"Me & We" by Rob Rosen

On the shortest day of the year, in a place abandoned by the Arctic sun, a goose-stepping squad of soldiers hold electric arc lamps behind two men who flicker in the harsh shadows as they walk towards the soft orange glow of buildings huddled in the distance ahead.

ME’s movie star gangster face is enshrouded in a white Arctic fox fur coat. His kid-leather gloves are thrust deep into his pockets as his combat boots lurch through the snow that blankets the permafrost. One hand caresses the compact self-loading pistol that spoke to the angry crowd, stopping them from tearing him apart the day the wall and the Great Leader’s motherland empire came tumbling down.

WE’s ice blue eyes gaze from under a towering high patrician forehead, flouting the wind atop a lanky bundle of jumbled grey rags that moves with royal stride. He’s as defiant to the bitter cold as to the assassins he taunted from intensive care after their botched attempt on his life. Now WE drolly asks, “Come to visit your jolly North Pole death chamber?”

“I’ve come to offer you a choice.” ME’s monotone reply.

“Such a rare gift!” WE ripostes too dramatically.

ME’s knows WE’s dossier. Reckless sarcasm, spoofing, and slapstick. As a young skinny nerd, WE used humor not knuckles against his opponents. But ME knows spoofing and slapstick are only funny until violence slaps the smile off one’s face. “Let’s be clear. I don’t find you witty,” ME’s glance is hardened by experience. ME’s brother died of diphtheria, his father was disfigured, his grandmother was killed, his uncles disappeared, all in defense of the Great Leader’s motherland. ME’s grandfather cooked for the Great Leader, every night placing dinner on the sideboard, then quietly retiring so the Great Leader and his dinner guests could serve themselves and discuss the war. ME places a hand on WE’s shoulder as his lips widen into the smile of a victory assured before the engagement even starts. “And there’s no one else to entertain. I’ve come for a dialog, a discussion of the future. Fair enough?”

“Sure, no objections. But -” WE remembers standing silently, hand on the shoulder of an immense cow his Grandmother had him fatten up on pork lard. He gestures to the marching marionettes on his flank, assault rifles slung over shoulders. “Appears this is more show trial than dialog. You’re the judge, and the judgment,” he sighs, “will involve violence.”

“Violence is dialog by other means, and life’s not fair.” ME remembers victory, how the motherland became an empire, and upon the Great Leader’s death the paralysis of power that ran that empire into the ground. ME refused a role in that antic comedy, patiently watching the first flailing moments of a short-lived democracy until ME could choke it to death with his own hands. “If you want to discuss anything but the future of the motherland you say you care for so much for, I yield. Otherwise, may I begin?”

A shit eating grin, WE nods in assent.

“Right is simply a question between equals. For the rest –”

“Yes, yes. The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. And how’s that turning out?” WE checks his rising emotions, sniffs back the mucus filling the furrow of his upper lip, “What about fairness? What about right and wrong? Certainly in great danger you’ve as much interest in them as anyone. Your actions have consequences, and a slip on your part,” WE’s cadence slows, “Will bring on the heaviest vengeance.”

“I’ll take that risk” Me’s voice trails off as his mind wanders elsewhere.

WE wanders as well, to a time where the rustling grass steppes were spread under an endless sky. Where a low cinderblock factory was sheltered by a copse of trees. The doors atop the concrete shipping dock were slid open to let in the warm air. WE’s Grandfather, in knee-high black leather boots, pants rolled up over top, black suspenders covered in sawdust, waved directions to a truck backing up as he asked WE, “Are you Ukrainian or Russian?”

WE complained. “That’s like asking who I love more, you or Grandma.”

WE’s eyes return to the tundra.  “And how, pray tell, could it be as good for me to live as for you to rule?”

A dozen pairs of black boots crunch through sharp snow. A soldier’s lamp sags a bit. ME turns, hood falling to his shoulders as his eyes scour every inch of the soldier’s body. The man hurriedly raises the lamp to its proper height. ME lifts his hood back into position, impatiently picks at the loose end of a seam. “I’m here in my interest. My offer’s in your interest as well. I gain by not destroying you, you gain by not suffering the worst.”

