Why have just one election when you can have 1093‽
Sunday, December 25th, 2044, 3:07am
Presidential Mansion, Scott City, Darmen
BBBRRRIIINNNGGG! BBBRRRIIINNNGGG!
Thielene Lee awoke from her dream with a start. It wasn’t unusual for her husband to receive calls late at night, early in the morning. Nor was it unusual for her husband to continue sleeping even as the phone went off. She reached over him to pick up the phone.
“Hello?” she asked. An anxious voice quickly replied, asking for her husband. She looked down at the darkened outline of her husband. He remained in a deep sleep. With the phone in one hand, she brought her free hand down hard into her husband’s stomach.
Tor Tong Lee awoke from his dream with a start. Lee spluttered out a “Huhhh?” an element of fear present in his voice.
“It’s Alex. It sounds urgent,” said Thilene handing her husband the phone before leaving the room to dehydrate.
Lee spluttered into the phone, still half asleep, “Huhhh?”
“The bloody bastard. He’s finally done it!” Speaker of Parliament Alex Quinn seemed very excited to Lee, but not in the good way.
“The who? The what?”
“Rademacher!”
Lee was now fully awake. There were very few names in the multiverse that Lee truly feared, but Rademacher’s name was certainly first on that short list. “What has he done?”
“He’s left the coalition. He’s taken the vast majority of the Lib Cons with him and he plans to hook up with the NCLDU to form a new liberal party.”
“How do you know all of this Alex?”
“He sent me a letter just now. Had a messenger deliver it to me personally. He’s going public tomorrow morning before the football matches start. Guess he wanted us to know today to give us a little gift.”
“A gift? Today? What for?” asked Lee.
“It’s Christmas.”
“Oh.”
“Anyways, we should meet later today to discuss strategy over the next few months. We definitely have to respond to this. I’m sure he’ll make the CRC a main topic of discussion heading into the elections.”
“Today? You want to meet today?”
“We have to. We can’t afford to let Rademacher go public and not have a response ready. At least he was nice enough to give us a full day’s notice.”
“But my family? They’ll be over all day.”
“Certainly you can spare a few hours, right? Listen, I’ll get O'Donahaue and a few others up to speed and we’ll be over at three to discuss things. I’ll see you later.”
Before Lee could respond, the line went dead. He put the phone back onto the nightstand and after taking a few moments to collect his thoughts, returned to sleeping. Thilene slid back into the bed next to him.