Anaïs Progin had secured a life many would beg for: a family, a position at City Hall, and a name recognized across the city. Yet, every victory had left a mark: a rejected file, a joke heard too often, a drink that had become a necessity.
At eighteen, Anaïs worked for LifePaths Corp. as a health report writer.
The title sounded more important than the actual job. She spent her days in front of a tired screen, in a windowless room where care requests poured in one after another. Each file had to conclude with a simple recommendation: grant, defer, or deny.
Granting care cost the corporation money and drew criticism from her superiors. Denying it exposed Anaïs to messages from families, appeals, and sometimes even insults. She bore responsibility for a decision she didn't truly control, for a salary that barely kept her own account afloat.
Her Civic Score was already teetering on the edge of "Off-Grid" status. Her job didn't help matters. To LifePaths Corp., she authorized too much spending; to patients, her name appeared at the bottom of rejection notices.
She quickly learned to recognize phrases that meant nothing. "Insufficiently documented medical benefit" could imply a treatment was too expensive. "Deferred pending civic stabilization" meant the patient’s score was too low to warrant immediate care. Anaïs had to take these stock phrases, polish them up, and sign off.
It was during this time that she set a goal for herself—one far less spectacular than those suggested by career guidance programs:
One day, she would sign a report that helped someone instead of casting them aside.
At nineteen, Anaïs was shortlisted for *The Ascension*. For a few days, she believed her life was about to change. The show presented every candidate as proof that the system could still reward the deserving. Anaïs was already picturing a new apartment, a better-paying job, and a Civic Score high enough that she wouldn’t dread every inspection.
She didn’t make it past the "endearing candidates" segment.
The edit highlighted her low-paying job, her plain clothes, and her obvious eagerness to be chosen. The hosts smiled. Online, viewers were less kind. Her face circulated alongside jokes about the rejection-letter writer hoping LifePaths Corp. would finally accept her own application.
Anaïs looked at the initial reactions. Then the ones that followed.
That night, she drank to get to sleep. The next day, she drank because the clips were still circulating. Later, she no longer needed a specific reason. The addiction stayed with it long after the show ended; it simply changed form.
At first visible and chaotic, it became discreet, structured around her schedule and obligations. Anaïs could prepare for a meeting, review a budget, and answer a journalist without anyone noticing the drink she’d had beforehand. Those who loved her noticed, though.
At twenty, LifePaths Corp. promoted her to head of the health editorial team. The corporation called it a step up. Anaïs saw it primarily as a chance to choose the words others would sign their names to. That was when she grew closer to Loïc, her neighbor and colleague. They took the same transport in the morning and often returned home after the shops had closed. Loïc knew the procedures well enough to understand why Anaïs came home furious. He didn’t ask how many treatments she had denied; he asked how many decisions she had managed to get overturned.
At first, they talked mostly about work. Later, they kept talking even after arriving at their front doors.
At twenty-one, Anaïs tried to join the party governing Fribourg. She prepared her candidacy like a medical case file: experience, proposals, figures, and references. She was received courteously. It was explained to her that her profile was interesting, that her social conscience deserved a hearing, and that there were certainly other ways to participate in public life. No one immediately mentioned "the Ascension." Eventually, however, the name came up. The party did not want this engaging candidate. Anaïs was shown to the door with plenty of encouragement but no concrete offers. She went home, placed her application folder on the table, and opened a bottle. Loïc found her sitting in the kitchen, still wearing the jacket she had chosen for the interview.
He didn’t tell her to forget about politics.
Three years later, Anaïs and Loïc founded their own party: "More for Less."
The platform was summed up in the name itself: give more to those who had the least, fund healthcare before publicity campaigns, and open municipal services to residents whose Civic Score no longer cleared the standard security gates.
The slogan was immediately mocked. It was deemed naive, contradictory, or poorly phrased. Opponents claimed it sounded like an advertisement for a discount chain. Anaïs refused to change it. The city remembered it.
Posters for "More for Less" were printed on a shoestring budget and put up by Anaïs, Loïc, and a few volunteers. Some hung crookedly. Others were torn down. But at public meetings, Anaïs spoke about decisions she knew firsthand: the cost of a denied medical treatment, the burden of administrative paperwork, and the ease with which someone hovering on the edge of "Off-Grid" status could simply drop off the list of priorities.
She knew how the system drafted its rejections. She had written them herself.
At twenty-six, Anaïs and Loïc got married. The ceremony was modest and ran longer than planned. A few party members gave speeches that went on too long. Anaïs promised not to check any election results during the reception. She lasted nearly an hour.
The following year, she became the mayor of Fribourg.
The once-endearing candidate was now entering a building where the ruling party hadn't even wanted to set aside a chair for her. She kept on several employees from the previous administration—much to the annoyance of her most vindictive supporters. Anaïs didn't want to take over an empty town hall; she wanted to know where the files were kept and who still knew how to read them.
