Open Primary Page 12

  His hands move down my back, around my waist. He gives a slight tug and I'm halfway onto his lap. As he squeezes my ass, I bite his lip, one of my go-to moves. He's a skillful kisser. Just the right balance of tenderness and control.

  A man's voice tears us apart before I can invite myself inside.

  "Mr. Colton, you have a call."

  He shoots a look towards the house, where a man in a white suit stands on the stone steps.

  "Who is it?"

  "Mrs. Zhang. It's eleven a.m. in Beijing."

  "Damn," Peter says.

  I scoot off him and slide behind the wheel.

  "I have to take this. Would you like to come in and wait? Should only be fifteen or twenty minutes."

  Part of me wants to say yes, but another part wants to get back to the office and obsess about the article in The Times, about our leaderboard, and about the site in general.

  The second part speaks loudest. "I should get back."

  He looks back at the man on the steps, leans in to peck me on the cheek, and hops out. When he reaches the steps, he turns and calls, "I'll text you later."

  "Okay," I say, though not loud enough to reach him as he disappears into the house.

  13

  I'm driving to The Colton Industries campus for the regular Friday night party, eager to hear Malcolm DJ for the first time since the night of my presentation. Mostly, I'm eager to see Peter for the first time since the kiss.

  As it turned out, his Beijing call led to a trip, which took him out of town for nearly a week. And when he returned, I came up with excuses not to see him. I'm not sure why. It has something to do with the nagging feeling that the first time a paparazzo catches us together, I'll appear next to him with the dreaded caption: Peter Colton's Latest Girlfriend.

  I wonder whether I'll kiss him again. I wonder whether I want his staff to know about our…I don't know what to call it. "Attraction" is the best I can come up with.

  But I'm distracted by something else—some movement on the site that, while not alarming, has bugged me since going over our leaderboard a few hours ago. I park in front of Building 7 as a partygoer passes my car wearing a sexy librarian costume that looks like it was designed on a war-torn planet in deep space.

  The party is just starting so I decide to satisfy my curiosity.

  First I check our top ten list. To be honest, I'm obsessive about the list. As things progressed from real to realer over the fall, as we got more press, more money, and more candidates, I began checking it ten or twenty times a day. Okay, maybe it's more like fifty or sixty.

  You know that feeling when you log onto Facebook and see that little red number of notifications? Or when you get a new text but your phone is across the room and you have a few seconds of anticipation, wondering who messaged you?

  I have that feeling a hundred times a day now. Every time I refresh our homepage. Even when, like tonight, the leaderboard is right where I left it earlier in the day.

  1. Marlon Dixon

  Since he joined, the Reverend Marlon Dixon has been the rockstar of Ameritocracy. Charismatic, engaged, and constantly self-promoting, he's held onto the number one spot for the last two weeks, with no sign of slowing.

  2. Tom Morton

  Morton entered in mid-September and, for the first few weeks, didn't make much of a splash. A former Ambassador to Ukraine and a Washington insider with a decade of high-level consulting for oil and gas interests, he has a decent résumé. But he's not a great fit for the site. He's as deep in the Washington swamp as you can get and still be breathing.

  In his late fifties, he cuts a severe profile, with graying blonde hair, a sharp nose and an apparent inability to show emotion. In his two or three dozen videos, he speaks in a smooth, almost mechanical cadence, saying nice, patriotic things without any real feeling behind them. And his candidate statement reads: Believe in America. Restore Faith in Our Most Cherished Dreams.

  It's the kind of thing a politician would say in a bad Hallmark movie. The kind of thing that sounds good at first, but doesn't say anything. Given that the whole point of Ameritocracy is to eliminate meaningless political speech, his style stands out for its blandness.

  Between his hundreds of Facebook posts, position papers, and videos, he doesn't get much more specific. Though we made a sacred pact to be neutral about the outcome of the election—our algorithms were designed around this idea—it doesn't mean that Steph and I don't form opinions about candidates. As far as we can tell, Tom Morton is in favor of puppies, ice cream, America, freedom, and a few other buzzwords, but he's a soggy slice of generic white bread.

