The Gregorian

(2 intros to the same story... for my fiction class.)

His speech at the Northern Front had been a success, and he knew it. From flashing his now trademark smile to throwing his muscular arm from above his six-foot frame and crashing it against the unsuspecting podium, he had controlled the separatist audience as a conductor would a symphony. When he first began calling for deurbanization, his Ivy-shaded vernacular and Boston accent betrayed him. But he had learned a lot from those failed campaigns. Rather than speak on the presumption that the separatists would listen to his like-minded ideas of revolution in spite of his pedigree, he now spoke as if all that his pedigree provided him was spite; ideas had become an afterthought. Now, when he demanded that the Metropol bombers be executed, he heard the heckling and the threats from his first campaign; when he ordered that capita-maximums be enforced throughout the Central Territory, he saw his commanding officer killed in the failed mutiny; when he called for mandatory immigrant deportations to Canada, he felt the pangs of Maryanne breaking their engagement; when he denounced the Treaty of Cincinnati, he smelled his son’s burnt flesh from the South Side bombing. Only by wearing his past as if it were a crown of thorns, he knew, could Gregory Bender succeed in winning over New America. Now, as he waved to the adoring crowd from his helicopter, six days before the Territorial Councils would choose a new president, he delighted in sensing that the punctures were deepening. There was no turning back.

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The hardest part about pulling the trigger, I knew, would be that he remembered my daughter’s name. It’s always what’s worst about undercover work, having to get to know the guy, realizing that they personally aren’t that bad as they say back home. But this is war and I have my duty. There are three separatist leaders competing for control over New America and Gregory Bender is the only one who has the power to inspire its permanent disillusion from the Union. No doubt, with his experience, intelligence, and presence on the stage, he is the most dangerous man in either country. His conviction is astounding and his intense face and large build makes it seem that he is willing to take on the Union with his bare hands. With all the fighting and sacrifice that these people have gone through, they need to believe in someone like Gregory; what’s worse is that he knows this better than anyone and is perfectly willing to exploit it. If I could not see the destruction he’s causing, I’d say there was a beautiful dependence in their symbiosis. The trouble is, after having been in his inner circle for the past two years, I can see that he has given up on any reconciliation between New America and the American Union. It doesn’t matter if he’s discussing military operations with a general or rallying a hall full of widowed housewives, he’s only concerned with making them an extension of his will, a means by which he can satiate his torment. He has witnessed too much and lost too much because of this war to see anything past it. He is beyond compromise. Like me, he is on a suicide mission. That’s is why I must kill him. I just wish the poor bastard would stop asking about my daughter.