Free Directive 51 by John Barnes

people were this bored at an election, Jason thought, my parents were barely old enough to vote.
    The Pirates underdog miracle team was tied three games to three against the ever-loathsome Angels. The Bucs had come fighting back after being down three to one. Game Seven tonight in Anaheim was going to be a game . Jason smiled to himself. Also the last night baseball game, ever, and the last one televised.
    The election was dull in comparison. The truckers were all agreeing with the talking heads on Fox that Roger Pendano was going to be re-elected, and Will Norcross didn’t have a prayer (or rather prayers were all he had).
    Four years ago, Jason had taken a semester off to ring doorbells for Pendano, and later he’d met Beth at a Pendano for President rally. He still liked the corrupt old oily preppy, even though he was just as much a part of the Big System as that right-wing Jesus-boy Norcross.
    Still, even with a landslide in the making, Roger Pendano had apparently not wanted to jeopardize his massive victory and had really fastened the muzzle on John Samuelson, his much-more-liberal vice president. Now, that was a shame; Samuelson sometimes said something that needed saying. But Samuelson hadn’t even been seen in public for almost two weeks—whoever heard of a disappearing vice president just before an election?
    Maybe Daybreak would make enough difference so that Samuelson could be president next time—without all the Big-System media and technobullshit distortion, it might be worth electing a president again.
    The right-wing hairdos were now working up a harrumphing rage because some people wouldn’t vote for Norcross because he was openly Pentecostal. Jason shook his head; since when was it unusual for anyone in Congress to gibber like a nut in public at the direction of unseen forces?
    The waitress topped up Jason’s coffee, following his glance to the TV. “Politics. Gah.”
    “Yeah,” Jason said.
    Back in the parking lot, he opened his passenger-side door, pulled his gloves on, extracted a few eggs from a box in the back, and considered where he might plant a few before moving on. Truckers were protective and observant about their rigs, but maybe on that yellow illuminated—
    “Hey, there, hippie-dude, what’ja got there?”
    He looked up to see the truckers; the question came from a slim little man with protruding ears, a mop of black curly hair sticking out from around his strap cap, giant sideburns, and big brown eyes, who resembled a leprechaun going to a costume party as a trucker.
    Jason gave Leprechaun the warm grin that had gotten him through a lot of college classes when he hadn’t done the reading. “Well, it’s pretty dumb, and I don’t really know how to explain it,” he temporized. Then his eye fell on the deer whistle on the hood of the nearest cab. Hah! “I was just going to go inside and ask you whether you wanted one of these,” he said, holding two eggs out so they could see. “Don’t touch them, they’ll give your fingers the itch the way fiberglass will. My stupid dad thinks he’s an inventor, and he’s created this wind-resistance cutter. Supposedly you put it on your hood and it sends, like, radio waves forward that harmonize the sound vibrations in the wind stream and make the air flow real smooth over the car, which reduces wind resistance so much, supposedly, you get some extra miles to the gallon. I think. I gotta admit, I don’t understand Dad three-quarters of the time even when he’s not talking about physics.”
    He caressed one of the little eggs with a gloved finger and let himself sound as if he were trying to hide his pride. There’s the ticket. Good old Dad. Genius inventor. I’m his amiable dimwit hippie son. Got it. “It’s solar-powered, so it has to be somewhere the sun gets to, but that way it doesn’t draw any power from the rest of the vehicle. Dad says it’s an idea from Nikola Tesla, who was this scientist dude that, like, studied air and