John watched the members of both government houses pour into the parliament chamber. The members of the Commons were quick to find their seats, having sat on them just one week prior. Meanwhile, the Exceptionals had to search around for a little bit. While the House of Exceptionals meetings had no appointed seats whatsoever, the House of Commons and Parliament did. Members of the upper house had been given the opportunity to choose where in the political spectrum of the room they wanted to sit. The further left, the more they were principally against taking direct government action. The further right, the more they were for it. Of course, these were inverted from John’s perspective on top of the seat of government. It was also arbitrarily chosen as the system by which they sorted the parties.

Parties next to which the Exceptionals now sat down. Rarely, this was because of direct party affiliation. It was absolutely allowed for Exceptionals to have a public membership of any party, John didn’t see the merit in trying to demand otherwise. It would just get aligned under the table anyhow and it wasn’t like he could tell people they weren’t allowed to agree with certain perspectives repeatedly. Most of the Exceptionals, however, found themselves next to a party simply by declaring that this was where they saw themselves, just about, on the sorting system. Theoretically, there could have also been those that failed to fill out their questionnaire and were placed at random.

Clicking around on the interactive seating order on the laptop in front of him, John found that there was nobody in that last category. The program’s main purpose was to spare the Gamer the potential embarrassment of forgetting someone’s name. Hardly a likely occurrence, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. The program was also available for everyone else and to be used to spread that day’s discussion schedule. Being a slightly modified version of the (at this point almost finished) Fusion communication app, it was also incredibly safe. Scarlett had guaranteed that much.

‘I should come up with some fancy name for the app,’ John thought and suppressed a yawn by slowly letting the accumulated air flow out of his nose. The press attendance today was moderately high and he didn’t want to give anyone the opportunity for a bad photo. Somewhat bored, he looked through the schedule for the day. He had done so numerous times throughout the week already.

The Speaker of Commons had, on John’s advice, made a very simple schedule for the first parliament session. Every one of the ten present parties would send forward one representative who was going to present the core of their manifesto, if they had one, and their current positions on policy in about fifteen minutes. Given the reality of politicians, this would likely mean that they had to plan for twenty minutes per person. Between that and the doubtless pauses and questions that would surface in between speeches, John would be surprised if they got done in less than four hours.

Thankfully, John could distract himself through one simple trick: he wasn’t actually there at all. The body present was the Mandala Sphere. The Ambassador Double was impossible to distinguish from his real self by all conventional and unconventional means. Well, that was what the text said, but John knew better than to assume that there were absolutely no means. As a matter of fact, he already knew two that existed. One, Eliza could detect that he wasn’t giving her the ‘genuine stuff’ when he came inside her as Jack and, two, Velka was more affectionate when he came to her as his double.

So, while half of John’s mind was quite bored attending the parliament session, the other half was busy doing the usual fun stuff. That didn’t eliminate the problem entirely, he still had to be present enough to react to questions or other problems, but it sure beat simply sitting there. If there was any issue with this arrangement, it was that Aclysia and Beatrice were mildly unhappy that they were with his double, doing government stuff, instead of giving him a paired blowjob. He mentally sent them a promise for a quickie in one of the empty offices during the half-time break. That eased their frustrations somewhat.

John scrolled down on the order of business plan. At the very end of it, there were a few items that they needed to decide on today. Namely, there was the issue of the prune cake shipments to Florida and, somewhat related, they had to set the official holidays for Fusion territory. He had promised Florida that four-day weekend, but there were other days that had to get the official stamp as well. Christmas was an easy example. Only after that was decided would they close the session.

Somewhat ironically, Florida only had one representative for this whole thing. Because they hadn’t held elections yet, they had only their local member of the House of Exceptionals to attend. Sitting on her own, her table joined with no others, Alice was positioned close to the middle and slightly to the right of John’s perspective, putting her closer to the libertarian side of things. She waved indiscreetly when he glanced in her direction. He waved back and looked around some more to pass the time.

The other people sent by local governments were scattered all about. The North Lake state’s representative was sitting, effectively, opposite of Alice, being slightly to the left. She was sitting as a member of the Centralists, the party that was like John’s political fan club. In her maid outfit, the woman named Amethyst stood out quite a bit. She wasn’t just a representative, but also someone who taught at Aclysia’s maid academy. An institution that was slowly getting rolling and had gotten considerable sway over local affairs. A somewhat odd development but, given the way he had reformed that area, not entirely unpredictable.