Her election didn't fix anything.
Alcohol remained a constant presence, often hidden in ordinary glasses and during long, drawn-out evenings. Loïc knew the lies before she even finished telling them. They would argue, set ground rules, and then start all over again. Anaïs might win a negotiation in the morning, only to lose the evening to a bottle.
At thirty-one, Rita was born in the midst of a new campaign. For a few weeks, the Progin apartment served as both a nursery and a campaign headquarters. Leaflets were stacked beneath the changing table. Loïc would rock Rita while Anaïs edited municipal memos. She would answer messages while pacing the hallway, then forget to actually send the replies.
It was likely the only period in her career when she submitted documents late without offering an excuse.
That year, Anaïs invited local representatives from major corporations to join her campaign for a large-scale public tree-planting project. The neighborhood in question suffered from unbearable temperatures every summer. The corporations offered to fund the trees, provided they controlled the inauguration ceremony, the imagery, and the placement of their logos. Anaïs agreed to the photo op. In return, she demanded that the land remain public, that irrigation be funded for several years, and that the contract specify the number of surviving trees at each milestone. The first draft of the document focused primarily on visibility. The second added binding obligations. The signatures, however, were still missing.
By the time she was thirty-two, the representatives finally gave in. On the day of the inauguration, the trees stood in impeccable rows. Corporate executives posed for the cameras alongside Anaïs. She smiled beside them, wearing a pristine hard hat. The photograph was published everywhere.
What she had actually secured did not appear in the image.
It was buried on page fourteen of the contract—in the provisions for maintenance funding, the penalty clauses, and the ban on closing the site to residents with low social ratings. For the first time, Anaïs signed her name to a report that didn’t take anything away from anyone. She had imagined she would feel something greater. She checked the signatures, filed her copy in a grey folder, and went home to put Rita to bed.
At thirty-three, her position at City Hall was solid enough for her to launch a campaign for a broader mandate. This choice surprised those who thought she would want to bask in her victory. It particularly unsettled those who understood her methods: Anaïs didn’t attack institutions from the outside. She would walk in, ask for the documents, and sit there until they were brought to her.
She wasn’t incorruptible in the comfortable sense of the word. She negotiated. She accepted logos, ceremonies, and handshakes. She was also aware of her own weaknesses. Some nights, she used them as an excuse. On others, she simply tried to hide them before the next day’s meeting.
When she was thirty-four, an old file resurfaced. It had been considered "frozen"—which mostly meant that several influential people preferred it stay that way. An audit was announced. Her advisors recommended she challenge it; in their view, accepting it would be tantamount to admitting there was room for doubt. Anaïs agreed to the audit.
However, she refused to sign anything until her campaign manager, Solène, had reviewed every line. For several nights, the two women worked in an office that was far too cold, alongside a printer that generated more heat than the radiator. Solène compared versions and circled the changes. Anaïs went over everything, including details that couldn't be used in her defense.
The file revealed neither perfect innocence nor any spectacular wrongdoing. It showed compromises, poorly logged meetings, and decisions made quickly enough to leave blind spots. Anaïs could have hidden behind procedural technicalities. Instead, she chose to correct whatever could still be fixed.
From that point on, her revenge took a different form.
She no longer wanted to humiliate those who had dug up the file. She wanted to impose rules on them—rules precise enough to apply to them as well. Solène called this her "constructive revenge."
The phrase stuck.
The following year, during a raffle held in the stands of the municipal stadium, the announcer handed the microphone to Anaïs. The program called for a few words about the sponsors, the renovations to the field, and the city’s sporting ambitions. She began with those topics. Then, she pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket.
Anaïs named the players who had been forgotten in previous seasons: those whose contracts were cut short by injury, those whom new performance metrics had reduced to a mere red line on a graph, and those who had left without ceremony.
Some of the names were known to only a fraction of the crowd. That was enough. Applause broke out in small pockets, unaccompanied by music. The protocol officer signaled for her to wrap it up. Anaïs finished the list.
At forty-one, Anaïs Progin died from the effects of her alcoholism. The news came as a surprise to those who had known her only in public—standing behind a lectern, her files neatly organized, her voice steady. It was less surprising to Loïc, Solène, and the loved ones who had watched her struggle, make promises, relapse, and then return to work as if a busy day were enough to keep the disease at bay.
The city published a tribute to its former mayor. Loïc asked that they not write that she had fought to the very end. He knew there had been days when Anaïs no longer had the strength to fight. That took nothing away from what she had accomplished.
She hadn’t toppled LifePaths Corp. She hadn’t cleaned up politics, stopped drinking, or prevented corporations from turning every concession into an advertising campaign. She had used their money, appeared in their photographs, and learned to speak their language. But after her time in office, the fine print had become harder to ignore. And in the reports bearing her name, the people who had been cast aside still had a name.