Speaker For The Damned

Speaker For The Damned

The Speaking of Andrew Wiggen

"I'm not playing Russian Roulette the way Graff was."

"Yes you are sir.  The only difference is that he knew he had only one empty chamber, and you don't know how many chambers are empty because he loaded the gun."

~Orson Scott Card; excerpt from ENDERS SHADOW~

                Ender, the great xenocide, the man who destroyed a sentient, ramen species.  Who would have know he got his name from his two year old sister, who couldn't pronounce Andrew?  Born in a time when the Earth's population was overwhelming, and there was a limit of two children per family.  Ender was a Third, and though he was legally born, with the government, he was still a mockery to his family. 

                Ender was born in a time where the threat of the Buggers was very real.  After the First and Second Invasions, the International Fleet (IF) created a series of schools in which to train young, genius children to become commanders of the fleet they were sending against the Bugger home worlds.    The fleet they called the Third Invasion.  The first of these school was the Battle school, found in the Belt.  This school was used to train and test potential candidates for future commanders.  The school screened millions of potential students and only took the smartest and most charismatic, but they also needed a killer instinct.

                Ender's older brother, Peter, the Hegemon who united Earth, was tested for the program but found too violent.  Ender's sister, Valentine, was also tested, but was found too mild.  Ender was born in hope that her would be a mixture of the two.

                Ender was taken up to the Battle school at age five, and between that year, and the time he was ten, more burdens were placed on him, by purposefully isolating him from his peers, and by rigging the war games, around which the students' lives revolve, in the favour of his opponents armies.  In his final battle at the School, he resorted to ending the game before it was supposed to be through, by heading towards the enemy gate, not caring how many of his men were disabled.

                After that, he was transferred to Command School, used to train students of at least sixteen years of age.  The ten-year-old Ender was put through tests by the famous Mazer Rackham, hero of the Second Invasion, though the tests were, in reality, attacks against Bugger Fleets.

                In what Ender thought was his final examination, he was so tired and resentful of the stress his teachers, and Rackham were placing on him, he decided to fail the test by destroying the planet he was supposed to by attacking in the simulation.

                Against impossible odds, Ender had beaten the Bugger at their home world, and had committed genocide, though at the time, he had thought it only a stupid game the adults were forcing him to play.  It wasn't until after he had committed the unspeakable crime, that he was told what he had done.  An eleven-year-old boy had commanded the army in the destruction of a sentient species.  Ender was crushed and never stopped despising himself for it.

                After the annihilation of the Buggers, there was the League War that lasted five days; the cause, who should get control of Ender.  Finally, a treaty was signed agreeing that Ender could never come home to the planet he had saved.  The person who proposed this was believed to be Locke, also known as Peter, Ender's brother, though in reality it was Valentine who convinced her brother to not let Ender come home for fear that Peter would use him.

                With now where to go, Ender decided to become the governor of the first colony, on a Bugger world. His sister accompanied him.

                After several years, The Speaker for the Dead wrote The Hive Queen and The Hegemon, the lives of the Buggers and Peter Wiggen, Hegemon of Earth.  The Speaker for the Dead had a deep understanding on the misunderstanding that passed between Buggers and Human, causing Ender to look like a monster to have killed a ramen race, though he had not intentionally done it.  Shortly after that Ender disappeared.