MingWei laughed, and returned his attention to Matt.
“I’m sorry. I thought we might have a security problem. There are a lot of people gathering on Market Street between the market and the restaurant. It looks like a few thousand, and it is still growing.”
“But not a security problem?”
“No, they are yelling ‘Chen, Chen, Chen.’”
“That could still be a security problem, MingWei. They might be calling for my head.”
“No, Chen Zufu. It is a party atmosphere. They are smiling and laughing. And they are calling ‘Chen’ while waving their lavalavas over their heads.”
Matt laughed.
“So much for Kendall’s nudity laws.”
Opening The Convention
When Piotr Boykov woke that Thursday morning, he had no idea that he would forever after separate his life into ‘before that day’ and ‘after that day.’
Boykov was the person in charge of running the animal husbandry operations on Arcadia. Not the director of the food department on the council. That political hack knew nothing of animals or farming. No, Boykov was the person who actually made the decisions about meat production, from animal breeding all the way to the meat counter.
Boykov woke at seven, when the sun came up. The sun always came up at seven in the morning and set at seven-thirty in the evening on Arcadia, due to its zero axial tilt and twenty-five hour day. Astronomical noon – the sun at its highest position overhead – was actually at one-fifteen in the afternoon.
Boykov checked his mail, and found an announcement that the Chen would address the public at eight. He knew the Chen, of course, at least tangentially. The Chen-Jasic family’s restaurants were wholesale customers of the animal farms Boykov managed. But he had no clue why the Chen would be addressing all the citizens of the planet.
After the Chen’s speech, Boykov sat stunned. So that asshole Donahue, the director of the food department on the council, was dead. That suited Boykov just fine, and if the others on the council were cut from the same cloth – as the Chen had said – that suited Boykov just fine as well.
The question ‘Now what?’ loomed large to Boykov. Large disruptions even in incompetent governments did not necessarily turn out for the better, as attested to by the history of the Russian administrative region his parents had left behind when they left Earth.
That afternoon, Boykov received an invitation to sit on a constitutional convention.
Adriana Zielinski also got an invitation to sit on the constitutional convention. She was provost of the still-fledgling university, as well as the headmistress of the low, middle, and high school.
Many of the children of the colony were schooled at home, to the extent they were schooled at all. Zielinski couldn’t blame the parents. The entire education system was grossly underfunded, as tax receipts were squandered on fancy administrative buildings and perks for bureaucrats. She also suspected, based on their lifestyles, that senior people in the government weren’t strictly limited to their official salaries.
It was infuriating, partially because proper education was so easy with the materials they had brought along from Earth. Zielinski had entire curricula at every level – excellent ones! –available in the colony’s library. Students didn’t need instruction so much as supervision in their use.
But that all depended on the communicators, with their heads-up displays, and the government had slowly increased the age at which the devices were provided to children. Using the on-line curricula was no longer possible in the age ranges in which they would be most effective.
Zielinski had been trying for years to stem the downhill slide, to no effect. But in one day the Chen had overturned everything.
Maybe now it would be possible to repair the damage and make some real progress.
All across government agencies and private companies, prominent individuals on Arcadia received invitations to the constitutional convention. They pondered what a new government might look like.
After a weekend of such thoughts, they met in the auditorium in the administration building on the southwest corner of Quant Boulevard and Arcadia Boulevard on Monday morning at eight o’clock.
The delegates to the constitutional convention milled about in the auditorium. With one and a half million people on Arcadia, no one knew everyone present, but all of them knew lots of the more prominent citizens invited to the convention. They talked in knots and clusters of people here and there, whether in the seats or in the aisles.
Friends sat together when they found each other in the crowd. All in all, there were probably close to two hundred people.
There were people, like Zielinski, in business suits, the normal business wear of their position. There were people, like Boykov, in coveralls, which was also the business wear of their position. There were people there in lavalavas, including some women who wore only the lavalava, perhaps in solidarity with the Chen’s speech of last Thursday.
At eight o’clock, a young man in a lavalava and flip-flops walked out to the center of the stage. There was a single pillow in the middle of the stage with a microphone on a low stand. He bent down and picked up the microphone from the stand and addressed the room.
“If everyone could be seated, please, we will get started.”
He bent down and replaced the microphone in the stand
People wandered to seats and sat down. When everyone was seated, the Chen walked out to the center of the stage. He was dressed in a lavalava and flip-flops. He kicked off the flip-flops and sat in tailor seat on the pillow. There was some applause from the audience when he appeared. Once seated, he motioned for silence.
“Thank you all for coming,” the Chen said. “Please pardon me for sitting rather than standing, but this is the most comfortable position for me. At my age, comfort has become a priority.
“The reason for this meeting
