“The senator from… Wyoming.”

 	“Thank you.”

He was an elderly man, in a rumpled tweed suit. Many of the senators who saw him take the podium couldn’t place the face. He was an easy man to ignore, an old and presumed senile senator from a backwater, rural state. He never really mattered much, except if you needed another vote for one of your motions and you couldn’t find anyone better. A simple man, and an insignificant politician.

After a slow walk from his desk in the back of the hall, he mounted the podium.

“I hope you don’t mind the IV bag,” he called out, shaking the bag suspended from the metal pole at his side. “Doctor’s orders and all that. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
	He chuckled.

“Senators, I stand before you to filibuster the budget resolution for fiscal year twenty-seventeen. I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded coast to coast that our constitution is important, that the lives of American citizens are sacred, that no american should be killed by a done on american soil without first being charged with a crime. I do not oppose for the person, I oppose for the principle.”

“I brought my tablet with me today, and we all know that you can fit a great deal of books on here. In order to educate the senate today on the very principles of the America that we are sprung from, I will read ‘Crime and Punishment’, so that all may know that none are above the law.”

He adjusted his glasses, and began reading.

“On an exceptionally hot evening early in July,” he announced, voice filled with vigor. “A young man came out of the garret in which he lodged…”

--

“And as you can… see… this… is.. A… bad… thing…”

It was the third hour when the senator had stopped reading ‘Crime and Punishment’ and had started lecturing on the political backdrop of Harry Potter. After another thirty minutes, his voice had taken on an unsteady cadence, and he shifted from leg to leg, as if he had ants in his pants. The thin clear tube that led to the trash can filled with yellow.  Several senators in the audience gave audible noises of disgust.

A nurse came up aisle and changed the now empty IV bag for a fresh one. 

“Senators, as you all can see, I’m here for the long haul.”

“Mary had a little lamb, it’s fleece was white as snow. And everywhere Mary went, her american civil liberties were sure to go.”

---

At the twentieth hour, both tedium and delirium was setting in. There had been a steady stream of aides bringing food and drink to the assembled senators at their desks. No food was allowed to the speaker. To take a meal, would lose the floor.

There were odd shapes floating in the corner of his vision, colors that demanded to be smelled, tastes that scraped against his skin. Still, he persevered, tapping his way through his e-reader at a steady pace. His throat burned as he read in a monotone, and for a moment he considered tapping into his outbound pipeline to slake his thirst.

--

At the thirtieth hour, both of his bags had been replaced at least four times, he was fairly certain of that… maybe. The numbers in his head weren’t working. Trying to think was fuzzy, and the answers were slipping away. It was a hoarse voice that whispered into the microphone clutched in a veiny hand. There wasn’t much of the world left, other than the garbled text on the page that he was reading through, and the thin black speaking read. Through the black fog that filled the chamber, many of the senators were sleeping. 

“Senator McConnel in those… fancy people pants. Most people liked the skivvy, but I liked the pants.”

The cats were spinning, and the papers on the podium were floating away.
“I yield the floor,” he wheezed, collapsing onto the blue carpeted floor of the Senate chamber.

The voice of the Speaker of the House was tired, flipping into his ears, then out his nose.

“The senator from Wyoming yields the floor.”