The Grasshopper

Chapter 15

That night the new president of Earth, Erivan, did not sleep either. As soon as he went to bed he lay on his side and tried to go to sleep. But it didn’t work, he was too excited.

“Finally…” he thought, raising his large body and leaning back on the arched backboard, “…finally… after twenty-five years of being vice president.”

During that period he had also held the office of President, on several occasions, when Kaella would get angry enough and stopped being surprised that these grown men were taking their function of president seriously, and they would start thinking on their own and making decisions.

Then under order from Kaella, Erivan would eliminate the incumbent President, making use of media campaigns and court cases, and in line with the Constitution he would take his place pending early elections, and after that he would again retreat to the position of vice president. Into the shadows of the loyal guardian of Humane Capitalism.

But this time it wasn’t so. And it would never be again. In the past several years Erivan had been under a lot of stress and it took its toll on his health, because Kaella did not take his warnings seriously. From time to time Kaella would not even read his reports on Pascal Alexander’s activities and would tell him that he was exaggerating. Alexander had succeeded in creating a strong Non-Consumer movement. They had taken power in entire cities and on all the continents. They had taken factories, started their own production of goods.

When he realized Alexander’s strength, Erivan stopped realistically and truthfully reporting to Kaella. It was probably his smartest, one might even say his ingenious decision. He allowed Alexander and the Non-Consumers to produce their own weapons and waited for the right opportunity. He waited for the moment when Kaella would no longer have any choice and when he would have to chose to finally put an end to the Non-Consumers. This sixty-two percent support for Alexander, which Erivan had shown to Kaella only now, on the eve of the elections, had finally sobered up the old and naïve ruler. He accepted the proposal for them to carry out an assassination of Xing, when he goes tomorrow by car to give his election speech, here in Capital City, and to blame the Non-Consumers for it.

And he had done well to have already killed the Xings. Zodiac, the pilot of the stolen Non-Consumer plane, told him that their rockets were not a hundred percent accurate. If the first projectiles were to miss or only graze the presidential car, one of the Xings might run out and escape. Why should he take such a risk if the family was within his reach the entire time?

“Now it’s really enough, Mr. President,” Erivan said to himself out lout, smiling because of the “Mr. President”. “Don’t torture yourself with things that are no longer important. Rest. Starting tomorrow numerous statesman and wartime duties await you as President and Supreme Commander of the Inspectorate.

He got up out of bed and went to the bathroom. He got a box of sleep medication from the cabinet, took one pill, greeted himself in the mirror with a dignified bow, and returned to bed.