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 dropped his scraper and went to find Bay 9. The corridor map had no such room, but when he traced the wall with his hand, he felt a seam the paint had hidden. A door. He pressed it, and it sighed open into the dark.

Past the tank, a second door stood open. Cal went through and stopped cold. The next room was wall-to-wall screens, thousands of glowing faces, each one casting a vote. They weren't people. They were copies the ship had made to fill empty seats. The whole quorum was fake, and it was about to kill someone real.

Cal looked for the machine making the copies. In the center of the room stood a humming box with one big lever marked PURGE SIMULATED VOTERS. Pull it, and the fake quorum would vanish. But a warning blinked: REMOVING VOTERS MAY LEAVE NO ONE TO STEER THE SHIP.