By Ian Rossin
(TW: blood, violence, graphic imagery, reference of school shooting)
Blood splatters onto the hidden camera lens as the machine guns jutting out of the wall each fire a round of bullets into Senator Blake Balor’s body. A chime sounds, indicating death. “Finally,” John says, standing up at his control station to stretch. “That man was taking too long to die. What a jackass.”
“What other fate would you expect for someone who preaches on the irrelevance of gun safety?” I respond. “He deserved it.”
Blake Balor is—sorry, was—a Republican Senator who was seemingly indifferent about whether or not kids aged five to eighteen made it to full adulthood and lived happy lives. Any time a school shooting would occur (which is, of course, often—what else would you expect in the United States?), Balor would put the blame on anything and everything except the people who sold the guns: “he was mentally unstable,” “his parents probably abused him,” “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a bullying victim.” It was never, “we should implement more thorough background checks” or “we should raise the age limit so school-aged children can’t legally buy guns.” In fact, in his campaign ads, Balor was often seen holding a hunting rifle in order to appeal to the firearm-lovers in America. What was he hunting? Probably as many votes as possible, which he achieved.
“Sam, who’s left?” John asks.
I look at the current stats on the monitor at my desk. “Aside from Balor, Scott Cain, Ivan Keres, Mort Malvolio, Cary Welsh, Cole Dagon, and Delaney Darcy are all dead. The only living candidates left are… Matthew Joseph, Bella Varney, and Donovan Dugal.”
John nods. “Sounds good. I’m going to call the clean-up team to get rid of the Senator’s body and wipe his insides off the maze. Need to make sure it’s clean for the next person.” He sits down and picks up the phone. I stare at the video feed and watch as Joseph, Varney, and Dugal make their ways through the maze. Which one of the three will be our next president is anyone’s guess.
Allow me to explain. Years ago, we had a particularly terrible president who didn’t have a selfless bone in his body. Every decision he made was made without regards to the economy, the planet’s climate, or the wellbeing of his country’s citizens, both illegal and legal. Less than one year into the president’s term, the people were so fed up and angry with him that someone actually assassinated him on camera during a public speech in front of the White House. Since then, a new system was devised to make sure that any president we’d have from there on out had real morals and an undeniable sense of good versus evil. Now, instead of an extremely limited pool of nominees put forth by their respective parties, all with a variety of beliefs and worldviews, the people vote on ten candidates to be put into a maze and have their morals tested by answering questions surrounding issues like “What would you do during a pandemic?” and “If you were given one billion dollars by another country to fix America, how would you spend it?” If a candidate answers a certain number of questions wrong, they’re promptly killed. Why? Because what’s the point of having someone without a shred of decency or goodness remain alive and in a position of power where they can negatively affect the population?
Are there flaws in the system? Yes. For example, all ten presidential candidates could be extremely morally corrupt, and we could still end up with someone terrible. However, the expectation—the hope, more like it—is that at least one of them won’t plunge the country into darkness and demise.
My place in this crazy, mixed-up world is working as an intern at the agency that organizes the elections and designs the mazes. Young adults between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five have the opportunity to participate in the fun because, as the next generation of lawyers, doctors, politicians, what have you, it’s believed that we should have a real say in who leads the country. As an intern, I’ve been tasked with crafting some of the questions, designing a small portion of the maze, and thinking of ways to carry out the deaths of the candidates deemed unworthy to be president. For instance, it was my idea to have guns fire if someone answers the gun safety laws question incorrectly. Can you tell I’m a fan of irony?
I look up at the screen before me and see that Governor Joseph and Senator Varney are getting too close to each other. I press some buttons on my keyboard and a wall slides up out of the ground, ensuring they never have an encounter. Contestants aren’t allowed to make contact in the maze, as this can result in unpleasant interactions. During the first election using the maze system, the neck of one candidate was snapped by another who was drunk on the idea of power and control. Naturally, they subdued the crazy candidate, and he did not become President of the United States that year.
Governor Joseph takes a left and finds himself in front of a sleek white podium with a screen on the flat surface. A question pops up on the screen, which reads: “If two warring countries agree to a ceasefire, how would you ensure peace?”
Four answers appear underneath the question, and the options are: A) Threaten to use United States warfare to personally nuke the country that breaks the ceasefire first; B) Provide both countries with nuclear weapons and bombs, allowing one of them to attack whichever country breaks the ceasefire first; C) Have both parties sign a detailed peace treaty and commit to weekly check-ins, using negotiation tactics and interpersonal communication skills to ensure positive and professional interactions; and D) I don’t know. Next question.
I feel like the correct answer is fairly obvious, but politicians are more stupid than you’d think. Joseph narrows his eyes in concentration, clearly working out whether there’s some angle or trick. His fingers linger over the B button, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the answer he ultimately ends up choosing. It’s the answer almost all politicians end up choosing. They don’t want to put in the work to maintain peace themselves, so they hand out weapons to foreign countries like candy to children and leave them to do the murdering. That way, no blood is actually on America’s hands. What they fail to realize, though, is that there is blood on America’s hands. U.S. weapons, U.S. blame.
