All Kinds of Heroes

They would find him; he had made sure of that.  It would all happen according to plan. 

He smiled at his reflection on the computer screen, the flitting bursts of color from the screen saver exploding over his image as he feathered his fingertips lovingly over the keyboard.  ‘The greatest invention of mankind’, he thought, ‘and the worst’.  He knew with absolute certainty now that all things carried the seeds of their own destruction.  The computer did, his emaciated body did, the whole world did.  ‘Good and evil’, he mused.  ‘Good and evil in everything’.

Sighing audibly, his breath shaky with tension, he glanced at the watch sitting askew on his thin wrist, marveling at the fact it was a great invention too.  It could tell him what time it was in every part of the world, and it was almost time now on the eastern coast of North America.

He depressed a key on the computer, bringing up the program that had been his obsession for the past three and a half years.  He had taken his time, been careful, --oh so careful, changing his location frequently, while planting the suggestion that someone could someday bring the world to a screeching halt.  There had been speculations, warnings in the major newspapers, all according to plan; but nothing too alarming, nothing to make anyone search for him or stop him before he could complete what he thought of as his mission.  He would be a hero.

He felt the familiar surge of rage at the thought of the necessity for the mission and the hate that prompted it.  ‘Did other heroes, other saviors and martyrs feel the same

rage as they approached their final moments?’ he wondered.  The rage made it easier somehow, though the outcome was never in question.  They had taught him well in those American Universities, but they had failed to see what he was learning.  To their peril, they had failed to see.

His eyes quickly scanned the computer screen then drifted to the syringe that lay in front of it. 

“My vial of peace, my entry to paradise,” he whispered.

His only regret was that he must be a dead hero rather than a living one.  He would have preferred to see, to hear of and to know the crippling chaos that would be inflicted on the arrogant super-power that was the United States of America.  But that wouldn’t be possible.  He was as good as dead anyway.

He glanced again at the message he had placed in the printer tray.  It was important for the world to know that he acted alone, that he alone was the genius who made it happen, that the credit was all his.  And they would know why he had done it and why he had ended his life.

It was time.  One minute to midnight, December 31, 2004, Eastern Standard Time in North America.  He visualized the glowing orb in Time Square as it made its descent to the chant of thousands of revelers, --”30, 29, 28 --”, and nimbly typed in the command that would set everything in motion.

“Happy New Year, America,” he whispered, smiling.  “Let the chaos begin.”