DeLupa hurled a roll of paper down the steps with theatrical gusto, holding the end so the scroll billowed like a streamer in the post-storm wind.

“This has been circulating among the Humanists for decades now,” he cried. “It’s called the Wish List. If you want someone dead, you put their name on the list. If someone else wants them dead, they add a second vote. The rumor claimed that somewhere out there someone was watching the list and secretly granting these ‘wishes.’ The Anonymous and I, like many others, always thought this was a sick joke, but now we know it wasn’t. The police just found the master Wish List, updated hourly, kept in the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ computers. This… This is…” Again he touched his tracker, scowling as if the Anonymous’s instructions came over the line too fast for him to follow. “This is not a government scheming to enrich itself, this is private individuals picking victims, and not a few. Each Hive Member can only vote for each name once, so if one name has a hundred votes that means a hundred different would-be murderers have added that victim to the list. The highest ranked name has nine hundred and eighty-nine million, four hundred and eight thousand and sixty-one votes. That’s nine hundred and eighty-nine million individual Humanists who have willed to commit murder, at least ninety percent of the Humanist Membership, and we must assume… there must… be more since… since…” The red-faced Proxy ripped the tracker from his ear and hurled it on the steps. “Little wonder a nation of murderers would elect a willing murderer to lead them! Even now they’re trying to stop me from saying what must be said”—he gestured at his tracker on the ground—“but I won’t let them! I’m not directing this appeal to the Humanists, I’m talking to everyone else. Arrest Ganymede, yes, but don’t make me President! You trust the Anonymous, I trust the Anonymous. If I became President, the Anonymous through me would lead the Humanists wisely until the next election, but the system wouldn’t change! A system that reliably picks murderers, because the Hive members are murderers themselves! The Hive is the problem, this Hive which breeds competition, and glory-seeking, and backstabbing, and idol worship, and will keep producing murderers as long as it exists!”

The crowd on the steps below DeLupa began to churn, and murmur terms of fear.

“I’m not speaking as Vice President anymore!” The Proxy’s cheeks puffed like an arriving wind. “I’m repeating the Anonymous’s plea: Dissolve the Humanists! Dissolve the Hive! Make all current Humanists into Graylaw Hiveless, at least until they join a new Hive which will give them something better to believe in. They won’t keep thinking like murderers without the poisonous Humanist atmosphere to twist them. They need to be split up, offered something better, new ideals, new guidelines. Let them—let us—become Cousins and Masons, and learn from their good models. Dissolve the Humanists! That’s the only real way to make the murders stop!”