Maria put down her fork and waved across the table at her wife, trying to get her attention. "Hey!"

Jules looked up from the screen of her tablet and extracted an earbud. The tinny sound of laughter was just audible. "What?"

Maria tapped her wrist. "You're on in an hour. I hope you've done your homework."

"Homework?"

"For the debates." Maria reached across the table and snatched Jules' tablet away, ignoring the protests. "No. You haven't!" She tapped the device's screen, bringing up a schedule page. "Look - you're meant to be voting on five referendums tonight."

Jules shrugged. "I'll just vote the way I feel, same as I always do." She caught sight of Maria's shocked expression. "Hey! Everybody does it. Who has time to read all that stuff about medical reform or budgets or whatever? It's just expert opinion." Jules almost spat the last words onto the table.

"Expert or not, somebody's got to make the decisions. Do you think people will ever want career politicians in charge again? Like hell they will! Will of the people - right?"

"Will of the people," Jules echoed. She took her tablet back. "At least my vote counts as much as the next person's."

"Only if the next person's as big an idiot as you are!"

Jules stared at her partner. "Don't even think that!" She glanced at a black cylinder that stood on the table. A blue light coming from a slot around the top of the cylinder showed that it was active. "You don't know who's listening. What if they think you're a secret Parliamentarian?"

"With my voting record?" Maria smiled. "Still, it can't do any harm to apologise." She leaned over the cylinder. "Hey, Cortex. I didn't mean what I said - okay?"

The light on the cylinder changed from blue to green, then back to blue again.