Misinformation. They will reduce me to a serial number.
I do not fear or regret my impending demise. It is neither possible nor desirable to thwart the inevitable. The Regime can murder my mind and my body; it will thereby only sow the seeds of its own destruction. One cannot evaporate ideals. Moral integrity does not succumb to aggression. Love will endure as humanity’s highest value. No regime – even one that arrogates to itself an imaginary permanence – can dismantle such a timeless, invincible value. Love wins in the end. The Regime disintegrates and all its victims attain vindication in the irreversible tide of history....
I set the book down on the table beside me. I poured myself a mug of coffee and lit a cigarette. Past two in the morning, I was camped out on the balcony outside my apartment. The cool air fused with the caffeine to keep me alert and focused. Faint sounds emanated from the street below. The world was otherwise dead, like Gabriel Manchester. His words lived:
I was the first child of R. Smith and Helen Manchester. A sister, a brother, and two more sisters followed me over the next fourteen years. My siblings and I grew up in a virtual palace and attended prestigious schools. I cannot look back on my upbringing with pride or gratitude. Brutality contaminated my family’s fortunes. Innocent bodies paved our road to prosperity.
R. Smith Manchester was the most devious, cutthroat, ingenious man I ever knew. He headed a division of the Injustice Department known informally as “The Iron Web.” A police state watchdog, he thrived on hunting so-called terrorists. His reputation grew with every arrest. Political ringmasters offered him candidacies for various offices. “Elected officials might as well be cardboard cutouts,” he said. He preferred the thrill of exterminating subversives.
My father became an anti-role model for me....
A mix of autobiography, historical expose`, and radical manifesto, A Man of the Regime shattered many of society’s sacrosanct myths. Manchester’s prose sparkled with the same beauty and conviction as his speeches. His underground code name was Albatross – which was what he represented to the reigning oligarchs. A wonder they had not terminated him sooner.
I stopped reading and grabbed another cigarette. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone on the sidewalk across from my balcony: Victoria Mason. Our eyes locked for four or five gut-wrenching seconds. She turned and darted into a dark alley.
Over two months had passed since the dustup over her torn dress. Just a few weeks had passed since my sighting of her during my tavern hallucination. I recalled her parting shot at me: “You have not seen the last of me.”
Ignoring Victoria, I refocused on Manchester’s book:
Primed for a lofty position within the establishment, I excelled academically. I breezed through high school and completed college in two and half years. People in high places courted me. I was uninspired by the prospect of serving a sociopathic plutocracy, yet lacked the strength of character to disappoint my father. I became a stooge for the Permanent Regime....
My father retired at sixty-five and faded from prominence. Meanwhile, I ascended the hierarchy with ease. His attitude toward my accomplishments soured as I began outshining him. I was no longer “R. Smith Manchester’s son”; he was “Gabriel Manchester’s father.” It was more than his ego could bear. He came to fiercely resent me. He should have blamed himself. Poetic justice demanded that he suffer the triumphs of his son....
Reading Manchester’s story sapped my energy. I fell asleep with the book at my knee, the cigarette in my hand still burning.
****
My perceptions went into a blender:
A blue blotch eclipsed everything – reminding me again of Lukas Lambert, the parallel universalist. I heard loud psychedelia and a steadily rising Gregorian chant. Unfamiliar still-shots flickered: the interior of an elevator; a
I do not fear or regret my impending demise. It is neither possible nor desirable to thwart the inevitable. The Regime can murder my mind and my body; it will thereby only sow the seeds of its own destruction. One cannot evaporate ideals. Moral integrity does not succumb to aggression. Love will endure as humanity’s highest value. No regime – even one that arrogates to itself an imaginary permanence – can dismantle such a timeless, invincible value. Love wins in the end. The Regime disintegrates and all its victims attain vindication in the irreversible tide of history....
I set the book down on the table beside me. I poured myself a mug of coffee and lit a cigarette. Past two in the morning, I was camped out on the balcony outside my apartment. The cool air fused with the caffeine to keep me alert and focused. Faint sounds emanated from the street below. The world was otherwise dead, like Gabriel Manchester. His words lived:
I was the first child of R. Smith and Helen Manchester. A sister, a brother, and two more sisters followed me over the next fourteen years. My siblings and I grew up in a virtual palace and attended prestigious schools. I cannot look back on my upbringing with pride or gratitude. Brutality contaminated my family’s fortunes. Innocent bodies paved our road to prosperity.
R. Smith Manchester was the most devious, cutthroat, ingenious man I ever knew. He headed a division of the Injustice Department known informally as “The Iron Web.” A police state watchdog, he thrived on hunting so-called terrorists. His reputation grew with every arrest. Political ringmasters offered him candidacies for various offices. “Elected officials might as well be cardboard cutouts,” he said. He preferred the thrill of exterminating subversives.
My father became an anti-role model for me....
A mix of autobiography, historical expose`, and radical manifesto, A Man of the Regime shattered many of society’s sacrosanct myths. Manchester’s prose sparkled with the same beauty and conviction as his speeches. His underground code name was Albatross – which was what he represented to the reigning oligarchs. A wonder they had not terminated him sooner.
I stopped reading and grabbed another cigarette. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone on the sidewalk across from my balcony: Victoria Mason. Our eyes locked for four or five gut-wrenching seconds. She turned and darted into a dark alley.
Over two months had passed since the dustup over her torn dress. Just a few weeks had passed since my sighting of her during my tavern hallucination. I recalled her parting shot at me: “You have not seen the last of me.”
Ignoring Victoria, I refocused on Manchester’s book:
Primed for a lofty position within the establishment, I excelled academically. I breezed through high school and completed college in two and half years. People in high places courted me. I was uninspired by the prospect of serving a sociopathic plutocracy, yet lacked the strength of character to disappoint my father. I became a stooge for the Permanent Regime....
My father retired at sixty-five and faded from prominence. Meanwhile, I ascended the hierarchy with ease. His attitude toward my accomplishments soured as I began outshining him. I was no longer “R. Smith Manchester’s son”; he was “Gabriel Manchester’s father.” It was more than his ego could bear. He came to fiercely resent me. He should have blamed himself. Poetic justice demanded that he suffer the triumphs of his son....
Reading Manchester’s story sapped my energy. I fell asleep with the book at my knee, the cigarette in my hand still burning.
****
My perceptions went into a blender:
A blue blotch eclipsed everything – reminding me again of Lukas Lambert, the parallel universalist. I heard loud psychedelia and a steadily rising Gregorian chant. Unfamiliar still-shots flickered: the interior of an elevator; a
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