Busy Busy Jessica

23/7/4999-1/8/4999

The next morning Jessica woke up refreshed and ready to tackle the coming days.

On the first day she called the P.A.I.L. from the automats and bought back the materials they had broken from the extra machines and reworked worked them all into 20 more of the telepad devices. She didn't think it was necessary but she couldn't leave a job unfinished. She called the Q's and they picked them up and went about adding them to all of the telepads they hadn't covered the night before. She had spent all 18 of here working hours building and testing each one. Alohra was at the shop that day and made her take breaks for food. When she had finished testing the last one she was about to lift it and carry it out herself but Alohra stopped her and suggested calling for help. Jessica had only agreed because she knew the Q's could do it. She slept on a cot in backroom of M.U.G. that night and for the rest of the week.

The rest of the week was spent slowly revealing each of her nominations for the next committee and them accepting the nominations. She spent all of her time at M.U.G. hand making things for her adventure friends that she felt would come in handy for the coming battle if it came to that. She double checked all of the work being done at the unpacking plant and was pleased that all of her P.A.I.L. employees had agreed to take salaries. She didn't want it to turn into a question, as though she was using them for free labor. No one else on Karth had employed this many P.A.I.L. at any given time and she wanted to set a new example for the future should anyone need this many in their employee again.

She didn't answer her phone and let the spell she had cast continue to auto reply to all the questions people were asking her. She had no desire to speak with anyone who she might slip in front of. She felt she was this close to finally getting somewhere anywhere in the quest she began when she made a promise to a friend at age one. She knew her pension for spilling the beans would get her in trouble if she was around her parents. They were not happy she was still so busy after finally quitting the strikeforce.

She simply told her mother, "I haven't spent nearly enough time at my business in the past two cycles. I have a lot of things I need to catch up on."

She began to feel that 30 hours in a day simply wasn't enough time to get everything ready the way she wanted it to be. Peter and Arholo stopped by a few times to try to talk to her but seeing the state she was in they had simply made sure she was eating and drinking. A few times they forced her to sleep.

As each day passed their anxiety over her reaction kept growing. Peter for the most part looked fine but Arholo had wrinkles taking shape around his eyes.

8 days after the first rain had fallen Jessica went to the committee building. It was the first of the 8 month of 4999th cycle and the old member's six months of service were coming to an end.

"Hi, guys ready to be done with this place," She asked the committee members whose time was now finally coming to an end. They were having a small party and someone handed her a cool glass of almost apple juice.

"Hellscape, yeah, the past week with Jacob here we actually got better work done," The marine biologist told her. Jessica smiled at all of them and at 10 am they announced their resignations.

People all over Karth were surprised only a little when the Q's and Mae the Fae volunteered for the unclaimed seats from SUN. Everyone believed their story about wanting to make sure things were run properly for a while and try to assess the damage the former chairman had done. The rest of the seats were filled by those Jessica had nominated the vote was nearly unanimous for each of them to take the seats she nominated them for. Most people on Karth believed her and them that talking with Jessica they decided to do their duty voluntary. The few people who didn't vote them directly into office and still selected the lottery system had served on the committee before and just didn't have the heart to vote someone into what had been for them the most boring 6 months of their lives.

Not everyone has to take a seat on the committee during their lifetime but there's always a chance the lottery will spit your name out. Compared to Earth the committee seats were treated the most like jury duty in a country called the United States of America. Unlike in the U.S.A., though no one on Karth could find a good enough reason to get out of it once selected.

The results appear on the selection board like this:

Contenant Name Species Cycles Height Gender

LOTTERY PICKS

MOON Deisy DARK ELF-LIGHT ELF 25 6'11" F

MOON Piper DARK ELF-HUMAN 18 6'5" F

MOON Abby LIGHT ELF-HUMAN 24 6'2" F

MOON Dzvezda LIGHT ELF 50 6'10" F

STAR Madigan DARK ELF-HUMAN 15 5'1" M

STAR Westley LIGHT ELF-DWARF 20 5'0" M

STAR Zalora DWARF-HUMAN 53 M

STAR Malrha DWARF 56 F

ISLANDS REP

ISLE OF LOST BOYS ZEREK DARK ELF 52 6'10" M

VOLUNTEERS

SUN Q FAE

SUN Q FAE

SUN Mae Carol Jemison FAE

CHAIRMAN

RETAINING POSITION Jacob from SUN

Now the people on Karth were a little surprised that in the end all of the non Fae on the committee were so young. It did make sense that Jessica had chosen each of them but no one on the current committee was over 60 and that was highly unusual. The group being a good mix of each of the crossbreeds was something that they felt made this committee unique from all the previous ones. Crossbreeding had only started becoming possible 200 cycles earlier.

The non-elfs bloods all wore the light of truth glasses and when they all light up when they put them on they all quickly said, "I am happy to be here and I look forward to working with Jessica." This was as much truth as they could say and it was enough for all of the lights burning to go out. Jessica sighed satisfied.

She had honestly forgotten that she had made these and it reminded her of something else she had forgotten to take care of.