  Much to our chagrin, Morton has slowly moved up the leaderboard. For the life of us, Steph and I can't figure out what he's for and what he's against, and we can't tell which political party he'd be a member of under ordinary circumstances. Our best guess as to why people vote for him is that he's good-looking for a man in his late fifties. Tall, good build, a solid jaw.

  In an antiquated, stereotypical way, he looks presidential.

  3. Orin Gottlieb

  An aging libertarian author with white hair and ten bestsellers to his name, Gottlieb is one of two academics in our top ten. A prominent voice among political conservatives, he single-handedly made libertarian politics cool again, bringing a philosophical underpinning to the arguments that others lacked. He comes off as full of himself, but a lot of folks buy his books, and a lot of them joined Ameritocracy.

  4. Cecilia Mason

  A seventy-year-old real estate billionaire from New York, Mason entered just after Orin Gottlieb, and has been getting by on celebrity and hugely active social media accounts. She owns two professional sports teams, a private island near Jamaica, and a world-class collection of music memorabilia from the sixties and seventies, including John Lennon's piano and the private jet Led Zeppelin used on their first U.S. tour.

  Her political positions are pro-business, anti-gun, anti-pornography, anti-drugs, and anti-video games. Though she's popular with older women, she's been dubbed "Nanny State Mason" on the forums, and has been unable to crack the top three. But she's smart and willing to spend her own money to get her name out there, and it's working.

  5. Tanner Futch

  The right-wing shock jock has done well for himself landing appearances on Howard Stern's show and a couple of the top podcasts on the far right. Even a few mainstream Republicans have praised him lately, though they did so without mentioning the conspiracy theories that are his stock in trade.

  6. Wendy Kahananui

  Our friend from Hawaii dropped off after a couple embarrassingly vague interviews, but she's in the top ten due to her massive online audience of devoted fans. As more experienced candidates join the field, I doubt her brand of crunchy New Age granola will convince new voters to support her.

  7. Beverly Johnson

  Best known for her YouTube channel, Pacific Northwest Home, Johnson is a self-proclaimed "proud housewife." She's a short, round, good-natured lady with red hair a few shades lighter than mine.

  In addition to sharing recipes on her YouTube channel, she's active in the community. She's pro-choice, but spends much of her time counseling women to choose adoption over abortion, which makes her sympathetic to some of the less fervent pro-lifers. And she's adopted six children, so no one can accuse her of failing to practice what she preaches.

  Politically, she's hard to align with either party. Socially liberal, but fiscally conservative, she favors a balanced budget amendment—"If families have to balance their budget, so should government." She's also made education a major part of her platform, favoring more money for schools, higher teacher pay, and a longer school year.

  Of all the candidates, Beverly Johnson seems most like a real person, which explains her popularity. She fights food cravings, has trouble getting her videos to upload, and is happy to talk about it all.

  8. Avery Axum

  I'm not supposed to play favorites, and I don't, but Avery Axum is my favorite.
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  The second academic in our top ten, he joined the site about a month ago and rose steadily up the rankings. Before accepting a professorship at the George Washington Law School in D.C., Axum worked in the legal offices of three presidents—two Republican, one Democrat. He also wrote six books, including the definitive history of the legal aspects of the Civil War and an alternate-history novel in which the Supreme Court decided the other way in the 1803 Marbury vs. Madison case.

  I keep telling myself I'll find time to read it. If what I've heard about its sales is true, I might be the first person to do so.

  Axum is in favor of radically overhauling the prison system and ending the war on drugs, positions embraced by the left, but he also favors states' rights and a strong military, positions usually associated with the right. All in all, he's a brilliant, right-leaning centrist with the academic background and graying good looks to bring dignity and integrity to the political process. Unfortunately, being his fan feels like loving an obscure cult movie: you find yourself repeatedly explaining how it's not that boring if you give it a chance. In contrast to Gottlieb, who has a gift for the sound bite, Axum seems unable to deliver an argument in under ten minutes.

