The eternal congresswoman: Or how to stubbornly stick around

Once upon a time, in the ornate chambers of Capitol Hill, there sat a congresswoman named Gertrude McStubborn (though some say her middle name was “Mule-Headed”!). Gertrude was known for many things—her loud floral dresses, her addiction to mints, and her fiery speeches—but most of all, she was known for her unyielding stubbornness.

How stubborn was she? When asked to evacuate during a fire drill, Gertrude just sat there, claiming the chair she was sitting in was “just getting comfortable.” When they updated the chambers with new high-tech chairs, she refused the upgrade because, “The squeak in my chair has become an old friend.” Yes, she was the sort of person who would refuse to acknowledge rain, even when she was soaking wet.

Years rolled into decades. And while the other representatives arrived and departed, Gertrude never vacated her seat. Not even once. In fact, there were rumors that the janitors had a special arrangement where they would vacuum around her in the wee hours of the morning.

But nature has a way of calling, you know? And I’m not just talking about bathroom breaks. I mean, Father Time. However, Gertrude McStubborn had no intention of letting a minor inconvenience like mortality get in her way. On her 110th birthday, she told her aids, “Even when I’m gone, I ain’t really gone.”

True to her word, upon her passing (where she was found still seated, now with a celestial grin), her team revealed her final act of dogged determination: a hologram of Congresswoman McStubborn. And it wasn’t just any hologram, but one equipped with an AI modelled after her personality. This meant it was just as stubborn and twice as sassy.

Now, debates took an amusing turn. When someone said something Gertrude’s hologram disagreed with, she would flash neon colors of disapproval and occasionally glitch around the room to dramatically make her point.

Another time, during a particularly boring filibuster, Holo-Gertrude started doing the Charleston to entertain herself. The entire House was in splits!

But things got tricky when it came to voting. The opposition claimed a hologram couldn’t cast a vote. But Holo-Gertrude, with all the spirit of the real Gertrude, argued, “If I can dance the Charleston and critique your terrible tie choices, I sure as heck can vote!” After a lengthy (and hilarious) debate, a special provision was made for AI-Hologram voting. A first in history.

As the years went by, many congresspersons came and went, but Gertrude, in her sparkly digital form, remained, serving her constituents from the Great Beyond. And while she no longer required mints, she was frequently heard requesting, “Can someone throw a virtual mint over here?”