The governor does, in fact, select B, which results in a harsh buzzer sound. The screen goes white, and the words “Two Questions Left” flash in red, indicating that he only has to get two more questions wrong before he meets an untimely end. “Dammit!” he curses. A hole opens in the floor, and the podium descends into the ground. A panel slides closed, the hole is no more, and the man moves on, the back of his suit jacket soaked through with sweat.
Meanwhile, Senator Bella Varney comes to a halt when faced with three pathways. All three contain question podiums, but it’s a matter of the difficulty level. If she goes left, her question will be medium. If she goes right, it will be difficult. And if she goes straight, easy. Senator Varney opts to go straight, and the podium screen says, “All humans deserve rights such as free healthcare, affordable housing, and clean water.” The words “True” and “False” appear below the statement. She doesn’t hesitate to press “True,” which elicits a pleasant Ding! from the machine. The podium vanishes, and the senator goes on her merry way.
Watching government officials slowly move through a maze and answer questions may seem boring, but it’s interesting to see how their minds work, to see the inner workings of the people we let run our country. Personal and psychological profiles are made for candidates during the initial election process, yes, but the information collected by my agency is inaccessible to the public.
Congressman Donovan Dugal approaches a podium placed at a dead end. I watch closely as he only has one more question to answer incorrectly before he’s out of the running. The question blinks onto the screen. It asks, “What motivates you? Select all that apply.” The options are money, power, pride, love, hate, fear, and change. If the congressman chooses money or power, he’ll immediately get the question wrong. If he chooses any of the other answers, a prompt asking him to explain his choices will appear. I find this question particularly interesting, as there are so many ways it can go. If he’s forced to explain his answers, they’ll be sent to one of the interns and we’ll get to evaluate the validity of them.
Donovan selects pride, fear, and change. The prompt appears on the screen and he types out the reasoning behind his answers. A moment later, I hear a double beep coming from the monitor on my left, and an intern named Katherine looks up in surprise. She’s been busy on coffee runs and email replies, so the opportunity to actually take on an important task such as this one isn’t to be passed up. She presses a key, and the congressman’s response pops up. Her face takes on a kind of intensity as she reads it, evaluating every word closely. She’s about to decide on whether to pass or fail the man when we hear a buzzer sound, and then a chime.
My eyes flit to the screen and widen in alarm. The scene on the feed is gruesome. Governor Joseph is lying on the floor, facedown in a puddle of blood, slash marks from tiny knives covering his body. He must have gotten his next two questions wrong. The camera zooms in to the podium in front of him so everyone can see where he erred. The question was, “Would you cut funding for arts and education if you could use the money to expand military power?” His answer, unfortunately, was “Yes.”
I hear John sigh across the room. “Well, he did want cuts.”
“I don’t think those were the kind he was thinking of,” I retort. “But at least the arts and education are safe.”
“Yeah, for now,” he says.
I glance back at Katherine, who’s trembling and frozen with fear and new indecisiveness.
“Katherine, are you okay?” John asks.
But she’s not okay, and the reason why dawns on me. She still hasn’t decided whether to pass or fail the congressman. And now there are only two candidates left standing. She has the ability to choose the next U.S. President.
Trying to maintain a calm demeanor, I say, “What does his response say?”
She takes a breath. “‘I choose pride as a motivator because I long to have pride in my country. I choose fear as a motivator because I’m fearful for the direction America is heading in, and I’m fearful for my life in this maze. I choose change as a motivator because I want to make change myself, and change things for the better.’” Katherine looks at us, asking for input, for help.
“His response means nothing,” I share. “Why does he not have pride in his country? Is he against a specific movement, in opposition of a specific law? Exactly what direction is America heading in? What does changing things for the better mean to him personally?”
There’s a pause before John gives his two cents. “I agree with Sam,” he starts, “because there’s not enough information to go off of. There’s no details or thought behind the response. It sounds like something a politician would say to rally a crowd to his cause, without explaining what the cause is.”
If there was an option to bypass the question, to simply allow a contestant to move on if their answer isn’t sufficient or informative enough, I’m sure Katherine would take advantage of it now. But there’s not, so she’s at a loss. Her eyes move to her keyboard. I can see her contemplating our words, taking the congressman’s into consideration. Her finger floats toward a button, and she lightly presses it.
A buzzer sounds. A small square panel opens in the wall to the congressman’s left, and a dart flies out of it and sticks him in the neck. Congressman Dugal promptly collapses, and a chime sounds.
A deep voice booms over the speaker system. “Congratulations to Senator Bella Varney, the new President of the United States of America!”
Author Bio
Ian Rossin is a Master’s student at Emerson College enrolled in the Public Relations graduate certificate program. Once finished with the certificate, he’ll be pursuing an M.A. in Publishing and Writing. He’s currently the Social Media Manager for PTM, the Secretary for Redivider, and is a Feature Writer for Atlas Mag.