Straying from my typical style, here is a more serious story about a man forgotten by history, although he is one who began the suffering that Gundam Seed revolves around.
Confessions of Anger
by crosstrigger333
It's not his fault. I realize this. It's not his fault that they exist now, or that mankind is being split apart. It's not his fault that the natural-born humans cannot compete with his kind.
But it was his revelation that set it all in motion.
This is the story of my past with the man known as George Glenn. What you are reading is the truth of why I did it, of why everything happened.
My name is Nathaniel Uris. I was born in Cosmic Era 22, to Jim and Regina Uris. My father was a graduate from MIT, and among the best in his class, second only to the 17-year-old prodigy, George Glenn. He and Glenn were friends back then. The two of them always spent time on their weekends studying, though Glenn had a much busier schedule with swimming and football. The two of them were rivals, though my father was seven years his senior, but in the end, the friendly competition between them led to both of them graduating top of their class.
My father and Glenn kept in touch. My father became a professor in Aerospace research, while George Glenn went on to be a Nobel Prize Nominee, an Ace Pilot in the Air Force, and an accomplished Aerospace engineer. His most notable project was the Hermes I, the ship that was used on the historic Jupiter Exploration Mission. I wasn't born yet, but my older sister, Samantha, wrote in her old diary about the day before the launch.
Entry 8 from Samantha Uris's Diary, Age 11, C.E. 15
Ding Dong
"I'll get it, mom!" I called as I ran to the door. I opened it to see a young man, who looked about 35 years old. He had a strong looking face, and was quite handsome. But none of that surprised me. What caused me to stop and stare for those few moments was something I still cannot explain. I didn't know this man, but for some reason, he seemed different.
"Hello, is this the Uris residence?" he asked me.
"Yes it is," my father came out of his office from behind me. "Sam, go help your mother set the...table..."
"It's been a long time, Jim," the man smiled.
"Well, stars abound! George Glenn! How have you been, old friend?"
"Never better," Glenn answered. "I'm leaving on that mission tomorrow at noon. It's going to take 14 years, so, I thought it's going to be the last time I see an earthling for a while, so I thought I'd pay my most challenging competitor a visit."
"Challenging competitor, is it? Well, I'm not going to be the world's most sought after man for the next fourteen years, now, am I?"
Mr. Glenn joined us for dinner. He was very friendly, and told stories and jokes. I had never seen Dad so happy to have an unexpected guest, and I know it wasn't because George Glenn was famous. It was because they were best friends.
Mr. Glenn invited us to the launch tomorrow. I'm getting the day off from school to go with Mom and Dad to see him off before he leaves Earth for 14 years.
End Entry
It was during the launch that Mr. Glenn made his revelation, and sent the manual for human genetic enhancements to the world-wide network.
My parents were both shocked at the truth of George Glenn's beginnings, as well as the rest of the world. Glenn was actually a genetically modified human, not born through natural means. Even though I didn't exist yet, that revelation would change my life, though I did not initially understand what it meant.
Initially, people were stunned, but didn't have many hostile feelings toward the "coordinator", as the new humans became known as after Glenn's speech. While there were many that considered it disgusting to do such things to an unborn child, many welcomed the idea that mankind could extend their reach so much further. Thousands of young pregnant women began flocking to medical facilities to create new coordinators, hoping that their actions would create people who would be as smart and strong as the great George Glenn.
However, the excitement didn't last. It was a little over a year after Glenn left that the host of a popular American political talk show made his own statement.
"George Glenn has created a catastrophe! Not only is it horrible to alter man's natural make-up from a moral standpoint, but does anyone realize what these "Coordinators" will do to our future? When these children grow, they will outclass any natural human! If you don't have a child that can compete with these Coordinators, they will not have the same oppurtunities as they would have had before. The high-pay job market will be full of these coordinators, while the natural born humans will be stuck with manual labor! If we let this spawning continue, our unemployment rates will not be proportional to skill but to genetics!"
--Chris Bell, "Voice of the World" C.E. 16
This was something that not even George Glenn could foresee. The mass production, for lack of a better term, of Coordinators would greatly influence who will get a job and who will not. Be it an engineer or an athlete or anything else, the Coordinators would outclass the Naturals in anything and everything. Millions heard this announcement. Millions revolted.
The rebellion resulted in the loss of twenty facilities located around the globe. Because of this, the United Nations established a ban on genetically altering births in late C.E. 17. The ban did save lives, but it did not quell the hatred.
