Hadrian's Rage (25 page)

President Elena Stiles, Hadrian is disappointed in you! Why? might you ask. You are, after all, a genetic descendant of the Stiles founding family. But clearly, being a Stiles, or a Stuttgart for that matter, does not guarantee you will be a Hadrian patriot. My one apology to Gordon Stuttgart, who remains firmly entrenched in Conservative Right Politics. But back to you, Ms. Stiles; when the people of Hadrian elected you as our president four years ago, it was based on the understanding that you would continue to protect Hadrian’s founding principles and carry on with the good work of reforming our wayward bisexual youth.

Instead, the first thing you did was to place strai sympathizer Jason Warith in charge of Hadrian’s Reeducation System, who after turning our reeducation base camps into summer camps, announced his resignation as head of Reeducation. That’s right, folks; the
Golden Boy of Reeducation
has just resigned because he’s strai! Good work, President Stiles; you really know how to pick ’em. And now, word is out that you are seriously considering dismantling the reeducation system. Where are these strai sympathies coming from?

So, now that our reeducation system is in shambles, you propose to break your own Anti-Strai Propaganda Law, a law you signed into our constitution shortly after your inauguration, by funding educational changes that will allow our teachers to teach our youth about what it means to be strai. Well, the world already knows what it means to be strai. It means overpopulation and the inevitable polluting and destruction of our planet to accommodate twenty billion human beings. This is something Hadrian stands opposed to and must always stand opposed to!

Yes, I agree! Sorry, Hadrian; my production manager wisely reminds me to get back to the topic of Stiles threatening to dismantle the Anti-Strai Propaganda Law that strictly regulates the indoctrination of our youth by heterosexuals. Elena Stiles was recently quoted as saying the Conservative Right browbeat her into making this law. Well, I think it is time the Conservative Right really does do some browbeating. We need to browbeat President Stiles right out of office, making room for someone like Cooper Johnston, whose political campaign not only will maintain the Anti-Strai Propaganda Law, but return us to the day when being heterosexual was itself a crime, punishable by exile, and when all wayward youth who foolishly act on opposite sex attractions are reeducated for their benefit and the benefit of Hadrian!

The question that remains on the minds of every Hadrian patriot is why, and how, a founding family member becomes a turncoat? Not only has this happened to our President, but also, it is clear our founding mother, Destiny Stuttgart, heavily influences her. Mother Stuttgart, who is now, I’m sure, well over ninety, is clearly senile. Rather than take her ramblings seriously, we should be showing the old woman compassion and sympathy; she clearly needs proper medical care rather than the caregiving provided by her grandson, another out and proud strai! No doubt, Dean Stuttgart is the very root of all that is causing our government to betray our founding principles, the four cornerstones upon which our good country is based. We must never forget that ours is a nation intrinsically opposed to heterosexual propagation! To accept strais and bisexuals into our fold would only result in exasperating the world population and pollution problems the heterosexual barbarians have inflicted upon our earth!

So, then, why would two of our most respected founding family members turn on their country this way? After some work by HNN’s research department, we discovered that President Stiles’s leanings toward the strai agenda began with the death of little Fredrick Mustonen.
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Being but four years old and suffering abuse at the hands of his mother because she feared he might be strai, she beat him to death; clearly, this was a case to pull at the heartstrings of all Hadrian citizens’ hearts. But little Fredrick was the victim, not Hadrian. The woman who committed this heinous crime was sentenced to exile, but she wisely chose to drink Black Henbane. May little
Fredrick rest in peace, but it is truly horrible to use his little death as a means to manipulate our citizens into feeling sympathy for all strais.

And, of course, there is the recent murder of Tara Fowler, an out strai at Augustus Uni, who actively fought for equal rights for strais as well as for the freedom for strais to marry and propagate at will. I am sorry she was murdered, as are all of Hadrian’s citizens, but her death would never have occurred had Elena Stiles not encouraged strais to be out in the open, offending the sensibilities of Hadrian patriots, threatening to undermine the cornerstone that identifies our country as homosexual. And we all know what happens when one cornerstone collapses—the whole structure collapses. Under the old laws, Tara Fowler would have been picked up and placed in reeducation where she would have learned to love and embrace the only true loving expression, but instead, she was allowed to strut her heterosexual stuff and threaten Hadrian’s homosexual lifestyle.

