is a semi-solid pane of bubbling skin and button nose, and he’s on fire. It’s like an aura surrounding his exposed skin, gentle candle flames of a cool blue-violet. He’s wearing...not sandals, per se, but the singed straps and toe posts alone, his toes clenching.

  “Sure did,” Telly says, patting me on the back.

  “I’m not the Adversary,” I say, keeping my voice neutral.

  “Oh! Well, in that case,” Fark says, every compound of his violet bug eyes rolling, “I guess we have to start all the way over. The Adversary wouldn’t say they’re not the Adversary, folks.”

  “Rude,” I answer in dispassion. I look around. “Do I get a booth, too?”

  “Pick one that you like,” Telly says, smiling and shrugging. “It doesn’t matter which.”

  I take worried steps across the linoleum floor, with so many pairs of eyes on me that I might as well be wearing a clown suit. The ring of voting booths surrounds the central column of TV screens, and I shuffle, sidestepping along, working my way around the ring.

  “The other side? Not the other side! Stay, stay, over here!” Adol says, taking a booth two spaces to the left of Fark and patting the one between the two of them, with a thump.

  “Honey, it won’t matter if we’re voting them out today,” Fark adds.

  “And what if? What if our sentence doesn’t find its parole?”

  It occurs to me that the reason I was able to see everyone is that they clustered along one arc, so that the central TV screens don’t block the view between any two people on opposite sides. They’re all on the same semicircle. By now, Telly takes her position, next to Ernie. Orbora settles in, going for a booth where the wrist holes have been widened; her arms scrape against the jaggedly-opened steel with a squeak, but her face doesn’t change from a smile of contentment.

  I don’t choose the spot next to Fark; I go on Adol’s left instead of her right. I stand upright, as proud as I can, and take a breath. My hands slide through the holes—the edges of this undamaged booth are not sharp, and my forearms glide over the finished metal.

  Adol goes out of her way to walk down two spaces to the left, to get on the other side of me. I let her insist on this with her pouty face and intent gaze towards my metal-obscured hands. Inside, I feel a row of ten smooth, circular buttons in that same two-by-five grid, all accessible with my left hand alone. My right hand can reach one more, and it’s much larger, the full size of my palm.

  “Welcome to Mob Rule, Number Nine!” North says, his voice jovial, but strained. “Do you...have a name? The screen doesn’t quite tell me...”

  “Sammy, or Sam,” I say, staring at the squiggles on the box, coordinating my hands to which button is which. “Uh...”

  “So do we vote Sam out now? It’s open-and-shut to me,” Cieze interjects. “Watch.” His elbows move a bit, hands moving, and then his slot on the grid-of-ten lights up green on the TV screens.

  “Cieze, no,” a woman in the back says, her voice stern like a schoolteacher, or a customer service worker actively trying to get fired. “We talk first, then we vote.” The screen says she’s ‘Magnolia’, and her skin is a lot more complex than her namesake flower. It’s all chunks of jagged, offset cubes of fool’s gold that have grown imperfectly, merged and intersected into a crust that covers her—all glitter and corners. She’s not as tall as Telly, but I get the impression of well-developed biceps and possibly abdominals behind all the crystal. The cube layer isn’t as kind to her face as it is to everyone else, giving her a mineralized ski mask-head; she’s idly picking at it with her nails. She has no hair—just a disorganized crown of cubes. I can see through the eye holes of that mask, and there’s such a brilliant, shining white inside that it hurts my eyes to look directly at them. I decline to.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Well what else could this whole game have been!?” He asks, beating a fist onto the top of his booth. “Adversary hasn’t done anything for years. Why? Because they’ve been buried in the sand!”

  “We can’t know that,” Magnolia says.

  “It’s so safe a bet that it’s them that there’s no good reason not to do it. Vote!”

  “Can you shut up and wait for people to talk, airhead?” Magnolia retorts, and Cieze clams up, his lips so tight together that the liquid gold fuses them with saliva-like strands. He half-crouches back, behind his booth. Magnolia sighs. “Agh, I know, that was mean, that was mean.”

  “If we could not yell at people, that would make me very happy today.” Orbora says, a weak smile on her face.

  “We’ll make her happy. Happy Orbora!” Adol cheers.

  Ernie’s brow is lowered and he’s scanning the room, like a man paid handsomely to watch the birthday party of a child that he doesn’t like. “Let’s.” That’s his only word.

  Fark leans in a bit. His booth creaks; the building’s acoustics catch and amplify it. All eyes go on him. “Obvious point of order—Sammy here is Number Nine. This is more or less the only thing that’s worth talking about today, but I’ll also say that the Deep Dig is going well. I can confirm our findings about the sand we’ve hit since yesterday. It’s very slow to move, up until you get it out of the ground, and we’ve got piles now that are acting like regular sand. My best guess is that it’s filler material for a bona fide stasis field. It’s easier to get through than the metal floor, just not by that much.”

  “It’s a lot easier on me to turn the crank when we’re going through sand,” Ernie comments.

  “I’m glad we can make life easier for everyone,” Orbora says, smiling to Ernie. The corner of his mouth twitches upward.