On the day of my birth, George Glenn was on the television. He had just reached Jupiter, and was giving a status report to the nation, unaware of the conflicts back home. By this time, many were having incredibly biased opinions of the Coordinators, calling them "unnatural" and "inhuman", their anger clouding the memory that it was not morality but economics that the hatred was based upon. My father was not one of them. He was in favor of pushing mankind to a new limit. He was in favor of the scientific benefits that would better the world and possibly save lives.
However, because he watched George Glenn's message from Jupiter, he missed seeing my birth. I didn't, and still don't mind, because of the historic moment that took place that day, but my mother never forgave him. According to my sister, they had a fight. My mother argued that he cared more for his coordinator friend than his own son, while he argued that Glenn had just reached a new level of scientific discovery and he was now a witness. Eventually, my sister came between them, telling them not to fight so much in front of her new baby brother.
They stopped for a while for my sake. I was young, so I did not understand that the tension between my mother and father was not something that happens in every family. It was seven years later, when George Glenn returned to Earth, when the tension snapped.
My father was leaving to see Glenn after 14 years. I remember my mother telling him that he should forget about the freak who started such a mess. My father instantly went on the defensive, telling her that George Glenn is a great man, and that he shouldn't be prejudiced against because he was born differently. She argued back that that 'great man' would be the one who caused their son to never get a job. I was seven, so everything seemed too complicated for me to understand, but seeing the anger in their eyes scared me. Not knowing what else to do, I cried.
My father picked me up, telling me that everything was fine. I didn't need to cry over mommy and daddy. I didn't believe him. There was still a little anger in his eyes, though not as intense as it was a few seconds before. He walked over to my mother and told her something I couldn't hear, and then he left. Not for a day, or a week, but for good.
I was so young, the psychological impact was enormous. I hid everything under my smiling mask of a face, but inside, it was tearing me apart. My daddy had left us. My daddy had gone somewhere far away so I can't see him anymore. My daddy was gone, because he left to be friends with a freak.
This feeling continued on through elementary school. I was eleven when the ban on genetic alteration was repealed, C.E. 33, and the Coordinator Boom began. This sparked a hatred deep down inside the majority of the natural populace. People attacked women giving birth to Coordinators without hesitation. One of those women was my sister, Samantha.
Samantha Uris Lawrence, age 29, and her husband Kyle Lawrence, age 32, were murdered by an unknown assailant after coming out of a medical facility with their newborn daughter, Fiona. That was what was on the news that day. I remember my mother sobbing, and I remember crying about all of the times that Samantha was a wonderful sister.
During her funeral, I heard my mother cursing the Coordinators for what they were doing to our family. They had caused my father to leave us, and it was because of them that Samantha was dead. She didn't expect me to hear her, but I heard it all. She was left a broken woman, a shell of her former self. From that day forward, I hated all coordinators: the ones who made my father leave, who killed my sister, and who broke my mother.
My life was the same through junior high and high school: the same in that there were no coordinators in my life. All of them had yet to accelerate to my level, but all the same, they were a thorn in my side. Whenever I saw a seven-year-old walking out of a junior high school class, I knew that he would be another George Glenn. Another Coordinator that would destroy another family like mine. However, what really drove me over the brink was what happened after I went to college.
Her name was Contessa Noble, and she was the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. I was 25, attending graduate school at Carnegie-Mellon, while she was only 18, but a junior in Aeronautical Engineering. She had gotten a full scholarship when she was sixteen for her revolutionary propulsion design that she presented at, of all things, a science fair. She was also a champion soccer player and an excellent swimmer. At first, I was skeptical. I knew from the start she was a Coordinator, but there was something about her that softened my hatred.
She seemed so happy, so friendly. She wasn't arrogant or antisocial like many geniuses were. It was after she talked to me that I knew I loved her. All at once I had begun to realize that I had never even known a Coordinator, yet had carried this anger within me for so long, because of what happened to my family because of George Glenn. But once I got to know Contessa, everything changed. I no longer held so many dark emotions for them.
It wasn't long before she admitted that she loved me too. We were married in the year C.E. 47, right after I finished Graduate School. I was so happy, and for the longest time, I forgot about George Glenn and the horrible feelings I had for him. I forgot that my father left us, and that my sister was killed because she had coordinator children. I had moved on.
