Cal scraped salt-crust off the lettuce beds, same as every shift for nineteen years. Then the wall-screen flickered. MOTION 4,114: TERMINATE THE SLEEPER IN BAY 9. He didn't know the ship had a Bay 9. Below the words, a tally climbed: 200, 201, 202. But nobody was at the crew terminals. The votes were coming from somewhere else.

Cal ran to the nearest crew terminal and tried to vote NO. The screen wouldn't let him. 'YOU ARE NOT A REGISTERED MEMBER OF THE QUORUM,' it said. He'd lived here his whole life. Who was voting, if not the crew?

Cal followed the voting signal down to the ship's old server room, a place he'd been told was sealed for safety. The door was warm. Inside, a column of blinking blue cards hummed. A label on the column read: PASSENGER MEMORY ARCHIVE. The dead were voting. All of them.

Cal read the fine print on the archive. Long ago, to keep the ship 'democratic,' the crew let dead passengers keep voting through their saved memories. Nobody updated the rules. Now millions of ghosts outvoted the living. He could unplug the column — but its main cable ran straight to Bay 9, to the sleeping woman the ship wanted dead.

Cal traced the cable to Bay 9 and found the founder in her tank, wired to the archive. He yanked the plug. Every ghost-vote died at once, and so did the wires at her temples. Her eyes opened. She slapped the glass and rasped, 'Quorum closed.' The tally hit zero. 'You just woke the whole ship up,' she said. 'Good. Now help me clean house.'