The Lightcap by Dan Marshall

been a long time since he’d been to a bar.
    As he was trying to remember the etiquette for ordering a drink, a tiny woman materialized, seemingly from nowhere.  She was so small Adam had thought at first she was a child, but as she moved closer he realized she was a small woman.  The waitress stopped chewing her gum long enough to ask for his order.  “Scotch.  Old aged.  Rocks,” he replied.  Adam may have felt out of his element in a place such as Hanley’s, but he could still order a drink with confidence.  He’d practiced this when he was younger, thinking he could impress a waitress who was the focus of his youthful infatuation.  She had not been very impressed; truth be told, she had not seemed to care at all.  He still liked scotch though.
    The diminutive current waitress disappeared into the crowd and returned several minutes later, carrying a large glass of brown liquid that washed around two dueling spherical ice cubes.  “Twenty credits,” she said as she chomped, her mouth decimating her gum.  He gave her thirty, feeling both generous and thankful she had appeared when he needed her and retrieved his drink so quickly.  Adam picked up his glass, slowly swirled the scotch in it and looked around the bar.  Most faces were turned with rapt attention to the bar’s screens, which showed animated maps of the Region, each precinct lighted with blue or red depending on which candidate—the one who was pro-business or the one who was very pro-business—was leading or had won. 
    In some cases only a few ballots had been counted, which led to them reporting absolutely nothing, saying things like, “Too close to call,” and, “This is just a projection, only two percent of the polls have closed.”  Someone had evidently decided these statements sounded better than, “We have nothing to report.”  The news could never stop, even if there were no stories to cover, because it would cause a drop in ratings.  Actually, the news stopping would itself be news.  Anything was more interesting than dead air.
    Adam watched each screen briefly, more interested in how people responded to the news than the news itself.  Groups of patrons cheered or wailed, then he noticed a group that had occasionally done the opposite.  Words were traded, and in some cases the thick-necked bouncers stepped forward with menacing faces, unspoken warnings of their potential intervention.  Already an excuse to party, politics had become an excuse to brawl.  “If you can’t beat your opponents in the tally, beat them in the streets,” was the motto of many.  The bouncers were there to keep beatings from occurring, for the sake of the bar’s insurance policy, not any sense of obligation to customers.
    Adam couldn’t help but chuckle.  He took a pessimistic approach to politics.  He’d always voted for the candidate who seemed most likely to lose a few minutes of sleep if he or she were to accidentally run over a small, defenseless animal.  There wasn’t always a candidate who met that criteria, however, so sometimes Adam would have to pick the one who seemed the least interested in using an elected term to pad a bank account.  One election, Adam couldn’t even figure that out.  He ended up going to a voting center that year, forgoing his usual method of mesh vote.  He stepped into the booth, closed his eyes, and picked one at random.  He had considered not even voting for the briefest of moments, until he remembered his mother and father would have been very disappointed, had they been alive to see it. 
    After Adam’s first vote, his father took him out for dinner and a drink, hugged Adam, and said, “Voting is a way to have a small amount on impact of larger things in the world.”
    Ray and Monica, Adam’s father and mother, died a little more than two months later in an autocar accident.  Adam, with the benefits of age and wisdom—including more than a bit of cynicism—now thought his father naïve