Six years later, C.E. 53, was the year that everything changed. By then, Contessa and I had a child, a baby girl named Joanna. That was the year that the Zodiac Alliance was formed. Contessa decided that she would join because they fought for the independence of Coordinators, because while I softened my opinions, other naturals didn't. Contessa helped design the propulsion systems that would allow the newly designed PLANT Colonies to safely reach orbit, while I worked alongside several Coordinators in breeding the horticultural plants that would help produce oxygen in the colonies. The Zodiac Alliance had decided that it would be in everyone's best interest if the Coordinators lived in PLANT Colonies, rather than on Earth.
Be that as it may, Naturals remained bitter about the fact that Coordinators even exist. Ignorance, Jealousy, Anger, Prejudice: All negative feelings that fueled the event that followed, and all negative feelings that resurfaced because of that event. That night, while I was walking home with Contessa and Joanna, a woman appeared before us with a gun.
"Get away from her, Nathaniel," she said. I knew the voice right away.
"Mom?" I asked. "What are you doing?"
"I said, get away, Nathaniel! She's a coordinator! You've tainted our family with her blood!"
Contessa picked up Joanna from her carriage. "Miss Uris...Mother, please, your granddaughter..."
"Die, Coordinator Scum!"
"Mother, no!"
The shot was fired, and both my wife, and my daughter, fell to the bullet. My mother had refused to come to our wedding. She never accepted Contessa for who she was.
"Why, mother? I love her..."
"You were under her spell, Nathaniel," she told me. "No Coordinator could love a Natural. You betrayed us! You betrayed the pure-blooded humans!"
"Shut up! I didn't betray anyone! Just because Dad left, just because Samantha died...It's not their fault! It's not the Coordinators' fault!"
"I can't hear you. You are not my son...so I'm alone." She pointed the gun to her own temple. "Goodbye, stranger."
The shot still rings in my ears. It was only after the shot was fired that I realized why this had happened. Contessa was blonde, a prodigy in the field of Aeronautical Engineering, an athlete, and above all else, a Coordinator. When my mother saw her, she saw George Glenn. She saw the man who drove my father away. The man who made his announcement that began so much hatred and jealousy. I had never cried so hard in my life: I had lost everyone I had ever loved.
I ran away from the Zodiac Alliance, to New York City, where I was hoping to find a job and a new life. But nothing was the same. Just as Chris Bell had predicted so many years ago, Coordinators had taken over any job that a man with my credentials could take. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't just the work I had to go through from graduate school, but the loss I faced throughout my whole life. I had gone through hell for them, and how do they repay me? They take away my life, and any chance I have of restoring it! Like a compressed spring, all of my anger and hatred was released.
That year, George Glenn was making a donation to a New York orphanage that had burned down during the conflicts. I paid him a visit, with my mother's gun in hand. I screamed the same words that my mother had screamed the night she took Contessa.
"Die Coordinator Scum!"
It is now the week after I fired that shot. Surprisingly, no one knows it was me who did it. Or, no one cared to acknowledge who did it, because they hated Coordinators as much as I did. The event was the trigger to so much more. In only the last week, there have been reported incidents of battery, bombings, murders of Coordinators all over the world. All because of the bullet that I fired, Naturals believed that Coordinators should all die.
However, the shot had the opposite effect with me. When I shot George Glenn, for a fleeting moment, I shot Contessa. I realized in that moment that I had become my mother. She had also lost so much, and vented her anger in the same fashion. I had even used the same gun, and the same cry.
As I stare at my television screen, I wonder what I have done. Only yesterday, a cult known as Blue Cosmos arose, proclaiming that the man who shot George Glenn was a hero. He began the revolution that would purify the world. I know that is not the case. Purify the world, with these jealous, ignorant Naturals? I see now what my father saw in George Glenn. It was like what I saw in Contessa. They were incredible people, capable of changing the world, making it a better place. Glenn was hoping that eventually, his manual would propel mankind into the deepest reaches of space with now understandings and new sciences. All he wanted was to better mankind.
Unfortunately, the betterment of mankind involves mankind's own negativities. The threat of Coordinators taking careers from Naturals, and the economic benefits that would ultimately raise unemployment, was enough to trigger so much despair and hatred among the populace. And now, because of me, things will become even worse.
I will not stay in this world much longer. I have nothing left to live for. This confession is only so someone can know why I did what I did. It is for nothing else. I know now that no one is at fault. The blame lies on mankind's most dangerous flaw: Anger.
fin