The quantum traveler reviewed history yet again.

Is life the test or is hell just all there is to expect?

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

It’s election night and everyone is on edge, waiting to hear if the candidate they voted for wins. I don’t discuss politics with friends or family since it only leads to arguments. In some cases, I blocked friends on my social media page because they’ve become too involved discussing politics and arguing.

Bless this country.

From Guest Contributor Lisa Scuderi-Burkimsher

Her father had come out a year before he died. Her parents had been divorced more than a decade by then and the news probably shouldn’t have comes as such a shock. At the eulogy, she lamented not handling his announcement with more compassion. She would never be able to understand what it had been like for him, growing up in small town Indiana.

She left the election viewing party early. She needed to cry alone. It was the first time she was glad Dad had died. He was spared having to see the wheels of progress start rolling backwards.

They need to run more tests but Dad pleads, “I want to go home.” This man who built houses can’t stand by himself to pee.

Television is election chaos. No help there. I realize what’s on my iPad, close his door, crank its volume: Dad and Bob Dylan, gravel-throated friends, a hospital bed duet.

From Guest Contributor Tjorven

At the start of every year, the Kingdom of Urbania elected a new monarch.

Farmer Putnam deposited his charges on the outskirts of the city where they would live out their remaining days. It was at this point he informed them that his transport fee was exactly one royal scepter.

The larger an election, the greater the opportunity for corruption. In the largest city in the solar system, people assume it’s easy to manufacture tens of millions of votes. For this reason, no one believed that Victor Coolidge, mayor of Colossolopolis, was duly elected. But his grip on power hardened over the years and seemed unlikely to end in anyone’s natural lifespan.

Not many people believed Coolidge could overcome the scandal, but he knew all he needed was a scapegoat.

Part Four

Yesterday was election day. I went to the local high school to vote, but I was denied by one of the polling volunteers. I’d remembered to bring two forms of ID as well as a copy of my voter registration card, just in case the new voting laws made it necessary. When she still said no, I started to get slightly upset.

She claimed it had something to do with the string of severed ears I was wearing around my neck, but I’m pretty sure America stills allows for freedom of religion, so I don’t know what her deal was.

In the tiny nation of Genesia, every three years a heterodixist is elected. This person is charged with rebelling against all that the Genesian culture stands for by opposing every public decision in the most obdurate manner possible. In this way, the citizens are comforted knowing that at least one person must always be calling their government to task.

The heterodoxist is considered one of the nation’s leading dignitaries. No one runs for the office willingly, but once elected, she is afforded great honor. The one drawback is that once the three-year term is over, the heterodoxist is publicly executed.

One morning, Mayor Baffels woke up to find a dark mist had descended upon the city.

In the end, he did win, but the hellfire and destruction that were unleashed by his deal with devil made his victory rather pyrrhic in nature.

Charlton Heston chewed through debates like a drunk cow gnaws at grass.

Only after the election did the voting populace realize Charlton Heston had died in 2008. And that’s the story of how a camel became President of the United States.