This brings us to the critical question: Where do we go from here? Do we reelect President Stiles, knowing full well her sympathies lie with strais, or do we look for new blood to come in and make Hadrian strong again? That new blood, though not having founding family genes running through his veins, has Hadrian’s best interests at heart. Cooper Johnston promises to restore Hadrian to its former glory, fighting against the heterosexual barbarians and building this nation towards a better and brighter future.

Vale!

Siddhartha Seshadri, Prasert Niratpattanasai, and Prasert’s little sister, Kendra Schmidt (siblings seldom have the same last name since each child takes his or her genetic parent’s last name), have decided to set up a little social experiment. Hadrian’s historical archives are filled with vids and documents from the past, detailing the horrific crimes humanity committed against the gay community before the creation of Hadrian, and just last week, Sid found an old video shot by two men in Russia, dated circa 2015. The two men who created this video wanted to show the world just how horrible homophobia was in Russia at that time. And what the video revealed was pretty upsetting, evidencing why so many gay couples came together to create a safe haven in Hadrian. Even so, Sid found it sad, too, that what he was watching from years gone by was the very same as what he was witnessing today in his own country, except this time attitudes were reversed. In Hadrian, heterosexuals were reviled for being the “breeders” and “polluters of the planet.” When he showed the old vid to Prasert, they both agreed a similar experiment needed to be done in Hadrian, on the streets of Augustus, and so Prasert, who had shared his bisexual identity with his little sister, found himself asking whether she would be willing to participate.

“Why me? Why not one of your straight friends?”

“Well, the two men in the Russian video were straight and their goal was to show Russia and the rest of the world just how homophobic their country was. I think we should use the same idea—have two homosexuals walking together like a straight couple—”

Kendra cuts him off. “Yeah, but the two guys in the vid are holding hands. Everybody in Hadrian holds hands. That just means you’re friends. It won’t work.”

“True.” Prasert has to admit Kendra is right. Everyone holds hands in Hadrian. It denotes friendship. No one ever questions when a man and a woman are holding hands. More likely than not, two walking in such a manner are family or close friends. But that is not the same when it comes to two people walking arm-in-arm.

When Prasert brings up this point, Kendra ejaculates, “No way! That’s gross.” It takes a moment for Prasert’s facial expression to sink in before Kendra realizes just how hurtful her sudden turn of phrase is. “I’m sorry, Prasert. I didn’t mean to be so insensitive.”

Prasert tries to swallow his disappointment, but he is still hurt. “That’s all right. It just goes to show how deeply rooted Hadrian’s prejudices are when your own sister can cut you to the quick without even realizing it.”

This response cuts Kendra to the quick. “You’re right, Prasert. I just blurt out an emotional response without any consideration to you or your friends. I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?”

Prasert smiles. Kendra knows exactly what he is going to say. “By participating in Hadrian’s version of a little social experiment.”

The following morning, Kendra and Sid bravely wrap arms around each other. The physical contact denoting affection for someone of the opposite sex is foreign to both, but their intellectual understanding of the experiment allows both to overcome the oddity of the moment. Directing her attention to the back of Prasert’s turban where he has adeptly hidden the small camera, Kendra giggles. “I can’t believe we’re actually using one of those archaic video devices.”

“Hey,” Sid reminds her, “some students need them. We can’t all afford expensive vocs.”

“No,” Kendra agrees, “but a good voc cam records ten times better than that old thing.”

“And how obvious would that be with Prasert walking backwards just to film us? You can’t hide a voc cam in the back of a turban, now can you?” Kendra concedes the point and Sid shouts for Prasert to begin.

The couple walks casually through the Uni Park, taking a moment to enjoy the flowers, cross the small bridge over the babbling creek, as well as do a little bird watching, every movement calculated to reflect a young
couple in love. It doesn’t take long for the experiment to unveil some of the more guarded prejudices people hold. The people they pass begin to stop and stare. Someone even calls out to his friends, “Hey, look—it’s a couple of strais!”

Laughter follows and someone else shouts, “You sick fucks don’t belong here.” “Yeah,” another voice adds. “Leave Hadrian, why don’t cha?”

And then someone purposely bumps into Sid. This happens a few more times, with men slamming into Sid’s shoulder and women slamming into Kendra’s. Suddenly, someone grabs Kendra and shoves her aside. The next thing Sid knows, a man twice his size in both height and weight has shoved his face up against his nose and started yelling, “What the fuck are you doing here, strai?” Much of the abuse blurs in Sid’s ears, but Prasert catches it all on cam. Prasert’s first instinct is to turn around and help his lover, but Kendra manages to extract Sid from a potentially volatile situation, so Prasert turns away again to continue capturing the event for posterity.

