The crowd cheering, the trampling of hundreds of feet on the hard soil. The sun was about to sink behind the horizon, bathing the green glowing city of Zhaun in contrasts. And people cheered and they screamed and they waved banners because tonight there had been victory and there had been loss. Tonight a new president of the city state had been voted and for the first time ever he was going to talk to them directly. Not from a monitor, not through a minion the person himself.
The red carpet was rolled out and metallic legs walked the person over it, his face behind the mask and his eyes first guided only forward. The leader of the Glorious Revolution now the leader of Zhaun as well.
Slowly he made his way past the people, past all those signs that showed lines like: "Viktor for Zhaun! Destroy the opposition!" - "The Glorious Revolution to overrule them all!" and finally "The Glorious Revolution comes! To war against Piltover!"
He walked a bit, one glance over the masses of people standing in front of the podium that he was slowly approaching. One would think, this was the goal. One would think, this was the thing he lived and worked for all the time. One would think this would make the man of steel feel happiness, finally.
But this was not what he wanted. With slow steps he climbed up to the podium, his place above them all, as their leader as the man to bring Zhaun above everything else, to go to war, to destroy the opposition and whatever those people wanted him to be.
Fingers curled, his hands became a fist before digging into the wood of his pedestrium. This was not what he wanted. The Crowd cheering, the trampling of hundreds of feet on the hard soil, all in celebration of his victory. But it did feel like a loss.
Raising one hand the noises drowned out and with a deep breath of air in his now mechanical lungs, he started talking, amplified and recorded spread around the place, into the radios of the nation, into the devices that showed his triumph and his loss over the whole land:
"All these time I have fought for this moment, I am standing here in front of the people of Zhaun and see them cheer for me. I envisioned this day since the time I first stepped out of my laboratory, fixed and with enlightenment what humanity meant.
I started spreading the word, just the way I could. I made an example on myself on how I saw the world. I saw my imperfections and I worked on them. Physically and mentally. And now I stand here right in front of you... and I see the impact that I made...
That is not what I wanted. Instead of giving you hope. I took it away from you. I saw myself as the first of a Revolution of mind and heart. I saw a world of flesh and imperfection and constant failure and I wanted to change it with you.
Now here I stand. In front of you people. Signs raised high. Talking about those phrases I used and totally misusing them. 'Destroy the opposition'. 'Overrule them all'. 'War against Piltover'...
You looked at my ideas and thought of them as tool of destruction to show ourselves better than everybody else. But as soon as we die these things die with us and we have not left anything to survive.
I took on metal in my body to correct my flaws. I thought so my mind could open. I needed so many things in order to work and I needed to things to stand here and talk to you like I do right now. But this is not what it was meant to be.
I wanted technology not to destroy the opposition, but to walk down the road and see this mother, dying from the imperfection of her own body and give her a heart. A strong heart, made of steel of metal to pump hot blood through her veins so she might gets to see her children grow.
I wanted technology so I could go into the house of the old woman that has seen so much so I could give her lungs made of fabric so she could breath long enough to tell us about mistakes and success she had so we may learn from it.
I wanted my technology so somebody could save the child from certain death from the his own imperfections so he could build his own legacy, to lead us into a future, where technology would lead to his happiness and everybody else, not his and our destruction and misery.
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be the president. I don't want to be the president of a humanity that works like machinery, but rather a machinery that works with humanity. A humanity we have to give. A humanity we have to live up to... This is the Glorious Revolution I had envisioned... and this is the glorious revolution I am going to bring..."
With those words he took of his mask, his face full of scraps of metal and scars. And it was not the face of a hardened man, a man of brutish power brought by machinery, but a man of sorrow, with a metallic heart pumping hot blood, for himself and for his people.
"But only if you are going to realize that..." With the metal of a face previously worn hitting the ground, the Machine Herald left... for the crowd to decide on their own, if this was the world they wanted.
