The case rests on an obscure fifty-three-year-old Supreme Court ruling, Foster v Love, where the Court ruled that while early voting was constitutional and allowed by law, votes were only collected in advance, and were not consummated until election day. The plaintiffs in this case are assisted by attorneys from the Kim campaign and the ACLU. Citing the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Foster v Love, they argue that every voter has the right to change their vote until election day. Especially in cases where important new information about the election has come to light.

The Stockton campaign…

48
The Dinner Party

Wednesday 2040.11.28

The Avatar watched on the house monitors as the pounding and clawing at the doors grew weaker and more listless. She watched as the guests succumbed, one by one, to the drugs in their food and drink, as the last useless phones slipped from limp fingers.

Only then did she instruct the house to slide open the door to Chen’s room, where Chen and Xu Liang had sealed themselves up while the drugs took hold on their guests.

Eight of Xu’s most senior staff. Key people at the Secure Computing Center and the PICC below it. Now they were all slumped across the great open space of this exclusive Shanghai loft.

Proceed, she instructed. She felt Ling struggling beneath her and kept a tight grip on the girl. There would be no mistakes, this time.

As she watched, Chen and Xu went from guest to guest with their hypersonic injectors, pressing the flat tips against jugulars, injecting the high pressure stream of nanites directly into the bloodstream, swapping ampules.

Xu did it happily, love and loyalty for her emoting from his brain. She’d been kind to him, had done deep reconditioning work, had software running to ease the cognitive dissonance. He’d done her no wrong.

Chen went from guest to guest in horror.

Ling struggled harder as she felt it. NO!

The Avatar clenched down hard against Ling. The girl should not be so strong. She shouldn’t be able to resist at all. No human would have been.

But no human would have had so much nanotechnology already in her brain.

No human would have lived with it for so long.

Ling was unique. Ling could resist her in ways that no other creature could.

Be still, daughter, she willed to Ling. It will be over soon. Then you can have your body back, and so much more.

Soon the staff were going through calibration phase, hallucinating, their minds opening to her as they came alive on radio frequencies.

The Avatar took stock of what she had, trawled their memories for useful tidbits.