The Amaca Coast had sent a man called Drevlin, who seemed to be a suit with opinions who had joined with the Economists party. Given that this was also the party that got the majority of its votes from that area, this completely fell within John’s expectations. He was also slotted to be the speaker for that party later on.

Eugen had been sent by Maryland. Apparently, he had been a bureaucrat under Abraham’s administration and part of the upper middle management. He was not powerful, but he knew how to make connections and push pencils. Essentially, he was there as a relic of the old system. John silently disapproved, but politics was about favours and there were some that predated his arrival in the Abyss by several years. It was best to just let Eugen attend and be replaced whenever the local government saw fit to do so.

Widely more pleasing was the representative of the Hidden Tradition. Ahanu, the young man that had spoken as the leader of the Native American guilds when John had first negotiated with them, had now been chosen to take the guilds’ spot in the House of Exceptionals. Doubtlessly, he could have won a regular vote as well, but it did fit that he was put in a more permanent seat. He sat between the Individualists and the Fusion Libertarians, having specifically asked not to be put as a member of either party.

Last was a man called Horace, coming as representative of the Meltpot state. John found watching that person in particular quite interesting. He was seated among the Wrath Party, Fusion’s military enthusiasts, and himself clearly someone who liked to brawl. The scars all over his brawny body said as much. What made him so interesting to John wasn’t any of that, however. It was the fact that he had been a very big fish among the small guilds to the south that Fusion had conquered. At level 70, he had been able to dominate most people in the area. Now that he was swimming in a bigger pond, that man was forced to come face to face with people like John, Alice and Elu. He wasn’t nearly as big a deal as he had perhaps thought he was.

Those were the representatives of Fusion’s states. There were a few other members of the House of Exceptionals, those that John himself had put in there. Magoi, for example, who sat among the conservative Stream Party. Most of them, John expected to only ever deal with during large gatherings.

Jumthek, the fish woman that had been elected first Speaker of Commons, finally rose from her seat. “I think everyone is present, save for Mister Tutlmakahn. He let me know ahead of time that he cannot attend as he expects his wife to go into labour today, so his absence is hereby excused,” she started the program. Her tone hid quite well that she was reading off a script. “Following the program without further ado, I would like to call the representative of the ‘The Free’ party to the podium.”

Someone stood up and walked up there, getting behind the single podium that stood in the otherwise empty space between the arch of desks and the seat of government. They only gave a dismissive glance towards the people up on the construct of marble and metal. John narrowed his eyes warningly in return. A lack of respect was to be expected from anarchists, but the Gamer was irked by it nonetheless.

What followed were ten minutes of the representative defaming Fusion’s government in numerous ways. Past actions were put into bad light, certain laws of member states elevated to sound as tyrannical as possible and aggressive expansion defamed. Only in the last five minutes did they speak about actual policy positions and all of that revolved around ideas how to circumvent Fusion’s authority while still technically working within it. The chief demand that was presented was a law for people to be allowed to create Illusion Barriers that would act as autonomous and lawless zones.

John looked extra impatient for the cameras, but said nothing. ‘The hostile press will have a field day with this,’ he thought, already seeing the headlines. ‘It will be something like: ’First session of Fusion parliament begins with passionate speech of freedom fighter’. This whole mad raving is absolutely harmless, but it’s still going to look bad.’

The Free party had nowhere near enough influence to put any of the things they wanted into action. With their attitude, it was just a matter of time until someone among them would try something stupid and John would be justified in barring them from participating in government. Until then, he had to just let his body language make clear that he wasn’t in favour of anything they said but let it happen in the name of open debate.

Up next was the Wrath Party. Although they were elected mostly by the small guilds of the Meltpot, there was no hostility coming from their speech. Their speech was mostly about the philosophy of ‘might makes right’ and how they should enact policies that promoted some violent means of competition. On the extreme side of things, they actually agreed with the proposal of making lawless barriers at some locations, be it for much different reasons than the anarchists. On the more moderate side of things, they advocated for mandatory combat classes in school. Given what the Abyss was, that wasn’t the worst idea John had ever heard.

From there things went relatively easy for a while. The Individualist representative presented a long list of policy positions that were partly contradictory. Given that the party had been cobbled together by people whose main uniting position was that they didn’t have much love for large organizations, that was of little wonder.