  Attention shifts to Telly, like there’s a social cue that I missed.

  “All I got is that I don’t mind sitting in the dome for a little longer to give the news time to stop being the news,” Telly says. “Oh, and me and Sammy are sorta shacking up in the same house now. The usual spot. Come talk to us sometime.”

  Next, Orbora.

  “If we’re still playing Mob Rule after this election, Cieze and I are fixing up the playground! The chains on the swings are stronger, so we can swing on them now, and the hopscotch is done.” She smiles. “I’m going to oil up the merry-go-round, next.”

  Magnolia looks at Cieze. “I didn’t forget about the checkers set, by the way. I’ll get you the finished board today if it still matters.” He nods, quietly. Magnolia shrugs. “Nothing else to report. Pass.”

  North hums. “I still think our comforts should think bigger than board games. Pass.”

  “Fark is the best! Pass!” Adol says.

  “Thanks, love.”

  “I’ll pass too. And I’m not voting for Sammy,” Ernie says.

  “Oh my fuck you’re kidding me,” Fark says. “Please tell me we have people willing to vote Sammy, here.”

  Ernie is still frowning. “Look, casting a vote against someone for being a nonce, that’s one thing. Voting to get a real elimination, that’s completely different. Is anyone protest-voting? Speak up, it’s important this time,” he says, and receives a chorus of ‘no’.

  “Can I just state my case for voting Sammy? Please? This is going to make perfect sense,” Fark says, his hands together, fingers up.

  “Fark, my friend, I think everyone understands the idea already,” North answers. “Shall we go to the vote?”

  “Fine,” he grumbles.

  “Wait up,” Telly speaks. “Give Sammy a chance.”

  Honestly, I’ve been bewildered by trying to pick up the social conventions about ‘passing’ and whose turn it was to speak and talking about your vote, so I’m staring like a raccoon caught digging through the trash. Gotta think. “Hi, uh. I’m Sammy. I’m 22 years old, I didn’t know what I was doing before I got here, and I sure don’t now. Please don’t vote me dead. I like being alive. That’s all.”

  Cieze claps sarcastically. North claps genuinely. The latter sounds like clinking glass bottles.

  Magnolia’s rectangle lights up green. So does Orbora’s, and then Telly’s; Telly is chuckling. North goes back to humming; his hands enter the box and his rectangle goes green.

  I stare down at my booth’s box, feeling around the speckled metal insides, tracing the buttons with my fingers.

  “You play it like a guitar,” Telly said, and I’m relieved that she caught my confusion, but I still don’t know what that means. “Hold down one of the eight buttons on the left, and while you’re holding it, press the one on the right to cast the vote. If you don’t hold any left buttons, it’s Abstain.”

  “And the ninth one is mine,” I extrapolate. “What’s the tenth?”

  “No Death.” Telly laughs. “It’s gonna be weird, pressing the ninth button for a real reason instead of just messing with it.” Please don’t press it, Telly. I’m counting on you.

  I hold down the tenth button, corresponding to the one blank rectangle on each TV screen. Everyone else’s rectangles slowly light up. I take a deep breath, my heart accelerating, and submit.

  I immediately turn around, so I don’t see the results; I watch the elevator doors. “What are you going to do to me if I’m voted dead?”

  “No one knows,” Telly says, behind me. “It’s the first time it’d happen.”

  The light behind me dims a shade, for just a moment—the screens are going out. And then they’re back.

  “You’re fucking kidding me! We’re still in here?” Fark yells, and his hands hit the booth, with a rejoinder of fatigued groans and relieved sighs. I turn back around and have a reason to relax.

  Day 999

  3 – Error in line 761: Players[9].name(): index out of bounds

  4 – No Death

  2 – Abstain (Present)

  “And...and, uh...” I herd my thoughts into a corner. “Now what?”

  “Nothing! Nothing at all!” Fark throws up his hands. “We do this every damn day for three more years and nothing ever happens in this game!” He hangs his head and puts his palms against his forehead. Adol pats him on the back, but she’s watching me, not him—her face serious.

  “Not happy either,” Ernie comments, frowning again. “Don’t know why, but I wasn’t going to be happy no matter what.”

  North smiles apologetically, his fingers lacing together at his middle. “I don’t expect anyone to be happy with our accomplishment today.”

  “I am. I’m right here.” I point to myself and look around the room. “Hello? Number Nine? Sammy? The person who got to not die? I am here, get used to me already.”

  Orbora is already quietly pulling Magnolia aside, exchanging those sorts of glances women give each other when there’s a bunch of grumpy angry men in the room talking about how they’re angry and grumpy. They’re quick to leave.

  “You are dying in the next election, Sam,” Cieze says, fuming and buttoning his shirt furiously. “I’ll make sure to it. You have to keep everyone convinced. I only have to convince one more.”

  “I should have protest voted you instead of abstaining,” Ernie curmudgeons at Cieze.

  “You won’t have time,” Cieze says. He turns away from his booth, looking over his shoulder to me. He pulls a finger across his throat; his flames crackle and snap with the motion. “Say your prayers.”

  I’m rehearsing them in my head as he walks out.