by Brad Oh
Corporate Global Alliance—a perfect amalgamation of all the ‘Preferred Choices’ ready and rearing to go to work.
But quarter expectations weren’t worth much, and I knew the final leader would only be revealed after 7 days’ time. “Used to accurately tally the public will and find the ideal Lead Citizen”, the news would reiterate ad nauseum for the next full week. Then they would finally wheel out some smiling, sycophantic bastard, and everything would continue on as normal.
The central section of the United Corporate Global Election Center made the periphery look like a respectable affair. The sprawling rectangular expanse was separated into six equal sections. Each one featured a tremendous array of products and propaganda so hedonistic in their severity that the sight of each sufficed to convince a man that no more mad and malicious display could ever be found. Inevitably, turning in any direction would reveal the falsity of this assumption.
There were jugglers and fire eaters, belly dancers and sword swallowers. The Disney section even had an elephant chained in place as spotlights painted screening times for new movies over his worn and wrinkled old hide.
Stepping into line at the Viacom Solicitations Table, I sidled up to an angry looking young punk with half his head shaved. “What do you think of this crazy scene?” I asked. I didn’t mention my affiliation with Citizens United E-Magazine. I’d come to find that people were inherently distrustful of any information source that didn’t bear the seal of approval from one of the Big Six, and avoided them whenever possible.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he answered. He had a heavy Queens accent, and reeked of gin.
“Amazing?” I repeated, taking a half-step up in line.
The boy glanced to each side, and then stole a quick pull from a flask in his pocket, offering it to me with a smile. “Yeah, when else in history have we ever had such clear control over our leadership? The entire world votes today, all at once. You can’t deny that’s pretty incredible.”
I gratefully accepted a quick pull from the flask, hoping it would do its job—dull my frayed nerves until I reached the counter to collect my own drink. “But does the image matter so much? Are you content to control who tells you what is decided, or do you really feel like you’re still affecting policy?” I knew I was testing the limits of responsible journalism with these leading questions, yet I had trouble fathoming the idea that this damn ruffian bought into the bullshit around him.
“Are you kidding me?” He rubbed a hand over the bald half of his head, rolling his eyes. “What about in 2025, when that one group—what’s their name—hacked the elections? We ended up with a masked Lead Citizen all year! If that’s not power to the people, you tell me what is.”
You dumb bastard, I thought, but bit my lip. “That son-of-a-bitch was the one who announced the ‘New United Corporate Global Green Routine’!” I cried; referring to the pitiful effort at urban beautification displayed in the hallway leading in.
“Exactly,” the boy winked at me knowingly, as if revealing his part in some grand earth-shaking conspiracy.
I shuddered. Goddamn punk. The Lead Citizen was meant to be the voice of the people in the United Corporate Global Government, but in my experience, they were little more than a mouthpiece. Through these elections, they were cleverly designed for maximum approval, but functioned only to regurgitate and promote whatever destructive new policies the Big Six decided to market to the ignorant masses.
When I finally got to the head of the line, I was greeted by a lovely young woman in a bright orange Viacom shirt. “Welcome to the Viacom Solicitations Table, where we get all our Reality! How can I improve your experience today?”
Behind her, a woman bounced up and down on an LED stage. She wore what looked like tiny wool mittens over her perky young breasts, and walked the stage with her legs bowed, slapping her crotch and wailing something about how freedom really got her off.
“I’ll have 2 Jameson’s, neat.” I tried to keep my answer curt, hoping to avoid unnecessary entanglements.
“Of course,” she said, smiling as she moved in what I assumed to be a dance along to the ‘music’ behind her. “At Viacom, our goal is to be the world’s leading, branded entertainment company across television, motion pictures, and digital media platforms. We focus on our consumers, enhancing our existing bra—”
“Make those doubles.” I cut her off.
