Chapter Text
The destruction of the Ministry of Political Education was a work of art. Political art, of course, which, having spent years reviewing and suppressing it, I feel like I can talk about with confidence. You have to admire how it was carried off, even if the end result is my office completely destroyed. Actually, I’ve known plenty of people who would say that the end result is the only part they appreciate, my old friend Aleks comes to mind, but as it was my office, I was a bit resentful of being impressed.
I still went to look at the Ministry buildings after the riots had been cleared away. Or had chosen to disperse after they saw that the Emperor had sent his eyes to make sure that justice would be fully, and justly, carried out. I don’t think highly of repetition of adjectives in the same sentence, but I will grant that reading the newspapers was what had given me a clue about calling in sick and so tragically losing the opportunity to make some last stand for my principles. Knowing journalistic integrity as I do, I knew that we would be getting articles about Ministry of Political Educations dastardly role in sending our brave boys to their deaths without the Emperor checking them off.
The burned-out buildings leave an impressive mark. Much more than they’d shown on the news, of course. It was a warning for the other ministries, but not necessarily what you want to tell people that simple, concerned citizens are capable of if they find the will to act (to use a phrase Aleks was very fond of, in our university days).
Minister Grishnov had to know it was coming. I had known it was coming, and not to put down my impressive judgment, I don’t have access to whole network of spies who can read poorly written newspaper articles for me. I wondered if some of the damage had been his work. The final choice of a man who knew there was no way out. Maybe he’d chosen to make the destruction too blatant for them to show. Maybe he’d wanted to highlight the danger people could pose, a danger that might not always be as well controlled as this show. A last conspiracy to poor out in respect for the old man. I couldn’t dedicate much time to it. I had my own problems to dwell on.
Afterall, there I was. No job, no prospects, sitting in a dingy bar with people I didn’t like but who represented the only company left open to me. Aleks would probably say that this was exactly what I deserved. But that’s because Aleks, with all due respect to his memory, was a moralistic prick who had no problem cutting out facts that were inconvenient for his narrative. Yes, if you looked at our last fight, where I was all full of hope for getting ahead in the world and he went on about everything I could lose, and then jump jut to me in said dingy bar, maybe it would look like the universe works his way. Conveniently ignoring that Aleks dreams of noble martyrdom came true four years before, changing absolutely nothing. I haven’t seen many signs of the people taking over creating a kinder, gentler world.
Aleks was just dead. Denis was dead too, having never made it to his dreams of being a commander. Tomas was back to the middle of nowhere, probably already married off on his father’s orders. Georgi was on ship duty. Dasha lost, and Ben too, and we all know what that means when they’re still combing for corpses. Out of my glorious cohort, Borya was the only one who had both survived and was still using his degree in comparative literature, and he was always far worse than me. And there was me, of course, but I was drunkenly thinking about my dead classmates. Which is the national pastime, so one of the common signs of depression. It would all be enough to make me bitter and cynical if I weren’t already overdosed on the stuff.
I know, I know, the question then is, so, Mr. Yan-the-Clever, when did the young man who decided to pursue a degree in the humanities become so cynical? With your degree, can you truly claim that you were, in fact, cynical from the outset? To that, I say, of course I was. The whole point of choosing comparative literature was so I could throw my family’s ‘sacrifices’ and ‘generosity’ back in their face by studying something they’d see as completely useless. Really, you could say that the least cynical move I made was joining the Ministry of Political Education with the dream of having a job where I could tell Imperial Security to suck my dick without getting arrested. And before anyone gets at me for poor judgement, it worked just fine for years. Though I decided not to use that defense when the boys with the silver eyes came knocking. At the time, I was mostly just glad it was them instead of some peasant with murder on their mind.
It was only after the riots settled down that I really got to appreciate all that I didn’t have in my life. You don’t sit around thinking about the tragic fates of all your friends from university – and how, in a very really way, they were the last true friends you had – when you’re having a good day. Or week. Or month. Not that anyone else was having a great time. I can notice that while still being preoccupied by my own situation, thanks Aleks. This time it didn’t even make me feel better.
