4
There was music,
but it wasn’t so loud you couldn’t hear.
There was a cover band, The DC Insiders, doing a stripped down version
of Miley’s Wrecking Crew’s big hit from 2023, Bad Waters Rising. Hard to believe the bad girl from the ‘teens
became such a folk ballad sensation in the twenties. And the music was further muted by the fact
that their little gathering was taking place in a side room, one especially
designed for Congressional representatives and staffers to have more private
conversations.
The waitress, a
young Latino woman with a bright smile and just as bright red hair, dipped in
to their room. “More drinks, anyone?” Gerald Jefferson ordered a fresh The Citizen,
and everyone else held steady. “I’ll
getcha some fresh Kale Chippers, and ya just lemme know when you’re ready for
some food. Gotta a fresh shipment of Chesapeake
Bay Oysters, if any of ya want to take advantage of that.”
That was
rare. They were coming back but had
almost become extinct. “Oh, my stars!”
gushed Louise Pinkyard. “It’s been a
coon’s age since I could slide those down my throat! How much are they?” Gerald winced a little when she said that,
but he knew in her head she was thinking of a raccoon, and was probably completely
ignorant of the phrases more archaic meaning.
The waitress
gleefully answered, “Just $50 for six, only $90 for a dozen!”
Louise
blanched. “I’ll pass.” That was steep, even on a Congressional
salary. The pay had gone up little in
the last decade, since the Congressional Pay Act of 2025 had reset wages to no
more than five times the minimum wage. They did have a housing allowance, that
varied slightly depending how far away your district was, but it didn’t leave
you swimming in it. Top that off with strict
limits on post-career lobbying opportunities, and a pension that was only 5% of
base pay per term (with term limits of 5 terms, that left a maximum pension of
25% of your last congressional salary).
The days of getting rich by being a Congressman were definitely over, at
least fir it coming from the public till, or by influence peddling. Maybe when her Congressional terms were over
she could go back to being a college basketball coach – now there was a job
that still paid!
The Congressional
Pay Act was needed in part to control the costs of the increased size of
Congress. The ratio of representatives
to population had skyrocketed to 900,000, and was well on its way to a million
or more. The 29th Amendment, first
proposed in 2023, was finally fully ratified in 2025. It restored a fixed ratio of Congressional
representatives, as was the intent of many of the founding fathers. The ratio of 50,000 was not acceptable by
many, as the idea of a House of representatives with almost eight thousand
members was a bit too much for even the most democratically inclined to
accept. A compromise was made at a ratio
of 250,000, which created a Congress that was currently 1,592 members.
When the waitress
left, the five Congresspersons felt confident enough to quietly talk in the
security of their private booth. “Look,”
began Congressperson Louise Pinkyard, the New Conservative from Alabama. “I just gotta state, y’all convinced this is
on the up and up? We ain’t being played
or punked, you think? This ain’t some
ginned up nonsense just to get us to increase the NASA budget, is it?”
Congressperson
Gerald Jefferson, Progressive representative from Pennsylvania, laughed
heartily. “Oh, my lawd, Louise! You is indeed my special friend!” Louise frowned, but mostly in fun. The two political opposites talked to each
other this way all the time. Alfredo Barista wondered if sometimes they just
didn’t find their own private booth. “You
been hanging out with Buddy Dixon far too much!” Buddy was on the far edge of even the New
Conservative Party, and was hard for even Louise to take.
Congressperson
Barbara Winstead, one of Barista’s closest Progressive colleagues,
guffawed. “If any of you think this is
going to be a slam dunk, you’re mistaken.
Buddy Dixon’s attitude is only part of the problem we’re going to have to
work through. This is going to be
expensive as all get out, especially if we make it a manned mission. That means the Republicans, the Libertarians
and the New Conservatives will all have cost objections. Even the Democrats
will want to make sure the right wheels are greased to make it work.”