  9. Destiny O'Neill

  To my delight, Destiny has fallen in the rankings over the last month. Don't get me wrong, if she climbs the leaderboard again and wins Ameritocracy, she will get the money. I'm one hundred percent committed keeping the playing field level. But she makes me feel like we still have a cartoon character in the top ten, given how much of her is a performance.

  10. Justine Hall

  David Benson tweeted about Justine Hall constantly over the last week, and she needed the help because she wasn't doing much to support her own candidacy. Her position papers and the few videos she added to our site were all solid, and a couple of them were among our most-shared pieces, but she doesn't directly engage the voters much.

  In fact, seeing this makes me wonder about our entire project. When a talented, intelligent mayor of a major city trails a YouTube con artist due to lack of social media hustle, there might be a flaw in the system.

  I tell myself it's nothing I can fix tonight as I roll down the window, hoping to catch a note or two of the music Malcolm is creating inside. The cool evening air feels good, and part of me wants to head straight into the party, but instead I open Twitter, promising myself I will only work for five minutes.

  I run a quick search for Tom Morton. His official account is full of bland position statements, probably tweeted out by an intern in his office, and a search for mentions of his Twitter handle brings up just a few hundred tweets.

  Some are making fun of him, some are praising him, but most are just retweets of his bland posts with one or two words added. For example, an account called @UtahMom7691 quoted one of his tweets that read, "America must once again become the indispensable nation," adding only, "Strongly agree!"

  Another account, @RockstarSkaterJohn, retweeted one of his tweets that read "Families make up the backbone of this great nation, and must be supported," adding only "Hell yeah."

  I run the same search for Orin Gottlieb, which is a whole different experience. Morton has only a few hundred tweets using his name over the last day. Gottlieb has thousands. People tweet about him constantly, both positively and negatively. Memes are everywhere, some making fun of his libertarian politics, others touting him as something close to a Messiah. People have strong opinions about Gottlieb, and share them online.

  Something about the discrepancy in their mentions doesn't sit right with me. Yes, Gottlieb is a bestselling author with a strong personality. Yes, he provokes controversy, and Morton doesn't. But that night-and-day difference when searching for them feels…inorganic somehow.

  I cast a look at the front door of Building 7, where a man and a woman, both wearing tuxedos, walk hand in hand through the door. As much as I want to hear Malcolm DJ again, dance with Peter, drink ridiculous cocktails, and be around actual people, my worry over unusual Twitter activity is stronger than that.

  Sighing deeply, I open a new text to Peter.

  Me: Something is up. Gotta go back to the office.

  Before he can respond, I write to Steph.

  Me: You still in the office?

  Steph: I'm here.

  Me: Wait there. Coming back. Benjamin still there?

  Steph: He's here.

  Me: Wait, why's he there? Thought he was coming to the party.

  Steph:…

  Me: Let's dish about what … means tomorrow. Something's up tho. Have him pull up the stats on social media mentions for our top ten.

  I start the car, but before I can put my phone on driving mode, a new text arrives.

  Peter: What is it? Can I help?

  I read the text twice, start typing a reply, then delete it and pull Bluebird out through the security gate.

  When I arrive at the office, Steph is hunched over her laptop, a half glass of wine on the desk next to her.

  "What's going on?" she says, not looking up.

  "You might want to get yourself another glass of wine first. Never mind. I'll get you one while I get one for myself."

  A minute later, I'm back from the kitchenette, a glass of Sauvignon Blanc in my hand and the open bottle of zin for Steph.

  To my surprise, Benjamin Singh now sits where Steph sat, having returned from the bathroom. A look passes between them, but I'm too worked up to give it much thought.

  "I pulled up social media stats," Benjamin says. "What are you trying to figure out?"