But WE’s already suffered the worst when he watched the endless sky become pitch black. Heard the screaming sirens that cut short a paradise as it disappeared  into a radioactive cloud. The soldiers in flimsy rubber suits and ancient gas masks lined up to run one after another into the maw of a nuclear reactor run amok while WE’s family was herded onto their furniture trucks and driven into the heart of the motherland. This was the moment WE came to understand that all politics is personal.

“You can’t simply let things be? The little cat and mouse games we play out with one another that entertain everyone. The mouse is certainly no threat to the cat?” WE always look for common ground. Always the World Fellow Scholar sitting on green lawns amidst ivy-covered buildings studying political science and world affairs with elite youth from around the world. Always reasoning with rationality, understanding, and dialogue. The air they breathe.

“So naive.” Snorts ME, who lives in a different culture, underwater, where people have a banal hatred for those with lungs instead of gills. “That would only demonstrate weakness.” ME always flooded the zone with lies, meddling, counterfeiting, and spying. ME cribbed pages of his Ph.D. thesis from textbooks as easily as he hid genocidal terrorists in safe houses. ME loves his mook of a son WE, but is horrified by how different they are and so is unable to stop from hurting him.

WE knows his words are falling flat, that he’s flunking the test, and so WE takes a different tack. “Won’t my death simply encourage others to rise up against you before you get it in your head to kill them as well?”

“People, washed and cleansed in propaganda, are sheep following their shepherd. But I concede, a few can be fickle and must be more actively ‘reminded’ of what’s in store for disloyalty.” ME’s gait becomes jaunty as he recounts the rebellious general’s plane rigged to “inexplicably” drop mid-flight  from the sky. The renegade helicopter pilot found “mysteriously” riddled with bullets and covered in tire tracks across a lonely road on some sunny coast.

The wind never dies. WE watches as it carves crenellations in snow and can’t help but tease ME a bit. “Well then, if you work so hard to rebuild the motherland empire, wouldn’t I be a coward not to try everything that can be tried to return us to republic?”

ME sharply shoves hands in pockets as he stops for a moment, considering in silence, then says, “You’d have to kill me.” ME smiles. “Because I’m annihilating your followers. I’ve betrayed the ‘beautiful republic’ that arose from the fallen empire, befouled its honor with unspeakable crimes. As a republican it’s your mission to rescue the motherland from me! You’re the only man in the world capable of the task. The past demands you kill me. The future demands that you kill me. History demands you kill me, and history is our element, our god.” ME turns and looks up with eyes of coal at the much taller WE. “One strong man could throttle me. One cook could poison me. And why hasn't that happened yet? Because no word has yet been spoken to break my spell.”

“But to submit is to give up on hope.”

ME stops dead in his tracks. Face contorted in a fit of rage. Lifting both hands from his pockets, ME flaps them together to the tempo of his words. “Hope, danger's comforter, may only be indulged with abundant resources for its nature is extravagant! The weak who bet on hope see its true colors only when they are RUINED!” ME catches his breath. “And aren’t you much like me if, knowing all this, you still lead the sheep, blinded by hope, to the slaughterhouse?”

“I can hope for as much of God’s fortune as you since we fight a just cause,” WE says petulantly, “what we lack in resources can be made up for by your enemies, who are much more numerous, rich, and powerful than you.”

“God.” ME spits, black glove sliding across a puffy white chin. “God I believe, people I know, by the laws of their nature rule wherever they can. As for my enemies,” ME wags a black leather finger at WE. “When it comes things outside their interests, well, what’s expedient is just.” ME says dismissively. “Just look their wavering over supporting you and your cause. Their fears that I am completely mad and that if pushed too far I’ll resort to the weapons which would destroy us all.” ME scoffs. “Not a really good bet as allies.” ME spits and the material explodes into ice before it hits the ground.  “The truth of it all is that they cannot support you without courting danger. And that they court as little as possible.”

“Not supporting us comes with the great danger that you will act upon them as well.” WE’s bravado melts into peevishness.

