What drives me. The right-off answer is rage. From point to point, it is rage. If something happens, and if I was not anticipating it, I react like an animal—with violence. But the deepspine answer is love. Love drives me. So I must lie a bit to him.

He is like any other petty tyrant of history. A slave to his own whims. A master of nothing but selfishness. He is the Society—a monster dripping in decadence, yet seeing none of his own hypocrisy. He views all this wealth, all this power, as his right. He is deluded. They all are.

“Tactics win battles. Strategy wins wars,” I say.

winning. To win, I’ll need an army, but it cannot be made of slaves. Not again. I now need, as I’ll need at the head of a rebellion, followers, not slaves. Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.

“You have to remember, people don’t like being told what to do. You can treat your friends like servants and they’ll love you, but you tell them they’re servants and they’ll kill you. Anyway, you put too much stock in hierarchy and fear.”

It’s a sign of my fading leadership that I have to stand up.

“Life is the most effective school ever created. Once upon a time they made children bow their heads and read books. It would take ages to get anything across.” He taps his head. “But we have widgets and datapads now, and we Golds have the lower Colors to do our research. We need not study chemistry or physics. We have computers and others to do

I hope his pain fades in death. I did not love him till he was dead; and he should be dead, but he is still my brother. So I pray he finds peace in the vale and that I will see him again one day and we’ll embrace as brothers as he forgives me for what I did to him, because I did it for a dream, for our people.

He has a soul like mine. In death, it will go to the vale, but in life he was stupid and selfish with his grief. He should have been better than this. Reds are better than him, aren’t we?