“Now hold on a
fine minute, Barbara,” oozed Congressperson Kenny Roberts, the chubby
Democratic representative from Illinois, and a close ally of Subcommittee
Chairman, Dabney Reynold. “You think the Democrats are gonna be a problem? You might want to take a look at your own
party as well. You got a lot of members who
think space exploration is a major distraction from what’s really important,
like welfare spending and handing out goodies to those who don’t earn it.”
Barbara just shook
her head. “Good Lord! What happened to the Democratic Party I grew
up with? You have moved so far away from
FDR. I mean, let’s get real. You’ve even moved away from Obama and
Clinton.” The Democrats and Republican
were mostly aligned with different configurations of wealthy elites and large
corporations. They didn’t dominate
Congress anymore, but it was hard to get something done without one or both of
them.
“Oh chill out,
Barbara!” huffed Kenny. “I’m not the
problem, and you know it. I saw the
video. I’m on board. Just get the right contracts to the right
people, and I can help line up Democrats.
And, Louise, I know General Davidson.
He’s a good buddy of mine. He’s a
straight shooter. If he brought that to
us, he is one hundred percent convinced that it is real and urgent.”
Alfredo Barista
had remained silent, nursing his rum ‘n’ cola, taking in the conversation
swirling around him. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but what I saw
changed my life. We are not alone,
people, and now that we know that, we can’t go back to the way things were. We
have an obligation to science and humanity to find out what is on Europa. And the five of us, we represent three of the
six major parties that are in Congress.
My question to all of you is - can we get this done? Can we set aside our differences and create a
fully funded, first class mission to Europa?”
Barbara
started. “Well, I can’t say what the
Progressive Party will do as a whole, but I’m on board. If they could see what we saw,” tears forming
in her eyes, “I don’t see how anyone could stand in its way.”
“Oh, you’d be
surprised, darling, cooed Kenny. “But
don’t worry. I’ll do everything I can to
bring the Democrats along. Get the
contracts in line for the tech companies, and I’ll see what I can do to
persuade the Republicans with some military hardware suppliers, and we could be
cooking with atomic gas!”
“I don’t know,”
mused Louise. “It’s gonna be a hard sell
to my party. They’re gonna be members
who resist the money aspect. They’re
gonna be those who call it a hoax and affront to God. And we may even have some
who’ll think we should just vaporize the planet.” Even though the New Conservative Party was
only the third largest party, with 296 representatives, they were an odd
conglomeration of interests. They included
many of the remnants of the Christian Right, sitting sometimes uncomfortably
with what is often described as the “Trump Rump” – those Tea Party diehards who
stuck with him even after his crushing defeat in 2016. The charters that allowed for competing
parties expressly forbid parties coalescing around racism or pure
regionalism. There was no New South
Party, or neo-Nazis style parties. So
most of the Trump Rump gravitated to the New Conservative Party, although there
was a smattering of them in all of the other parties as well. Racism was a hard impulse to keep out of
American politics, but great progress had been made.
“But what do you
think, Louise? What do you think we
should do?” asked Barista.
Louise thought for
a second. “Well, what I saw chilled me
to the bone. As much as I’d like to
think not, I guess down deep I believe what I saw was real. I just don’t know about the expense and risk
of a manned mission. Maybe we could send
another probe.”
“I hate to say it,
Alfredo, but I kind of agree with Louise,” echoed Gerald. “I am committed to
further exploration. It just terrifies
me the chance we’re taking with our astronauts’ lives.”
“I know it’s a
risk,” pleaded Barista. “But this is
huge and cannot be ignored. We need
intelligent men and women up there, able to make on the ground, or, er, in the
ocean evaluations. Decisions that even
our most advanced computers cannot make.
So I don’t want any of you to have any doubts. That’s what I’ll be pushing for.”
“Well,” said
Kenny, then pausing to guzzle a pint of The Public. “We may not all be on the same page, but at
least all agree on one thing.”
“What’s that?”
asked Barbara.
Kenny slammed his
empty pint glass down. “At least none of
us want to blow the damn thing up.”
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