milliways_bar | (no subject)

"I know," Sirona says. "I'm just not used to it, that's all. I'm a bit nocturnal, and spend my days with computers, as it is."

"Programmer? Or hacker?" Charlie swings himself upright and sits on the branch.

"Depends," Sirona says. "On what needs doing."

He laughs. "I'll take that as hacker. I used to dabble in that. But I preferred looking at paper files. It was simpler." And more of a challenge sometimes. And it also reminded him that he was breaking and entering, and thus crossing the line.

"I see no point in doing anything on paper that can be done electronically," Sirona says. "Except voting, if at all possible."

"You don't trust electronic voting, either? Good. Though where I come from, they found other ways to cheat." Charlie remembers all too well the election that ended, despite the best efforts of too many other forces, with Myra Fermin in the mayor's job for real,

"Tell me about it," Sirona says. "I know about computers. There is no way to make computers safe. None! There were state elections in the place where I'm living in the state capital at the moment, the first to use voting machines, that is, computers. The result left the place in political shreds. A small party got in, with barely more than five percent, that upsets the whole power balance and leaves the state ungovernable. If you subtract the electronic votes, not so much. Recounts are unadvisable, and not really possible, because of those damn computers."

"Where are you from?" Charlie slides off the branch and lands with a small thump. "And what sort of party was this? Fringe, I assume?" Her accent places her from one of the places in Europe where the fringe has, on occasion, included jackboots and genocide.

"Wiesbaden, federal state of Hesse, Germany," Sirona says. "2008. And yes, fringe -- left fringe, actually. The party that's the successor of the successor of the single 'socialist' party of East Germany. So the Social Democrats, who would otherwise have won with flying colours, are tearing themselves up over whether they can cooperate with the Left. None of the parties can form a state government, which means that the old prime minister, who lost the elections, is still hanging on to his post."

"Wow. The return of the Communists. Ronald Reagan was right." Though his smirk says that Charlie wouldn't have thought Reagan was right if you asked him to look out the window and tell you if it was raining.

"The Hub City election was nearly that bad, though somehow the right woman won. And still had the job when I died. And when the White House was stolen, it was a total mandate."

"Split votes are always much more dangerous, in systems that have more than two parties," Sirona says. "I thought when the White House was stolen, it was stolen by a few thousand votes in Florida that weren't recounted as they should have been?"

"That? That was a nice little sideshow, but Luthor was far busier taking everything else. And he did it as a third party candidate. Everything about that, including the sideshow, was clearly a fix. But no one ever found any evidence before he resigned." He wonders if she has any idea what he's talking about.

"Who is Lex Luthor?" Sirona says. "The vote-stealer, in my world, was called George W. Bush."

"I guess we come from very different timelines. Lex Luthor was the richest man in America. And he decided to add politics to his portfolio. And we have a man named Herbert Forrest Jr. He might be the same as your Bush. Was his dad a prominent senator?" He wonders what his timeline did to deserve Luthor.

"No, his father was vice-president, then president, in the 1980s and 1990s," Sirona says. "And started a war in Iraq, which the son promptly took up again, maufacturing spurious reasons for it. To imagine how many lives could have been saved if that re-count had been finished, or if no voting computers had been used? Makes me shudder to my bones."

"We had that war. Before Luthor. Also on trumped up causes." The narration notes that the DCU timeline makes no sense. "Some things just happen, I guess. Though I agree about that war. And about computers.

"Lex basically owned the company that made the voting computers in twelve states. And was partners with the Japanese firm that made machines in about eight others. Add that to his bottomless war chest, and he was able to walk to the White House. Even though I never met anyone who voted for him." Not that Charlie had many friends, and not a single super-hero would ever vbote for Lex.

"If that happened in a multi-party system like mine, that is, fringe party waltzing to a total mandate, then people would probably start thinking at last," Sirona says. "It would be obvious the vote was stolen. Perhaps we should do that."

"We...your associates in the hacker community, you mean? Overcooking the books could backfire, you know." He bets she does.

"That's the point," Sirona says. "Imagine somebody totally mental getting in. So bloody mental, George Dubya is the very model of sanity and reason in comparison. Then people will wake up and kick them the hell out, and scrap the bloody voting computers in the process. Realise their votes are important, and democracy is valuable."

"Or whoever cooked the books the first time is on the watch for someone beating them to the punch next time. Or even wants to undermine democracy. I doubt that anyone who cheated this way has the best interests of Germany in mind. Or at best only has the best interests of the party in mind." Again, that would be something someone from the nation that gave us teh Reichstag fire might understand.

"Exactly," Sirona says. "So I guess I find somebody involved with Florida in 2000, and roll up things backwards from there. Of course, whoever cooked the books there will be on to me and whatever team I manage to rustle up. I wonder if that couldn't be an advantage..."

You could positively see her synapses fire in real time.

Charlie has to smile. He could never take this route. He was a loose cannon compared to some of the heroes, but never a revolutionary.

"I didn't get your name."

"I'm Sirona," she says. "I didn't get your name, either, though."

"Charlie." He offers his hand. "Nice to meet a fellow conspiracy follower. Though a lot of the things I followed were more the things people thought were conspiracies. There are a lot of wild ideas out there that aren't at all real."

"Oh yes," Sirona says. "And then there's things that are realy which people think are only wild ideas."