Kosala flinched here, catching her eye straying to the ex-Censor, who sat in the non-voting seats with the Minor Senators, and a number of other officials who had taken shelter in the Senate from the mobs outside.
“Now,” she continued, “this makes it sound as if the Anonymous has been corrupting the CFB to their own ends, but the facts do not support that. Upon deeper examination, the alterations I discovered are primarily reactive, engineered to conceal brief spikes or drops in the number of letters on a subject, and always relating either to some new Masonic law or policy, or to a subject that the Anonymous is about to publish an editorial about. For example, the surge in letters about the Mitsubishi land grab was caused by the Emperor passing a law restricting sale of land by Masons to Mitsubishi, and the spike of letters on that topic lasted only three weeks, after which the number of letters normalized and the CFB restored the search terms to their original arrangement. In other words, the Anonymous and the team at the CFB have been altering the letter sorting to prevent Cousin policy from being dictated by short-term, emotional reactions to Masonic policies or the Anonymous’s own editorials.”
Kosala let herself glance at Vivien again, her expression neither forgiving nor reproachful, but seeming to agree with him that, if the pair had had the power once in their lifetimes to stop time and take some private hours before the world churned on, they would have spent it here.
“I found it hard at first,” she continued, “to believe that the corruption could be so innocent. I was sure we’d uncover some incidents of the Anonymous stifling suggestions which came from the Cousins themselves. I found none.” She froze a moment. “Let me clarify that. I didn’t just find no incidents of the CFB conspiracy squashing Cousin-initiated movements, I found remarkably few confirmable Cousin-initiated movements, at least relating to matters of political policy. The number of letters advocating particular political actions or policies seems to spike or fall primarily in reaction to sudden outside events, the Masons or the Anonymous, or in response to world-famous incidents like the Mycroft Canner murders. These spikes are short-lived, usually normalizing after a few weeks. The information I have seen suggests that, if not for the Anonymous controlling the CFB, the Hive’s core political policies would have been dictated all these years by wild short-term oscillations of opinion, resulting in a chaotic and panic-driven system incapable of long-term stability. I wanted to ask the former Censor Vivien Ancelet to testify about this. Obviously, since the Censor was also the Anonymous and running this conspiracy, that is not appropriate, but I did put the question to their Deputy Censor, Jung Su-Hyeon A-ancelet Kosala.” She tripped over her own ba’child’s name here, her eyes ranging the benches as if afraid someone would rise to cry nepotism, but no one did. “It is Jung Su-Hyeon’s belief that, if these reactive political swings had been allowed to dictate policy, the Cousins would have suffered crippling economic decay over the past century, or even fallen apart, rather than remaining the second-largest Hive. In brief…” Here she paused, with the face of one who looks out over the cliff’s edge, and must jump. “In brief, this conspiracy’s effect has been to conceal and protect the Cousins from the fact that the feedback system does not work as a form of government. For many things it works well—local issues, disaster response, social protections, health and human services—but it does not work for political decisions, the quick but considered responses to actions by other Hives, or to global crises, that all governments need to be able to make. The feedback system cannot do it, and has only ever seemed to do it thanks to corrupt intervention.”
She paused again, a long pause this time, brushing back her black hair as if to fight off the temptation to hide behind it, and scanning the room once more, giving others the chance to interrupt with heat and fury which might have taken the spotlight from her. Fury was not so kind. “An hour ago,” she continued, “the Anonymous spoke publicly for the first time in history. They urged us all to move slowly, to keep our reactions to this crisis in check in order to preserve what they have called utopia. I disagree. I don’t believe this world where four out of seven Hives are ruled by corruption can be called a utopia. I don’t believe that, having recognized our long-term dependence on these corrupted systems, we should try to keep ourselves dependent on them. I don’t believe that any delay can prevent this crisis from being anything but what it is, the complete transformation of the Alliance. Better to act honestly and quickly than to succumb to corruption and base means to prop up what is already broken.” Her eyes flicked across the ranks of Cousin Senators, some weeping openly, others still stunned. “The CFB has not been shut down,” she continued. “Letters are coming in, in unprecedented numbers, and a new and uncorrupted staff has been there all day sorting them. One billion, two hundred million letters have been received so far today, representing more than two-thirds of the Hive. They have proposed a range of actions, but two demands above all are supported by the vast majority of letters. These ideas do not initiate from the Masons or the Anonymous. They could be called rash reactions to a short-term fear, but, since they represent the first uncorrupted voice the Cousin Hive has had in over a century, it would be the ultimate betrayal of my office to ignore them, or even delay acting on them. The first demand is that I resign as Chair.” Could you, like Kosala, reader, deliver such words without even a wince? “This cannot be treated until the Administrative Board convenes tomorrow morning, but if at that time the board consents, I will step down. Meanwhile, so long as I remain in office, I shall pursue the second suggestion, supported by over one billion Cousins, who have requested that we enter negotiations with Emperor Cornel MASON, first to have the Masonic Hive take over administration of our most vital social services, schools, hospitals, and such, to buffer them through this transition, and second to begin the process of merging the Cousins with the Masons, not fully but as a sub-Hive, like Greenpe—”
“Aunt Bryar, stop!”
The Titan armies, risen from Tartarus for their revenge, with the Hundred-Handed Ones raging beside them, a club in every hand, could not have stirred the Senators to more surprise, more outcry, more astonished awe than the sudden entrance, panting, disheveled, and in tears, of a young nun.
“Helo?se!” Kosala cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Thank Heaven I’m not too late!” The habit thrashed around Helo?se’s knees like rough surf as she rushed, the veils across her forehead slipping back to let her red-gold curls trail free. “I’ve just come from the hospital. The draft survived! Seigneur Jehovah wouldn’t let the doctors start their tests until He knew it was safely on its way to you!”
Kosala met the little nun in the center of the house floor, standing close as if hoping her flowing wrap might shield the stranger from Senators who gawked like zoo-goers. “What draft?” she asked.
Helo?se pressed a packet into Kosala’s hands, twelve crumpled pages, dense with ink and dyed red-black with gore. “An interim constitution. Seigneur Jehovah had it in His jacket. He and I spent all last night drafting it. You can use it to transition away from the CFB!”
“An interim constitution?” Kosala’s eyes locked on the pages, though whether on the words or on the crust of blood I cannot say. “For the Cousins?”