  "Morton's slow and steady climb has seemed odd, right? The vanilla ice cream candidate flourishing on a site otherwise dominated by folks on the further extremes."

  "Right," Benjamin says. "That I knew."

  "And I've been feeling like I just don't see people talking about him much online. He doesn't have a large platform on YouTube or Facebook or anything. When I pulled up his Twitter mentions, it was crickets."

  "And yet," Steph says, "he's getting votes."

  "Exactly."

  "So," Benjamin says, "you're wondering whether you're imagining things. Wondering where his votes are coming from?"

  "Right. Can you do something like a graph that compares his social media mentions with other candidates?"

  Benjamin turns to his computer. "I can do better than that."

  Benjamin pulls up a graph of blue and red lines that reminds me of something from calculus class in high school. "Haven't had much time with this, but I've been working on a new thing." He points at a fairly stable red line, moving from left to right across the screen. There are a few dips and spikes, but it's close to horizontal. "That line charts the average ratio of votes each candidate has to the amount of organic discussion of that candidate on our Forum."

  One of the major innovations of the last two months was the Ameritocracy Forum. Tens of thousands of users spend time there each day, discussing candidates, debating issues, explaining their votes, and sometimes even interacting with candidates who run Ask Me Anything hours and answer questions posed by users. A team of six moderators work remotely in eight-hour shifts, reading comments, banning abusive users, and working like mad to keep things civil.

  "I don't get it," I say.

  Steph takes a big sip of her wine. "Remember when I told you that we were trying to figure out how to make sure no one is gaming the system? This is one of the ways Ben came up with. The red line shows how much discussion a candidate generates relative to their vote totals."

  Steph puts her hand on Ben's shoulder. The "…" text and the fact that Benjamin is using her computer makes sense. They're sleeping together.

  "Tell her about the D Score," Steph continues as my mind adjusts to this new reality.

  Benjamin speaks with an excitement that's rare for him. "At any given time, we can see a candidate's D Score. An average score is ten. Less than ten, they're getting fewer votes than we'd expect, given the amount of discussion of them on our forums. More than ten means they're
getting more votes than we'd expect."

  He clicks his mouse and a dark green line appears on the screen.

  "This is Destiny O'Neill's line for the last two months. You can see that it's consistently a little bit above the red line. Her average D Score is fourteen. That's high, but still in the range of normal. It means that she's getting forty percent more votes than we'd expect her to get, based on the number of mentions she gets on the Forum."

  "But it makes sense," Steph interjects, "because we know she has a huge following on Reddit and YouTube, so many of her voters just aren't migrating to our Forum."

  "They're discussing her on YouTube and Reddit instead?" I ask.

  "Exactly," Benjamin says.

  "Please don't tell Destiny what we're calling this metric," Steph pleads, squeezing his shoulder. "If she starts recording videos about how she's scoring more D than the other candidates, I may literally go insane."

  Benjamin nods, still absorbed in his graphs. He clicks two more times, causing a bright blue line and a black line to appear.

  "The black line is Orin Gottlieb."

  The line runs a little below the original red line, and his D Score is nine. I ask, "So that means he's getting ten percent fewer votes that you'd expect, given the level of discussion of him on the forums?"

  "Right," Steph says. "And the blue line is Marlon Dixon, who's at a twelve."

  "Okay, I think I get it. What about Tom Morton?"

  Benjamin clicks his mouse again, and a purple line pops up. It starts well below the red line, trends upward for a few weeks, then crosses the red line before spiking.

  Benjamin taps the screen at the spike. "One week ago, he achieved the highest D Score we've seen in the system—a sixteen—meaning he got sixty percent more votes than we'd expect, given the number of mentions he's getting. Now, he's at a nineteen, almost twice as many as we'd expect."

  "That goes with the sense I got looking at his Twitter mentions," I say, "but that could just be because there's not much to say about him. Still wigs me out, though."

  "It should," Steph says, "because at least it means that something odd is happening, and it could be something nefarious."