John was one of the last people who came in after the break. ‘It’s just way too easy to forget the time when you’re busy fucking in two bodies,’ he justified things to himself as he marched towards the seat of government. Descending the long steps that split two party clusters, he first went to the lowest point in the room, then back up the construct of stone and metal. Soon enough, he was at the highest point on the floor, only those in the watcher’s area at an even higher elevation.

‘Statement: you’re welcome,’ Beatrice chimed into his thoughts as all three of them sat down. Ever the reliable assistant, it had been her that had pointed out to him they needed to get going.

‘I do very much thank you,’ the Gamer sent back and stretched to reward her with a few head pats. ‘Good girl, very good girl.’

She radiated happiness; the other maid radiated envy and shame. ‘I do apologize that I failed to keep time in mind, Master,’ she voiced her regret.

‘Well, your mouth and mind were rather preoccupied,’ he joked. The conversation would have continued with further banter and innuendos, had the Speaker of Commons not raised her voice at that point. It was a short announcement of where they had left off, how they would continue and which party was to send their representative next.

There were only two left, Project Shield and the Crowning Party. The former of those two got to go first.

Project Shield suggested things that went quite heavily against John’s moral code. That was to be expected, he found himself in the centre on most issues, so both extremes were bound to attract his disdain. In detail, they wanted that any form of homeschooling be outlawed, while also making all other forms of school run entirely through the federal level. This was then combined with suggestions that there should be one homogenous program for everyone, including, on the inoffensive side, math, language and physics and, on the more offensive side, philosophy and history.

It was entirely in keeping with Project Shield’s proclaimed goal to create a strong central culture. John was quite concerned that any culture that came about through top-down action, he would even go as far as calling it indoctrination, was going to be both too rigid and too easily hijacked. People that were just raised to believe something were too prone to not understanding why they believed it. This problem could be alleviated by having lots of different viewpoints that continuously clashed and forced people to inspect the weaknesses in their knowledge. This alleviation was difficult to find when all schooling came from one central policy.

There were even further issues with it. The schooling plan devised by a central committee could be fantastic and then everybody would get a fantastic education. Historically, even if this was the case, there came a time where the plan would be in need of reform. Because the curriculum affected everyone, everyone would want something thrown in there and that would create a giant mess. In the unlikely case that they somehow started with a great program, it was going to fall apart with time and then everybody would get a horrible education. It was much better to leave schools to compete with each other and have them figure out through trial and error what was actually needed.

That was the educational view of this. Politically, there was another thing to be cynical about.

Because the plan would be devised by whatever party was in charge of the ministry of education, that party would naturally give orders to teach along their own values. This would increase their share of voters in the next generation considerably. Essentially, this was a great way to take a long but straight path towards the single party government. All of these factors made John oppose any sort of forced curriculum on the federal or even state level.

‘Of course, I am biased because I went to a pretty good private school before all of this happened,’ the Gamer thought to himself and scratched his head. ‘Not that I would call any of my school years particularly pleasant. Then again, that had nothing to do with what we were taught and all who I was taught with.’

Outside of that schooling issue, they also suggested stronger police, condemned degeneracy and agreed with the Supernatural People Party that they should be getting separate spaces. John got a whiff of segregation in the tone of the representative, but that could easily be his imagination because it fit so well with everything else they were saying. Rather, it fit so well with the kind of political ideologies John already knew to have similar viewpoints in the other categories. Inference was useful, but he shouldn’t assume he was right just from it alone.

At the very least the Crowning Party put out nothing unexpected or annoying. They did as their name suggested and presented all of the advantages of a monarchy. That it was the most stable form of government. That the Abyss was naturally ruled this way, proven by the two strongest guilds on the globe, the Sons of Rome and the Mandate of Heaven, both being monarchies. Of course, that conveniently ignored that a whole bunch of the remaining Divided Gates, the Illuminati, Prometheus and the Sons of Odin to name some of them, were not governed by any royalty.

They had a case in that the strong tended to dominate the politics in all of them though. It wasn’t as if there was no case for a monarchy whatsoever. Otherwise, Metra wouldn’t have been so insistent that he would end up as a king. To the credit of the representative, despite their party being rather small, they had worked out a complete alternative system. It changed fairly little on the current government structure. It endowed John with some additional powers and privileges, but the federal, democratic underpinning would remain intact. When it came to unifying their wishes of having a monarch with John’s wishes to not be one, it was quite the compromise. If John had been willing to compromise.

‘Have to give them credit for properly reading me, though,’ John thought. With all of the articles that were written either praising or attacking him, it was nice to have someone who understood what he was about. Even if they tried to convince him that he should change his perspective to be more selfish.

“Thank you all for introducing your parties,” Speaker Jumthek announced and clapped her hands. John noticed the gills at the side of the neck spreading before she continued. He wondered whether that was a nervousness motion or if she could actually use them to supplement her normal breathing. “Up next are our first official tasks as the federal government. President Newman has the word.”

“Thank you, Miss Speaker,” John said as he got up. Looking around, he saw numerous screens all over the room flicker to life. There was one integrated into every desk and several larger ones appeared out of holes in the ceiling, hovering in the air at visible positions. They had descended on the signal of Jumthek’s clap. John had requested their usage in advance.

First, because they were genuinely useful here, and second, because he wanted to show them off. He had only gotten them last week, being reminded of floating equipment’s existence after the Florida encounter. For reasons that John wasn’t privy to, making soulless material float was way cheaper, mana wise, than it was for people. Good for him in instances like this, bad because he still didn’t have access to a flight spell. Confusing because the Mandala Sphere and the Ambassador Double kind of broke that rule. To be fair, it was a Game Breaking skill.