The Fusion Libertarians had many of the same principles but put forward more streamlined ideas. They were the first party to openly praise John’s current government. Regardless, they had a few suggestions. Most of them were relating to taxation, which they wanted to not rise ever again, and giving local governments more power.

The Economists party’s representative completely agreed with the previous speaker on the tax side of things. They also added praise for the recent change in Collide’s policy in the distribution of Guild Hall resources. The rest of the speech concentrated on the benefits of a more protected market and the need to establish offices that protected copyrighted material and such. Fusion’s patent bureau was still fairly basic, so John was happy to hear suggestions on that topic.

Arriving in the middle of the arch, the Stream Party delivered a long and methodical list of demands. They wanted the establishment of quality control offices, they wanted the establishment of a ministry for catastrophe relief, they wanted that rainy day funds were demanded by law on the federal, state and local level, they wanted the outlawing of certain addictive substances, they wanted clearer laws on where brothels and other sexual businesses could operate and they wanted a whole lot more. Most of their requests were sensible, others were overbearing, all of them would require a lot of work and planning.

After that quite neutral but by the sheer number of demands negatively tilted speech, hearing the Centralists was refreshing. They praised John to high heaven, insulted The Free party with some offhand comments and were generally pleasant for his ego. They also managed to spur the parliament’s first shouting match, thanks to one of the members of the leftmost party taking offense to one of the comments. They shut up on their own after only a minute.

The Supernatural People Party seemed to calm things down. They delivered a pretty milquetoast speech about their known desires. Special areas that fulfilled the needs of certain species, supply of necessary resources and money, such things. There was a moment of hesitation towards the end of their time and then they said something that John had not expected to hear. “We also would like that pariahs be made an exception to the ‘no discrimination’ amendment of the constitution, so we can keep them out of our spaces and businesses.”

“Oh?” The single sound came along with a shiver that went through the whole room. Almost everyone froze in their seats. Only those with strong wills managed to look over to the dark-haired woman that was now exuding a strange aura. “Pariah’s aren’t human, is that it?” The question was cheerful. The Maiden of Null leaned forwards on her table, resting her head between her raised palms and smiled her empty smile. “Well?”

The aura swelled from strange to terrifying. The shape of something cat-like flickered behind her and the whistling of tinnitus was torn into giggling bursts inside John’s ears. Those seated around the pariah suddenly fell unconscious, collapsed in their seats or even fell to the floor.

John gritted his teeth and now regretted not being there personally. It was difficult to open his mouth. The anti-magic messed with the connection between himself and the double. “ALICE!” he managed to finally shout, and the pressure vanished suddenly. It was as if his eardrums popped. The entire parliament, from the strongest member of the House of Exceptionals to the reporters in the watcher’s area, took a collective breath. “I understand that you take issue with that suggestion, but there will be order in the government, are we clear?!”

“I apologize,” Alice mused, her tone making it difficult to believe that she was genuine.

‘Of course, they had to send the biggest headache as their representative,' John thought as he turned to the representative of the Supernatural People Party. They were shaking all over, only standing by holding onto the podium.

“I thought it was just a coincidence.” John’s eyes moved to the part of the seat of government where the Speaker of Commons was located. “A copycat or something else, but… You can’t tell me she is the Alice?”

“Alice Pleasance Liddell,” the same introduced herself without issue. “The one and only.”

John allowed himself a groan of frustration. As countless cameras went off and eternalized the moment. ‘And there are the next fifteen headlines,’ he thought. ‘Well, the press won’t be good, but at least people abroad will respect Fusion more if they learn that she is part of it.’ Raising his voice, he retook control of the room. “It is obviously unacceptable that pariahs be made an exception within the constitution because of the way they were born. I understand that they cause intense discomfort, especially for those who are magical by their very nature, but there are very few blanks that are powerful enough to do any lasting harm. They will be punished for crimes committed like anyone else and they will have the same rights as everyone else. We can discuss a special clause of harassment law that pertains to blanks using their auras in needlessly aggressive ways.” He glared back over to Alice.

The people seemed satisfied with that answer, and once they had control over their legs back, the representative hurried back to their seat. The Speaker gulped so intensely that John could still hear it. To her credit, she managed to keep her voice mostly steady. “In slight violation of the protocol, I suggest that we now take the pause that has been scheduled to happen after the party speeches. We will reconvene in thirty minutes. Any disagreements?”