The crowd around the Rostra had not so much thinned as changed, those who had endured the chaos firsthand wandering home to huddle with their bash’es, while, from the capital’s depths, the morbid and the starstruck arrived in wide-eyed droves. The skies at least were clear. The Utopians had worked their magic, forty-seven minutes to cleanse the Saneer-Weeksbooth computers and restore that flying bloodstream which makes our modern world one living thing. At the Censor’s urging, the Romanovan City Prefect had closed the capital to anyone without a diplomatic, legal, or bash’ reason to enter, but that could not exclude the press, nor parasite DeLupa, thirsty for a stage.

“It’s unthinkable!” the Vice President railed. “Sniper, who we thought was our brightest star, not just defending mass murder, not just committing mass murder, but crowning it with this attempt on the life of a Romanovan Tribune! Never in my life did I expect to feel ashamed to be a Humanist, but how can I not? We’re the guilty ones! Europe and the Mitsubishi were complicit, but Humanists conceived this, Humanists controlled this, Humanists did this. Other politicians may be trying to sugarcoat it, but the Anonymous serves truth, and the truth is that our Hive’s most prized conviction, our love of human excellence, has degenerated into a cult of celebrity which hands power to the most charming, regardless of how rotten they are inside. President Ganymede is a mass murderer. Whether they committed the crimes before or after taking office doesn’t matter: we elected someone willing to commit mass murder.”

DeLupa’s hand rose by instinct to the tracker at his ear, reviewing the Anonymous’s instructions, perhaps, or the newsfeeds hot with babble as every capital from Brussels to Tōgenkyō swelled with mobs.

“I know how self-serving this must seem,” DeLupa continued, “the Vice President calling for the President’s arrest, but it isn’t what you think. The Anonymous doesn’t want you to make me President. The Anonymous doesn’t want you to make anyone President. In two hundred and fifty years, the Humanist Hive has not elected a single leader who refused to commit mass murder. Not one in two hundred and fifty years! Europe has had exceptions, the King of Spain, other good people who refused, that’s why the so-called Special Means Committee had to run the murders secretly around them. The Mitsubishi hid it from their Greenpeace Directors, knowing Greenpeace has a conscience if the others don’t, and the other Directors are chosen through patronage and family ties, so while it’s sick that they’ve all been murderers for centuries, it makes sense, at least, since each murderer gets to groom a murderous successor, it doesn’t mean everyone in the Hive is guilty. The Humanists don’t have that excuse. We have open elections, the most open in history, and still we elect nothing but murderers! Worse, I…” He paused again, perhaps receiving fresh instructions from the Anonymous over the line. “Worse, I know why it’s happened, and it’s not corruption, or election fraud, or even ignorance. The Humanists elect nothing but murderers because the voters who elect them are all murderers themselves!”