We lost the war. Countless soldiers had died. A political balance of more than a decade had been overturned and eviscerated. It was all very dramatic. Personally, I try not to linger on the past. Some of my fellow former colleagues, the others stamped not important enough to further destroy, liked to talk about how the war was always going to be lost or the fate of the War Party. My mind kept focusing on my persistent unemployment. I couldn’t even get a job with a newspaper – well known as the third hand of Ezar Vorbarra, the one jerking him off under the table. As I used to say to Julia, it was no surprise that Borya had risen so quickly in the ranks.
I hadn’t seen Julia since the end of the war. At her polite request, sent by a note. It was just what I would’ve done. Nicer, probably, as there was a suggestion that there could be a point in the future where we might be able to talk again. Still, it didn’t exactly bring much light into my life.
Then I got a letter from my aunt saying that despite the fact I’m a worthless degenerate who brings disgrace upon the family name with my every breath, it had been magnanimously agreed I might be allowed for me to attend my cousin’s funeral. If I stayed a few meters away at all times. Maybe not in those exact words, but you don’t spend years in the Ministry of Political education without being able to read the lines. Actually, you don’t spend years with my family without being able to read between the lines. You could say that I’d practically been training for the career my entire life. Though not to most of my colleagues, as they tended to lack a sense of humor, or, at least, were far too paranoid to let anyone they worked with see if they did have one.
I had liked Jo. He was overly earnest, but without the self-righteousness that most of my family was so good at. He was old enough to remember before I’d been the official disgrace, but he was never one to tut about what I’d done. Possibly because he was also old enough to remember that I’d already been, as it’s known in refined circles, a complete prick. I didn’t like to think of him dead in space, having marched off to do his duty without complaint. Maybe he hadn’t had complaints. Maybe he hadn’t had dreams of something other than the life of a loyal soldier sent to die in a war we were always going to lose. I don’t know. I never asked. As implied, I won’t argue that I’m not still a complete prick.
I don’t like to think about anyone dead in space. It combines two concepts I’m not keen on (that’s ‘dead’ and ‘space’ not ‘thinking about people’, for all those dead comedians taking up space in my head, Denis would’ve loved a straight line like that). Being sensitive to others ideas and beliefs, as a proper former Ministry employee, I can tell you that there’s a whole bunch of real crazies out there who have this whole isolationist ideology that usually serves as an accurate warning sign of a whole iceberg worth of crazy lurking right underneath. But when I way that just because we can go into space doesn’t mean we need to go into space, I’m not singing any party line. My motivation is ideologically pure, a simple complete terror at leaving terra firma.
I don’t even like flyers. Which is just good sense if you look at the casualty statistics. Or do a quick run through of obituaries in your local daily-lack-of-news. We used to joke that flyer accidents don’t make good political assassinations because no one would be able to tell they weren’t real accidents. I did mention the usual humor level I was dealing with. But the idea of actually leaving the atmosphere - it gives me the shudders. Fighting a war in space is bad enough, though the real horror story is the idea of being on a spaceship where some minor fault is going to take you out. You have enough time to really know that something has gone wrong and that you’re completely helpless to prevent your death. Floating out there, slowly drifting towards the inescapable oblivion. It makes a good metaphor for life in general, but I don’t want to live it. I made the stupid decision to look at some pictures, once, years ago, and I still have dreams of bodies floating through space. These days I’m no believer, but it still just feels wrong.
As it happens, I was telling some fourth-floor clerk about my cousin floating in space for eternity when the Lieutenant walked into the bar. In full uniform. With a truly agonizingly precise haircut. In a general sense, as I’ve indicated before, Imperial security can go choke, but right from the beginning I could tell we were dealing with a prime example of the breed. In case there’s any confusion, I despised him on sight.