ME looks at WE as his disappointing son. “I’m struck by the fact that you’ve mentioned nothing in which people might trust and be saved by. Your strongest arguments depend upon hope and the future. Your actual resources are scanty. So,” ME’s tone warms. “I’m gonna help you out. Make you an offer. Join me. Pay tribute, become my ally and designated successor. When I die, continue reforging our empire.”

WE’s clearly surprised. “Why wouldn’t I simply accept your offer, bide my time, and once you’re gone, turn your empire once again into a republic?”

ME laughs a bit over-dramatically. “Beside me you’ll lead the wars against our enemies, live on mega-yachts and in golden palaces, become rich in the spoils of war, besotted in hedonism, and corrupted by my future. Consider your dossier. You’ve bent to circumstance and exigency before.” ME pauses for a moment. “You’ve marched alongside far-right ultranationalists on the grounds that every element of the opposition is needed in the fight against me. When I waged war, you called for the deportation of all our enemies, referring to them as ‘rodents.’ When you ran for office, you railed against undocumented immigrants. You’re a brilliant screwup of a leader whose chaotic lifestyle makes your rare moments of heroism, the byproduct of selfishness, stand out even more. Nothing’s special to you, not even yourself!” ME’s eyes run over WE’s face. “Don’t think it dishonorable to bend once again and submit.”

WE replies quietly. “Not much of a choice really, Devil’s bargain or death.”

The wind gusts increase. The trees groan and crackle as they twist this way and that. Branches fly off, spin through the air, then skate across the snow into the dark distance. Snow devils rise tightly on spinning spirals of wind.

ME says in a fatherly manner, “If there is one thing we both know, it’s that those who do not yield to their equals, keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best. Take a moment and consider.”

ME signals the soldiers to halt as WE walks out of the harsh white light toward the orange glow in the distance, hands shoved hard in his pockets as he almost disappears into the darkness, then turns and walks back into the light, standing before ME with an awkward ironic smile pasted across his face. “The honesty of my beliefs, my naiveté. A strength and a weakness.” WE sighs. “You know I live what I believe. In that we’re the same.” ME offers an accepting nod. “There’s one more important thing I believe in. Loving others like I love myself.”

ME bursts of laughter. “Oh, this is too much fun. Love. That tangled mess of deep affections, intense feelings. It has no place here.”

WE looks at ME piteously. “You misunderstand. One loves others as much as one’s self – because it’s in one’s self-interest to have them love you. A future built on the self-interest of Love is much more certain than one built on the fear that you’ve staked everything upon, trusted most in, and someday will be most completely deceived by.”

WE kneels before ME. “I’ll be missing from all photos,” WE says, gently placing his hand on ME’s forearm. The two men begin to chuckle. 

“Yes, the passing of the greatest president no one ever had,” ME says as WE guides the pistol out of ME’s pocket and the chuckles become shaking laughter. 

WE places the barrel of the gun in the gentle hollow right between his prominent brows and nose. “We’re creating a new shared experience that equals the greats of our motherland literature.”

The two men sound like hyenas, laughing so hard they can barely keep the pistol positioned properly. ME, grinning ear to ear says, “Yes, a genre so saturated with cliches that it’s impossible not to write them.” ME continues in whining parody. “If I got a dollar for every ‘We didn’t get to say goodbye,’ I’d be the richest man in the world.”

The two men fall to the snow, clutching their sides in fetal positions, laughing so hard they cannot breathe. Slowly they both roll to their knees and look at each other with broad smiles.

WE says, between gasping breaths, “What’s it gonna be, fear or love?”

Arms crossed about his chest, gripping sides still hurting from laughter, ME staggers to his feet and feels the steely cold of the pistol penetrate the leather of his glove, finding its way into his skin.

WE wonders over finality. Will the slight click of the hammer be unleashed?

Rob Rosen spent the better part of a life as a technologist and applied AI mathematician with a front row seat to the technology revolutions of our time -- and the resulting social convulsions. He’s written a dozen short stories that have appeared in Cold Lake Anthology, Dark Horses, Metaworker Literary Magazine, Syncopation Literary Journal, Roi Faineaint Press (Watchers of the Sky), Mania Magazine, Interwoven, and is currently working on his first novel, a story of our times as told from twenty-five hundred years ago.