We are the same, Dear Leader. I realize that now. We’re both doomed, you and I.
It is dark, this place you made. So dark I cannot see my now-youthful hands. So dark I see neither arms nor feet, nor the walls all around.
Who knows how many there are, these places of yours.
I feel the smooth chip of rock, running my young finger along its sharpened edge. It’s three steps to the wall, and there I trace the outline of my son’s face, etched into stone. I use the chip to carve his jaw, scratch-scratch-scratch.
You know how long I’ve been here, Dear Leader. I do not.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
A fine man, was my son; a vision of my younger self. I suppose I look like him now, but I cannot see. There is only dark down here, where it smells sweet and strong and sour. The ground is sticky beneath my feet.
*****
I was an old man, once. I’d amassed eight decades and two years. I had gained and lost a wife, whose mind was as sharp as this chip of rock. Together we’d sired our son. Not as sharp as his mother, yet not as dull as I.
It felt good, to be old. Not the aches and pains, but to have gained and lost. The satisfaction of it. To have seen so much.
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Together we ran a family business; not quite a cafe, not quite a bar, not quite a diner — but to our village, all those and more. Eventually, it would become our son’s. That happy, popular boy, whose cheekbones attracted all the girls, and some boys.
You never saw his face, Dear Leader. He was more handsome than you.
One morning I woke to find him gone. Gone, along with most of the village youth! We soon learnt why.
You were young again, Dear Leader! A miracle science, one that reinvigorated your very cells, which restored you to your past. That day you would visit the big city, address the square, show off your regained virility.
But times were hard. How much had this miracle cost? Why should you enjoy your blessed immortality when so many toiled, when we all scraped by?
The village youths had gone to greet you, with banners and discontent. You’d show them your miracle, and they’d show you their rage.
*****
In the sticky dark, I scream for him. My lungs are young, my voice rebounds from cold walls. I scream for him until I lose my breath, hoping someone, somewhere, heard his name.
Instead, the day’s food clatters down, dropped from above.
Can you not see, Dear Leader? Death kept us equals. No matter how little we had, we all shared in death. It kept us in common.
*****
They did not remember your father’s discipline. They were too young to recall the common demands. To have seen all those students, piled upon the ground.
We had to warn them. We, the old, piling into some old truck, racing across barren fields and brown rivers, on towards the city. We arrived just in time to see the seething crowd; the huge screens. To see you ascend your stage.
No longer were lines of wisdom etched upon your face. Gone, your senior’s stoop. You waved at us, younger than your own children. A figure of health and youth; the living rendition of the portraits on our coins and post offices and buses. And as you stood above us, this is what we saw:
We saw forever. Your forever.
You cannot blame your people, Dear Leader, for the angry cries. You cannot blame the rush of bodies forwards, desperate to stop this endless reign.
Then, your gunshots.
You watched without expression. You remember.
