Theocrat by Hayden Hart

Author:Hayden Hart [Hart, Hayden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hypatia Press
Published: 2023-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

I leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. It was over. Regardless of how the trial ended, I would be banished to oblivion. Years of labor would easily kill me if a firing squad didn’t. If Frank knew about the recordings, then Eleanor must have been telling the truth. I stared up at the ceiling, hoping that, as the last minutes of solitude I would experience in the world of the living passed, I would be sprung from my captors via divine intervention. I wondered what Vexrus thought of me; after all, I had only wanted to ensure that my friend’s rights were respected. Had the State not forced my hand, Ashley would still be alive. If he had any concern for me, he chose not to make it known. I heard a knock at the conference room door followed by an order to come outside. My eyes darted around the room searching for a weapon miraculously placed there for me or some sign of divine mercy, but the door swinging open interrupted me. A pair of guards marched towards me as I sat quivering on the floor.

“It’s time to go, Mr. Wilson,” one of them said, and pulled me to my feet.

I nodded and stared at the floor as they marched me to the courtroom. Everyone in the spectator seats glared at me, as did the jury. Eleanor sat in the front row just behind the prosecution with a smug grin stretched across her face. The State determined and carried out Vexrus’ will, and every institution of the State as well as its citizens despised me. In the elaborate wooden carvings on one of the walls, I saw our nation’s flag wrapped around the Earth. Our nation was chosen by god, exalted over all others, but it was not Vexrus lording over all creation in this image; it was Visryan. A woman wearing a State media editor uniform clutched a copy of The Book of Vexrus as I passed. If high-level State employees, people who were supposedly ordained by god himself, despised me, that must have meant that god himself despised me as well.

In terms of functionality, god and the State were one in the same. I had even been a cog in the machine that made it so. If the State hated me, god hated me, and no amount of screaming, crying, or begging on the courtroom floor would change that. Citizens for whom the State and god had become separate were labeled heretics and eliminated, and Vexrus did nothing to stop it. Visryan often pointed to His lack of intervention as evidence that god was complicit in whatever it did. If the god I had been raised to worship existed, he wanted me to suffer. I was already damned, and perhaps because of that, I decided to bet on Reggie. I had been pushed into a corner from which there was no reasonable escape. My highest chance of survival was to hope for the unreasonable: that Vexrus did not exist.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.