“We aren’t strai,” Kendra now pleads to the crowd. “We just lost a bet. We lost a bet. That’s all. To pay up, we had to walk around Uni Park, pretending we were strais.”

The big man looks Kendra’s way before turning his scowls back at Sid. “That true?”

Sid picks up where Kendra left off. “Yeah, man; it’s just a prank. We lost a bet. Our buddies made us do this.”

“Fuckin’ stupid bet. Your friends must hate you.”

“Yeah,” Kendra agrees, trying desperately to convince the man. “I would have been a lot happier having to down a dozen shooters or guzzle a mickey of rye.”

This confession convinces the man and he laughs. Suddenly, he and Sid are best buds. He wraps an arm around Sid’s shoulder and gives him a shake. “You two were really good. I really thought you were a knife and a stab walking that way.”

“Yeah, well,” Sid says as he breathes a sigh of relief, “that was part of the bet. We had to make it look real.”

When Kendra is finally able to extricate Sid from his “new best friend,” the three of them head back to Sid’s place to debrief.

“Man, I’m telling you,” Sid readily admits, “that man scared the shit out of me. I thought I was dead.”

“I know,” Kendra concurs. “The way he grabbed me and shoved me…Look.” She points to the bruise on her left bicep. “That fucker really hurt me.” Now looking her brother’s way, she adds, “I had no idea what it feels like to be so hated. It’s horrible.” Shaking her head, looking directly into the vid cam Prasert is holding, she declares, “Everyone in Hadrian needs to know what this feels like.” Now talking directly to their future audience, she says, “If you could feel what Sid and I went through today, just for walking arm-in-arm, you would never want—you could never want—no decent human being could ever justify treating another person that way ever again!”

Jason Warith, the Head of Hadrian's National Reeducation System, has just resigned his post after exposing himself as heterosexual. This is perhaps the most shocking news to hit Hadrian's wave since the exile of Angel Higgins and Grace Godoy for the brutal murder of Tara Fowler. According to Jason, it was this very act of senseless violence, a vicious attack against a person resulting from hate, that inspired him to reveal his true orientation. He said he could no longer live with the pretense that he was gay. He had studied reeducation at uni and went on to bring in many of the humane reforms so desperately needed in our reeducation camps, but for Jason, that simply isn't enough. Jason turned down our offer to interview him, saying his coming out has brought with it a great deal of scorn and harsh words thrown his way. He wishes only to retire quietly now and avoid further bombardment of hate. But when he is ready, he promises to return to the forefront, or as he likes to call it, the front lines, in the fight for human rights in Hadrian, by joining forces with Dean Stuttgart and our founding mother, Destiny Stuttgart.

Although he is not here to speak these words, Jason Warith has given me permission to quote him directly. When asked why he was giving up on reeducation, as he is clearly the “poster boy” for the reformed heterosexual, one who lives a celibate lifestyle, his reply was simple. “I no longer believe reeducation is needed to help Hadrian remain strong in its intent to counter world population. Reeducating our youth—forever branding the unlucky ones with the stigma of being straight and, therefore, imperfect, someone needing to be fixed or cured—will never bring humanity together as a whole. We need to become one people, a collective willing to work together towards peace and harmony and the resurrection of the planet earth. If we want to create a sustainable world once more, we will have to
learn to live and love and work together as one. Tara Fowler's death has convinced me that Hadrian needs to learn to accept all sexual orientations. I want to see a Hadrian that embraces humanity—not one that embraces hate.”

Jason's words resound poignantly in the wake of the social experiment that has gone viral over the wave. Two young students of Augustus Uni, the uni considered to be the most liberal-minded in accepting open straight and bisexual students, decided to see how loving and accepting Hadrian's population really is. Siddhartha Seshadri and Kendra Schmidt, both gay, walked around Uni Park arm-in-arm. At first, they only experienced stares and the occasional glare. Fingerpointing and name-calling came next, and then the threat of violence ensued. The two had to lie their way out of being attacked by claiming to have lost a bet. If ever Jason Warith's words ring true, people, it is in the aftermath of this social experiment.

Truth, Hadrian! What you have just heard today is:

TRUTH!