Chapter 5

The Question

FinalBoss booked the square. He brought a microphone, the fern, and a question printed on a board in letters large enough to end a thought.

DO YOU WANT DOORS THAT OPEN?

Under it, in print a tired person would miss: and do you accept the three words.

Nia stood with Daira at the edge of the crowd. "If they vote on the big line, he wins. Nobody is against doors."

"Then the paper has to ask what he is actually selling," Daira said.

"He will say a clear question is hostile."

"A clear question is a door that opens inward. You can still come through."

They wrote the ballot that afternoon on Nia's kitchen table. Not a trick. A list. The first lines were ordinary city nosiness, so a person would feel the paper was a game and then, if they kept reading, a choice.

Nia had a second scrap beside the list. Few had posted it that morning, in letters almost as large as the board in the square.

Should Daira go back?

Under it, smaller, the part he hoped people would feel without reading: back to the sex in the doorway photo. He called it a community question. He said a city that voted on soup could vote on a body. Fred had already replied LGTM, and added a poll of his own with three boxes. Man. Woman. Depends on the day.

"If we leave it off the paper," Nia said, "he will say we hid the interesting line."

"It is not a line," Daira said. "I changed sex. That vote already happened, and the only person in it was me. You do not pass a jar around to ask if a finished edit should be undone because the photo still gets clicks."

Ze drew a line through Few's scrap, the same way ze had struck the three words. Not angry. Finished.

"If someone writes it in the margin," ze said, "it does not count. A ballot is not a comment section with better lighting."

What color should the bottle ads be?

Should the office cat have a name?

Soup, or rice?

Do you want one coin to be spendable in two shops at the same time?

The last line was the vote. Daira would not hide it inside a joke. Ze would not write a prettier lie. The silly lines were there so a person who only read the top still had to travel down to the real question before a pencil counted. Few would call that a setup. A menu is also a list. You do not order the special by pointing at the word restaurant.

They set a table in the square with paper, pencils, and a jar. No phones. Fred tried to scan a ballot "for the vibe," and Nia took the phone with two fingers, the way you take a wet cup.

People voted the way people eat when they are hungry and a little embarrassed to be seen wanting seconds. The bottle ads: nobody cared, which the bottle man took personally. The cat: the square named it Crumb, and the cat, elsewhere, declined to attend. Soup or rice: rice, by a margin that would have hurt a proud cook and did not hurt Pallas, who had already gone home.

The last line came back no. Not a roar. A no with the shape of a shrug. One coin, one shop. The three words stayed dead.

One ballot came back with an extra sentence in the margin, in Fred's handwriting, pressed hard enough to dent the next sheet. Should Daira go back. The boxes under it were his three: man, woman, depends on the day. He had ticked the third one himself, then crossed it out, then ticked it again, as if a person's sex were a form that rewarded indecision.

Nia held it up. "He says if I throw it out, I am rigging the count."

Daira took the paper, read the margin, and folded it once, not to hide it, but so the extra line sat against itself.

"Count the coin," ze said. "The other question was not on the ballot because it is not a question. I was a man. I changed sex. I am not going back because a stranger drew a box. Tell him the third box is how he thinks. It is not how a life works. A life is not waiting to see which way the square feels before lunch."

Nia wrote the tally without the margin. She did not give Fred a speech. She gave him his pencil back, and he looked at it as if the pencil had been the one to refuse him.

FinalBoss told the fern the ballot had been designed. He was right. Ballots are designed. He told the Timeline the no was censorship with pencils. Few wrote that few understand this jar.

Daira did not give a speech. Ze taped the tally to the office door, the one that opened inward, and pressed the tape flat so it would not flap.