She smiled, tapped a few buttons on the dispenser, and drew a sleek white contraption from her belt. It fired a red laser into the badge on my chest, and gave a confirmatory beep. The dispenser poured my drinks, and the lady slid them over to me. “50 Citizen Spending Credits have been deducted from your Citizen Spending Registration Card. Please enjoy your Free Voting Experience, and remember, at Viacom, our goal is to be the world’s leading, branded entertain—”
I walked away, finishing one drink quickly and tossing the empty plastic cup into a tall cylindrical container labelled ‘Viacom Cares about Our Environment.’
I ran my thumb across the thin laminate draped around my neck. On it was a barcode, my full name and Citizen Number. Everyone in the place had one. They were absolutely essential for access to an affair like this.
Inevitably, all money spent went to one of the Big Six. They were at the end of nearly every product you could legally buy or sell. Each dollar was immediately translated into Citizen Spending Credits and allotted to the relevant umbrella Corporation. They called it ‘Proportional Representation’.
It had always struck me as redundant.
“Jesus, Mary Mother and Joseph!” I remembered loudly complaining to a journalist friend during one drunken night in Puerto Rico, “They already have our money, why even pretend to give us a choice in the matter?”
We’d been promptly removed from the bar by a pair of tree-trunk necked apes for ‘disturbing the consumer spirit’.
Cameras lined every surface incapable of supporting LED advertisements, and even these were entirely plastered with ads and slogans for their respective corporate zone. I looked down again at the vital information displayed on my chest, and noticed tiny red flashes playing across it every few seconds. Scanners, I knew.
I’d come here with a lot of questions—key electoral concerns I felt needed to be addressed if the legitimacy of this so-called election was to be evaluated. Is voting a legal requirement? What are the protections on voter secrecy? How does the general public seem to perceive the election?
Now, every question I could think up seemed as empty as the thin plastic cup in my hand. I frowned.
Well, I thought, that’s another 50 Citizen Spending Credits gone from my account.
I didn’t imagine there were very many Viacom voting options I would have found myself passionate about anyway.
Citizen Spending Credits were acquired throughout the duration of each calendar year, right up until the day before election—a day recently dubbed ‘Black Saturday’, when citizens rushed out to spend as much money as possible on their favourite Corporations, hoping to get a hand up on other citizens and secure whatever shitty little features they hoped to see on the Lead Citizen that year.
It wasn’t the only way to use up Citizen Spending Credits. Certain goods—those agreed on by the Big Six for unilateral control and trade monitoring, could only be purchased through the expenditure of extant Citizen Spending Credits throughout the year. These charges were withdrawn from all six Corporate Credit Pools in equal measure.
Alcohol, Cigarettes, Healthcare, Border Crossings—these had been relegated to the Citizen Spending Credit Pool in order to ensure those accessing these ‘Exclusive Public Privileges’ were high-functioning, contributing members of society.
The result was two-fold. Firstly, it ensured that citizens who for whatever reasons failed to pay into the Corporate Economy would not be able to affect it come Voting Day. A second effect, one seldom discussed in Corporate Media, was that an unverified number of Citizens would simply spend all of their Citizen Spending Credits on these good
s—whether due to vice or need—and thus be excluded from the electoral process entirely.
I’d never been convinced that was such a terrible fate. In fact, the notion that you couldn’t be politically active if you didn’t vote always felt tantamount to saying you couldn’t be an atheist without going to church. I’d always done just fine on both fronts, but looking around, it was clear that all too many people were still beleaguered with the tired notion that democratic participation begins and ends with casting a worthless vote in a silly dog and pony show.
It was a sad fucking state of affairs, and contemplating it for any period of time gave me a strong thirst for a powerful drink.
Thankfully, this was not a difficult thing to accomplish at an event like this. All of the Big Six offered an unending supply of drinks at their respective stations, and I allowed myself to wander along listlessly.
To my left, a man was hammering on a Voting Station, screaming inaudibly in the raucous din. “Having a problem there, friend?” I asked.
He only half-turned, his glassy eyes meeting mine for a confused second before resuming his hammering. “Citizen Spending Credits for the Leadership Trait: ‘Well-Travelled’ will be counted as 2-for-1, for the next 27 minutes only.” The machine chirped, and across the screen popped an obtrusive link to said ‘Leadership Trait’.