“Is he is dead?” asked the Generals’ senior aide.
“He was dead of soul long ago, but it appears that his body lives – for now.”
“But he did push the Button after all.”
“As I expected. He was afraid of living. In some ways I cannot blame him.”
“Can not blame him, sir?”
“War can kill a man without damaging his body. One might consider that a feature of sorts, something evolution gave us to prevent us destroying ourselves. Unfortunately it does not always stand up to our instinct of survival by mastery, whether real or hallucinated. And it is always an hallucination.
“‘All men want to be rich, rich men want to be king, a king ain’t satisfied until he rules everything’. Those lyrics must have rolled through my mind a million times when I was in the Academy. One of my teachers drove home this simple idea – words can only take you so far. The ears may receive the sound, the brain may decode it, but the mind does not always listen. Or bother to care.
“The ‘Great Leader’ stopped listening many years ago. Nobody made him listen. Nobody made him care – nobody taught him to care about anyone other than the man in the mirror – and sometimes I wonder about that.”
“He did not listen to or care about himself?” asked the aide.
“Oh he cared about himself a lot. That was the only thing he ever showed an interest in. I sort of feel … sorry for him in a way.”
“Sorry for him? I do not understand General.”
“Perhaps ‘sorry’ is the incorrect word. There is a shared sadness, one he would never confess to – a real man does not ever let his guard down , never looks back, can not admit to error. Confession is for the weak – denial is the way of the bold. He was very good at denying anything and everything, and has been since the day he spoke his first words.
“The ‘standard’ rules of ‘justice’ would reward him with a lifetime in a cage, maybe as an example of human fall from grace, or quite likely, the intentional jump off of the cliff of sanity. He had to believe that he was the best, the smartest. If he can’t win the game, he’ll overturn the board and set fire to it.”
“The Big Beautiful Button?” said one of the soldiers standing next to the collapsed Great Leader.
“Yeah, The Big Beautiful Button”, replied the General. “One press and he wins, even if everyone else thinks he’s running from defeat. He gets the last laugh, even if it’s a second before everything goes up in flames. What a waste – but war is nothing but waste.
“There never was the Great Weapon to be used against his enemies. Everyone lied to him about it. Everyone – even those who stood beside him for years finally realized he was too dangerous to tell the truth to. His currency was lies, so they paid him in lies, specially curated for his pleasure.”
“What now, General?”
“Get the meds to rack him up and transfer to the care unit. I will be by to check on him later.
“Remember, for all he has done he is still Human – one of God’s children as we all are. He is to be treated accordingly.”
The General left the room, followed by his chief of staff.
“What the hell”, said one of the elite operating team members. “This bastard killed millions – why should be give a fuck about what appends to this walking piece of shit? He didn’t care about the humanity of the millions lying dead as his feet. I’d just a soon throw this living carcass into a wood chipper and spew the shreds into the sewer with the rest of the shit.”
“You don’t know who ‘The Great Leader’ is”, came a voice from just inside the doorway. Everyone turned around to look at a very old, wrinkled woman in a wheelchair. “I wouldn’t expect you to know, so I’ll tell you. The ‘Great Leader’ is my youngest son, a failure in parenting, unsavable despite efforts from everyone downstream of the Lord himself. The child I prayed for every night. I begged that God or whatever is in charge of the Universe to step in and redirect him to the right path.
“I tried, I failed. His older brother tried and failed, too many times – too many times. In the end he found he had no choice but to take arms against his own flesh and blood. It hardened his heart and broke it at the same time.
“This time we have been able to stop him, but oh at what a cost. Too much blood and guts, too much destruction, too much agony. But we had to do it – we had no choice.
“I am sorry, my son. Sorry that you brought this onto yourself. Sorry that we had to gang up on your ass to stop you this time.
“Colonel, prepare the prisoner for transport”, she said.
“Yes, madame.”
She rolled her wheelchair aside of the slumped over Great Leader.
“Son, we tried so hard to steer you to follow a better road, not to leave a trail of wreckage and pain. For years I blamed myself, that I had failed. That me and your brother had failed. Today I know I did not fail to reach out – you failed to reciprocate.
“If you ever wake up, you are going to be held responsible for what you have done and driven others to do. And I will be there for every moment because you deserve to find out what fucking around really means.
“Maybe, finally we can all rest in peace. It’s about time – I am so tired of all this shit slinging. You wouldn’t let me live my late years in peace and quiet – hell, neither of you could. I suppose that comes with the territory.
“If the General comes back, tell him I’ll be waiting in the garden – or what’s left of it – he can be a bit excessive sometimes when it comes to blowing things up.” She turned around and rolled out of the room.
“Who was she?” said one of the guards. “She said that this guy was her son. And that she appears to know the General quite well.”
“She is his the mother of them both,” said a woman in full combat gear and the insignia of lieutenant on her shoulders. “And the sister of my father. “
“Long ago my uncle told me that war was a scam, and victory is an illusion of proximity. Stand far enough back and all you see is rubble and bodies – you can’t tell one from another, friend from foe. It all looks the same. It all burns the same and is buried the same. Mother Earth does not care about the ideology or beliefs of any of her children. To the mother we are all gristle and bones to be recycled into new earth for new life to sprout up from.”
The carrier floated in. The medics lifted the exhausted body of the Great Leader onto it, strapped him down and headed out the door. The rest of the occupants followed them.
Stopping in the doorway before closing the door behind her, the lieutenant made one last scan of the room, shook her head, then turned off the lights.
Nothing was left of The Great Leader but a dark and empty room – and the Big Beautiful Button remote blinking red on the floor.
Shouter to Dead Parrots 