Standing in the Forum

Eleven hundred adults could not physically fit in one room, so the forum was a vote with a speaking queue, and Mariam put her name in the queue and then sat shaking for an hour. When her turn came she explained the fault. She explained the fix. She explained the nine hours of weightlessness, and she watched the live tally on the wall begin to slide against her as she spoke, because she had told them the truth and the truth was frightening, and a frightened quorum votes for the option that changes nothing. Someone in the queue after her proposed waiting, gathering more opinions, forming a study group. The tally loved it. Mariam stood there and understood the founders' mistake completely for the first time. They had built a ship that could not panic, and in doing so they had built a ship that could not act, and those had turned out to be the same thing.