The Wrong Side Of History
As blood pumped from the gash on his neck and the world before his eyes darkened, Senator Arnold McCoy’s last conscious thought was to wonder if being assassinated was enough to put him on the right side of history. It was his birthday. Surely, he could hope for something to go his way on his birthday, especially after the fiasco that the assassin had made of what should have been his swan song.
Senator McCoy had been looking forward to his 130th birthday and retirement party for months. He’d planned an epic gala event to remember—or not remember depending on how much tequila he consumed.
The trouble began less than a week before his party. He read and reread the anonymous message on the projected screen on his desk scowling and rechecked the time. He’d called the fixer the moment he finished reading the message.
The damn fixer was late.
He checked his temper.
The fixer wasn’t late yet. She still had a few minutes to arrive.
The senator rose from his desk chair and stretched. He was in the best health the medicos could produce. His heart valves functioned with micro-computerized precision. Nanite activity had repaired damage to his corneas and retinas allowing him perfect vision. Ongoing treatments to reinvigorate his damaged liver meant he could still drink, if not like a 21-year-old, at least like a 30-year-old. McCoy had lived long enough for the media to label him a “national treasure.” He’d cackled over that term the first time he’d heard it, knowing his long-dead childhood friends and classmates would have been flabbergasted by it.
But then, none of his childhood friends could have foreseen what the future held. He owed his continued existence and the accolades that came with it to societal catastrophe. Because the Rift Super-Volcano Eruption caused the Great Population Collapse. Because civilization fell to the brink of extinction.
When the need for continuity in government arose, he’d volunteered for experimental treatments to prolong his life. The medical treatments McCoy had undergone were now mostly considered unethical, unnecessarily dangerous. The Senator, however, had survived the side effects of the treatments and thrived, becoming one of five stabilizing voices. And now that the chaos was past, he was the last of the old ones, a hero. He’d hate to lose that designation to something as simplistic as blackmail.
Senator McCoy paced in front of his desk with his hands clasped behind his back, wondering where the anonymous scoundrel could have found the document he quoted in his email. McCoy had worked hard to bury information from the past that might complicate current matters. This document was something obscure, or someone else would have found it before now.
The fool hadn’t even stated his demands in his message. In fact, as McCoy reviewed the contents of the message, he wondered if the idiot might be something other than a blackmailer. Maybe this one was an idealistic crusader against perceived moral corruption, a self-righteous zealot with no idea of the flexibility political life required.
Over his extremely long life, McCoy had gained enough wisdom to recognize the need to alter positions. Social conditions changed. The sands of time shifted. It wasn’t that he had no principles, but rather that he’d lived long enough to see once-cherished beliefs become obsolete, and to see the most confounding social problems solved in unexpected ways. He’d lived to see things considered legal, wholesome, and necessary become illegal, immoral, or unsafe.
What kind of idiot would he have been to stand by old beliefs when new evidence proved them wrong? He believed that he was entitled to change his opinion without risking people holding his feet over flames when he did.
From sporting activities to medicine, what had been acceptable risk in his early career was now unacceptable and negligent. He’d expunged the fact that he had played football in high school from his formal biography not long before the youth leagues imploded. He’d realized the issue could become a sword of Damocles over his head, a weapon for someone to use against him, perhaps as a sign of risk-taking behavior.
As time passed, McCoy had to remove many similar swords, all, ironically, of his own making. A line from a speech given when the world was a different place eighty-five years ago could derail a program the senator was working on today. That’s why he’d hired the fixer, and her predecessor, so many years ago.
