By JestaAriadne 2004
A/N: Eh, my brother bought a Tom Clancy tape and I got a bit hooked on that... I thought I'd try a bit of a different writing style. (Again.) And make a bit of a point. (Couldn't resist.)
This is Shinra, a little ways into the game. It's, um, well I don't know exactly what to think of it... go read and see. Rating is mostly for a spot of bad language (some from the President himself, no less! Tut tut. Quel horreur!)
Oh yes and I doooo nooooot own FFVII. Or Othello from whence I pinched the quote for the bad title (bah, I was SO uninspired title-wise!)
--
Thursday 21st June. Shinra HQ, floor 65.
Reeve Beaumont, joint minister for Midgar and also - ironically enough - environmental concerns, took the walk to the President's office at one of the tensest leisurely strolls ever strolled. He'd often wondered if this long approach hallway hadn't been specifically designed to intimidate. Under the old President Shinra - how long ago that seemed now - its walls had been lined with family portraits; faces of illustrious ancestors, most probably fabricated, whose oil eyes bore down on the passer-by with obvious malicious intent. The new President had changed all that. Rufus Shinra had no pretences at superstition, and had pronounced his intention to make the HQ above all a place for work. Now, the entire company roll and hierarchy was placed on those walls, constantly updated, and accurate down to the last assistant garbage disposal unit. There was no doubt in Reeve's mind that this arrangement was by far the more frightening. Now it was all too clear where one stood, and how easy it was to fall.
He was a careful man, and he certainly did not relish the thought of his name being struck from that register. He had a serious matter to bring to the president; one that was not about to score him any popularity points, he knew.
And he could just have left all this alone.
He knew that too; how easily the whole thing could have been left to rot under some flunky's desk on floor 27... But Reeve Beaumont was also a man of honour, and now he felt he had to pay his due to a higher obligation - although exactly what that higher obligation was he couldn't have said. Honour was perhaps a strange quality to find at such a high position in the government, but it was balanced in the eyes of his superiors by a fantastically efficient mind - bordering on genius, some said - and the ability to follow a direct order to the letter.
He had nearly reached the end of the corridor. He checked his watch: 11:40. He was precisely five minutes early, which people would say was rather typical of him. He opened the manila folder and thumbed through the pages in an automatic way, trying to figure out just how to explain all this. He sighed. Well, he had the speech down, word-perfect, which was something. He hardly needed the papers, it was all in his head: the knowledge that sometimes felt like such a burden he thought he would collapse under it.
Two minutes.
He knocked, and the heavy old door swung inwards without so much as a creak.
One of the secretaries gestured him into the inner sanctum, where he was immediately faced with...
"Reeve. Great to see you, sit down..."
...President Shinra himself.
Reeve tensed. He'd only been in the office five seconds, and already that voice was grating across his taut nerves like sandpaper. Something about President Rufus Shinra just absolutely rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe it was the way he acted so pally when he screwed your life up; the way he could be on first name terms with everyone and no one dared to be with him; the way he shifted between his disguises; the way his smile never quite reached his eyes. He likes to act so invulnerable, Reeve thought. He was invulnerable, that was the worst thing; somehow everything you said wound up being exactly what he wanted you to say... Reeve wondered how it was possible for a man to be so assuming in such an unassuming way.
He wouldn't like to admit it, but Reeve had very quickly taken a very personal dislike to the President.
The same was true of probably most people who'd met Rufus Shinra, though they'd never work out quite why, but the difference was it actually bothered Reeve Beaumont. An old-fashioned sort at heart, he really wanted to respect authority, wanted to be secure in the knowledge that the powers-that-were were on top and in control, working away for the good of the people. Admittedly, after 5 years working his way up the governmental ranks, he was no longer quite that na•ve.
He sat down.
"So," the President began in that fatally friendly let's-all-have-a-fun-discussion tone, "what's this all about?"
Reeve took a deep breath, and began to Explain Things.
It took him less than five minutes to cover the basics; Mako emissions, surplus production of CO2 compounded by ruthless deforestation, all leading to the increase of the "blanketing" in the atmosphere, and trapping heat around the Planet itself...
He got that far before being interrupted. "May I see these?" The President gestured at the papers.
"Of course, sir." Reeve hurried to arrange the first few pages on the desk in front of him.
The President looked at the papers on his desk for a good few minutes. Reeve noticed that he did appear to be actually reading them.
"So," he said at length, spilling the rest of Reeve's carefully organized papers onto the floor with one shatteringly casual sweep of his arm, "you're saying - the planet's heating up?"
Badly shaken and making a poor effort not to let it show, Reeve replied: "I suppose - basically - yes, you could say that..."
The President appeared to give this some consideration. "Surely that's a good thing? It'll mean the workers will stop jetting off to Costa del Sol the whole time at least!" He grinned.
So he's decided to play it that way, Reeve thought, half wanting to actually point out that none of the workers would be able to jet off anywhere on their pay... Just in case the President just hadn't realised this...
Well, he shouldn't have been surprised at the turn the conversation had taken. Fine. Two could play at that... No. It was no good. Rufus Shinra had been perfecting his game since boyhood and no one was about to beat him at it.
