Chapter 7: Tower Meeting

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“So the first order of buisiness would be to establish a civilization,” said Jeffery. “I think we should-”

“Hang on, I think you're mixing up your priorities here,” interrupted Nathan. “First thing is to find food.”

“Well yeah,” said Jeffery, “But you're thinking short-term. We could set up some farms and stuff to grow food.”

“I don't want to be a farmer,” said Richard.

“Anyway, who put you in charge?” asked Zandria.

“I didn't vote for him,” said Benny.

“That's a good point,” Megan said. “Without leadership we won't get anything done.”

“That's true,” said Jeffery. “I think we can all agree, we need law and order-”

“I disagree!” said Zandria

“-or we'll all desolve into chaos.”

“And what's wrong with that?” asked Zandria. “I am running for president. And my platform is no laws! We're only two dozen people. We don't need them!”

“Well I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that I will be running,” said Jeffery.

“I second the nomination.” said Charles.

“Wait you need to second now?” asked Kyle.

“No!” said Zandria.

“Well I second you anyway.”

“But then who makes the rules about how the election works?” asked Frederick.

There was silence for a few seconds.

Allison spoke fairly quickly, so as not to be interrupted, and sharply. “Alright anyone can run who wants to, they don't need to be seconded or thirded or anything. They take a day to campaign, we reconvene here at the round table to vote tomorrow at sundown. I'm not running so no one can accuse me of manipulating the election rules in my favour-”

Zandria started to say something

“And we all know you want no rules, Zandria, anarchy is your entire characterization up to this point; try not to lean too heavily on it. Anyway, any objections?”

There was silence again.

“Well I guess that settles it,” said 7ollion.

“I wish to run!” said Toaster-Man in a commanding voice. “I shall rule Danada with an iron toaster!”

“Ookey,” said Kristina. “Anyway I nominate Kyle; I think he's a guy who'll always have the people's best interests at heart.”

“Dude, I don't want to be president,” said Kyle. “Too much pressure.”

“Wait, shouldn't it be prime minister?” asked Jessica. “I mean Canada has a prime minister and-”

“Does it really matter?” Mackenzie said.

“I guess not,” Jessica said.

<I have a question,> said Pudding, the fish who everyone had just forgotten about until now. <Can I run?>

“Why wouldn't you be able to?” said Jeffery.

<Oh, okay, well I don't want to.>

“Is that everyone then?” Bethany asked.

It was.

“Well then, I guess we could start the debate,” said Jeffery.

“Food,” said Nathan.

“Alright I guess we can start with that issue,”

“No, I mean I'm extremely hungry,” said Nathan. “I've literally never eaten before in my life.” He got up and walked toward the back of the cavernous room.

“Where are you going?” asked Benny.

“It's a leaning tower of Pizza, right? There's gotta be some pizza around here somewhere.” Nathan replied. Benny and several others got up to join him.

“If we're breaking up this meeting,” said Anthony, “We're going to go too. We're starting a band. We decided to do that before we were born.”

“A band?” asked Jeffery incredulously. “Who's we?”

“The seven of us,” said Anthony. He gestured at the group starting with him and ending with Kimberly.

“And that's literally the most important thing to do at the start of civilization? That's gotta be the most-” then Jeffery realized the danger of alienating a significant portion of the voter base.

“Yes, yes it is,” said Michael.

“What about instruments?” asked Samantha

“Don't you see that huge stage over there?” Tessa said, pointing off to the Northeast where there was, indeed, a huge stage. “There's gotta be instruments around here somewhere.” With that, the seven of them left to explore over by the stage area.

* * *

There was indeed some pizza by the front counter. Several boxes in fact, and it was all still fairly warm, surprisingly. The logic behind how this could be was questioned somewhat, considering the tower was actually created years before they were given bodies, but they decided to ignore it, because the pizza was tasty. The Danadians split up into smaller groups and sat at smaller tables, so as to facilitate a more natural flow of conversation.

“So what's your strategy?” asked Charles to Jeffery, in between bites. They were sitting at a table with what were Jeffery's main group of friends before they were born, and now supporters.

“Well the way I see it,” Jeffery replied. “Toaster-Man and Zandria will split the not-insignificant crazy-person vote, which makes my main contender Nathan.”

“So how will you defeat him?” said Stephanie.

“I'll simply appeal to the Danadians' senses of logic and reason.”

“You're obviously not genre-savvy here at all,” said Georgina. “Sorry, I think you'd make a good leader, but you're not a good politician; and sadly for democracy, the two things are not one and the same.”

“Then what would you propose I do?” said Jeffery.

“Attack ads!” said Georgina.

“That doesn't seem very nice,” said Meagan.

“Anyway, how would we do that?” said Frederick. “We don't have any cameras or TVs.”

“Yeah, so never mind that,” said Jeffery. “What I will do is tell all the people my plans for the short-term to build this city, make sure everyone has everything they need, and my long-term plans for the far future, to create the glorious Danadian civilization.”

“Sounds... glorious,” said Josephine.

“They'll have to vote for me,” said Jeffery. “There's no other decent choice.”

“Vote Jeffery: no other decent choice,” said Charles. “That has a nice ring to it as a slogan.

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