“As you all should be aware, I went to Florida recently,” the Gamer addressed the parliament in a clear tone. “Although it was not the intent of my visit, the local leadership and I came to an agreement – they would join Fusion under certain conditions. I would like to ratify all of the necessary conditions today. Beginning with this, Miss Speaker, I call for a vote on whether or not Florida is allowed to join the union.”

“Everyone, use the screen in front of you to vote,” Jumthek announced. “You have five minutes to deliberate the decision. Your decision in this vote will be visible in the public records.”

John sat down and waited, looking at his own laptop. He did have an integrated screen in his desk as well, but it was much more comfortable to open the page on the laptop. A curved diagram made up of dots reflected the makeup of the room. One by one the dots flipped from grey to green. Except for the person missing, every single representative voted in favour. That the vote would have gone in favour of the addition of Florida to Fusion had been beyond doubt, but John had done some extra diplomacy to make sure nobody disagreed with it. It would just look better this way.

“112 votes in favour, 1 vote absent,” the Speaker announced. “Florida is now officially part of Fusion. This entitles Miss Liddell to vote on the next few questions, upping the total amount of total voters present to 113.”

‘A wonder that her action earlier didn’t cause some opinions to flip,’ John thought, while also thanking the heavens that his efforts had been seen as more important than the pariah’s outburst. He would have called it an emotional outburst, but he wasn’t quite sure why Alice had done it. The dark-haired woman was prone to just doing things.

“This means that our borders have now adjusted to look like this,” Jumthek continued and pressed a button on her screen to make the image appear all the others.

‘I’ll fix that gap soon enough.’ John didn’t let anything related to that thought show on his face. Stating outright that he was planning to aggress on what little of the east coast wasn’t yet under his control would have been a bad diplomatic move. It would have also prepared his enemies and he didn’t need to get into a fight with the press, the more pacifist elements in his government and his military. Best to just keep his mouth shut on his intentions – even if the world already knew.

“Let us continue with the… less serious subject,” the Speaker said, once everyone had glanced at the updated map. “It has been agreed that Fusion will supply Florida with an annual shipment of prune cakes. The date for this has been set to the eleventh of November of each year, with the amount being set to 250 grams of cake per adult member of the Florida guild. The Economist party has launched an inquiry about this law. The word is given to Mister Holla.”

A man in his mid-fifties rose up, showing that he had been hiding quite the gut underneath the table. It was the very rare view of a member of the Abyss that wasn’t at least toned. John wouldn’t have called him fat, chubby was more apt, but it was out of the ordinary regardless. Observe put his size down to being so weak that he barely rose above mundane standards, thus only saving him from obesity.

“We would like to know why this has to come out of Fusion’s pockets. President Newman negotiated this deal and Collide has the resources to provide this by themselves. The federal budget shouldn’t be burdened by wasteful spending like this,” Mister Holla declared and sat back down.

John got on his feet in turn to answer. “Two simple reasons. The terms of the agreement clearly state that it has to be Fusion that pays this. Furthermore, it will simply be easier to organize something that crosses borders through the central administration, especially when ships are involved.”

“Would the Economists like to respond?” the Speaker asked, following protocol. The answer was no. Not because the party was happy with the answer, their faces didn’t look the convinced part, but because they knew that having the debate would be useless. “In this case, the vote is now open. You have five minutes to deliberate.”

John once more followed things on the screen. The Economists flipped from grey to red, with three exceptions. The other parties went majority or entirely green. Perhaps because it was so ridiculous, some people grasped at any reason to deny this. Regardless, it came out positive.

“84 votes in favour, 22 votes against, 7 votes withheld, 1 vote absent,” Jumthek announced the result. “The Act of Floridian Prune Cake Delivery passes with a clear majority.” She put in a pause, both to gather her breath and to make clear that she was moving onto the next topic. “The second point, tangentially related to Florida’s joining, is the official Fusion calendar. First, does anyone here object to making the Gregorian calendar the calendar of Fusion?” There was none voiced. “Splendid, then, to the allocation of the holidays. A committee has compiled all suggestions sent in by you, the representatives, as well as popular suggestions made by the people. To start with, we are mandated to add a four-day weekend to the calendar, due to us agreeing that Florida should join Fusion. This holiday will be in appreciation of cute animals. The suggested name is the ‘Fusion Pet Appreciation Festival’, does anyone take issue with this? …Yes, Miss Liddell?”

Alice’s hand had shot up immediately. “Not all cute animals are pets. The name is inadequate,” she declared. “Fusion Fluff Festival, that’s what it should be called.”

“Any comments from the floor…? Yes, President Newman?”

“If you take issue with the first name being inadequate for the reason of not all animals being pets, how does this not exempt all animals that aren’t fluffy?” John wanted to know.

“All animals are fluffy,” Alice returned, speaking out of standard protocol. Nobody minded, as this hurried this discussion along.

“I have a three-metre crocodile at home that would beg to disagree,” the Gamer returned.

“Stirwin is fluffy at heart. All animals are fluffy,” Alice insisted with unshakable fervour.

Sighing, John turned to the Speaker. “In accordance to the wishes of the representative of Florida, I request the holiday name be changed to ‘Fusion Fluff Festival’.”

“The request is heeded. Does anyone take issue with this new name?” Bored silence. “Then, as for the placement. The suggestion is that the holiday should occur every year on the first full weekend of June, encapsulating the Friday prior and the Monday after the weekend. Does anybody take issue with any of this?” Another ten seconds of silence. “In this case, the vote is now open. You have five minutes to deliberate.”

The holiday was voted in without any issue. There wasn’t anyone going against it, but about a fifth of people withheld their votes. John relaxed once that was done. There was now nothing that stood in the way of the proper integration of Florida into Fusion. Nothing could suddenly spring at him and ruin what had gone so smooth and had cost him several points of sanity.