"I'm afraid it's far from good news, Sir," Reeve said, frankly. No point beating about the bush, not anymore. Now he just wanted to be out of this office and away from that voice and that smile as soon as possible. "One main problem is that of water expansion..." He was well within his studied text now, for all the good it would do him.
The President let him continue for half a minute or so, then gave a good impression of a bemused shake of the head. "You'll have to explain it in layman's terms, I'm afraid," he said with a smile. "Not all of us are as adept scientists as you!"
Why? Why am I even here? The President wasn't going to heed a damn word he said. He looked him in the eye and stated categorically: "Sea levels are rising... Sir."
"Thank you," - an ingratiating nod of approval - "now we've got something solid to work with. Will it seriously affect us?"
The sheer stupidity of the question threw him for a second. He stammered: "Well - for an example, within 70 years, I estimate that -"
"70 years? What about now, Reeve?"
Reeve met his gaze once again. He sure as hell wasn't going to be frightened out of this now. "Sir, although there may be no visible effects at present, I would suggest that it is not altogether wise to take such a short term view." Not altogether wise? Damn near insane was more like it. "The Planet is a very fragile thing, and sustainable development must begin now in order to avoid irreversible damage..."
He wondered briefly if he had gone too far. But it didn't matter. He was being waved into silence.
"Reeve, with all due respect -" Rufus Shinra affected a disarmingly embarrassed smile, "I don't know how to say this exactly..." Oh yes you do, you fascist bastard, Reeve thought, alarming himself at his sudden strength of feeling. That smile. "Frankly, this reeks of that bullshit of Avalanche's."
Reeve took a deep breath as quietly as he could manage.
He was not about to commit suicide - probably both professional and literal - by pointing out that the violent tree huggers did have a few good points. He said: "Well, sir -"
"Never mind, Beaumont." The President was drawing the meeting to a close. "Who else knows about this?"
"Sir?" His tone remained terminally polite, but Reeve was suddenly alert for something that he hadn't even imagined..."Who else knows about this - this discovery of yours?"
"I - gathered research from various departments... astronomy principally for the actual... exact... data..." Reeve looked uneasily down at this actual exact data which was currently scattered over the carpeted floor. "And obviously environmental science had a large hand in the physical mapping..."
"But, Reeve," Ð he was treated to an earnest look Ð "are you the only one who's... made the connections, between all of this...?"
He rallied. "I suppose anyone could work it out, providing-"
The President sighed heavily and pointedly.
He gave in. " - Yes, so far, yes sir I am."
"And this dossier is the only one of it's kind...?"
And then Reeve Beaumont saw his very immediate future panning out, unstoppably. Why? He closed his eyes for a second. "Yes. Sir."
"Destroy it."
He stammered helplessly, floundering against the tide of total despair. "But - sir, this -""Reeve," the President said, simply, kindly - because you just didn't have to threaten Reeve Beaumont, everyone knew that, he did what he was told - "That was an order."
Reeve nodded.
"Yes, sir."
He knelt down and started to pick up the sheets of paper, one by one. The President just watched him, smiling.
-
If you want a job done... Reeve sighed heavily.
Well, fine, he would bloody well do it himself. Giving the job to some subordinate meant running the risk of that person being far too clever by half; they'd probably believe that an order to destroy those precious papers would be a secret message not to, and they'd save them, and then they'd get caught, and then they'd be out of a job and - ...
And Reeve didn't want that on his conscience as well.
He chewed his lip in a resurrection of an unprofessional nervous habit as he fed the incinerator with a few years of hard work. That was certainly part of it. It was such a waste of effort, it was almost making him really upset to see all of that work go quite literally up in flames.
The President doesn't understand science, he thought. The President doesn't understand real work. He just orders people to do stuff for him... But could he honestly not understand simple logic? Because it was terribly, terribly simple, each step of the process following sensibly on from the next. The future played out again in Reeve's ordered mind like a row of dominoes... A real domino effect this time. A chain reaction. Unstoppable.
He looked up at the metal cylinder which daily spray-painted a black streak over what was left of the sky, and sighed. More CO2 emissions, ha, and worse. He didn't miss the irony that the very document that was supposed to help prevent the world from getting sicker still was now contributing to that same cause...
Of course, the really serious effects wouldn't arrive for 50 years or so. What did it matter? Even under his plan for reducing Mako emissions, he could have only secured the world an extra 50, maybe. But who cared? It wasn't likely that Junon would sink into the sea during his lifetime.
That wasn't the point.
"Destroy it," the President had said, like a tart chucking away a pregnancy test to pretend it wouldn't happen...
Only... no, Reeve thought, it wasn't like that at all.
"Will it seriously affect us?" he'd asked in his coolest professional tones.
It was worse.
Because it wasn't that the President was pretending about that. Avalanche bullshit nothing... He was very well aware he was killing the Planet, and just didn't give a damn.
Reeve sighed, gave the casement a final rattle as the last of the ash fell through, and then went to wash his hands.
-
--fin---
....Thoughts? Reviews? Make me happy?