Grief. How would someone describe it? The past? An ideal render of the aforementioned? It is quite useless to sit and ponder when humans have a rat race to run. Waking up, clammy legs land on their filthy carpets, millions of microorganisms caressing what they think is the pillar of physical diurnal life. In order to make a human grief, one must progressively foster a lacuna in the backbone, slowly creating an unconscious dependency. And by the time they realize their self agency is truant, like a pupil losing all its wisdom, then the typhoon of tears will catalyse a millenary anguish. That renders the following query: Is grief the lack of agency? Dead bodies cannot move can they? A mourner can, but their souls are stuck in a cavernous hole of potency and tar. They repudiate the future and obsess over the past. Like any citizen of the Cerulean Republic.
It all started forty years ago. Two thousand thirty. Bartholomew Nantes hated the United States of America. Polarization had reached an all time high and the president had just finished his second term. To the unsurprised majority, he planned on usurping a third term, which was soon to be an archaic adjective since he managed to amend the constitution. Two thirds of congress. Forty of the fifty states. Originally only thirty six but that is nothing an intelligence agency cannot fix. Incentives aren't exclusive to the original victim though, thus one visit to any member of the constitutional convention was sufficient to set off a sequence, chain reaction if one must.
Nantes felt indignation. The vessel that carried his blood boiled and created enough pressure that would have made them burst, red plasma spurting through his somatic cells. But he wasn't a man without a plan, his obsessive nature would not have allowed him to be. His sleeves were kilometric, an ace fitting into every inch of the inseam. Enter: New Cerulean Hexagram. Conceived in twenty sixteen. Six sides, six leaders, Nantes being the center which served as base for the points. Saturn was his right hand man, Moon was his left. The latter provided all necessary funding for its conception. Saturn ideated a new draft, a new beginning for a deteriorating superpower. His ideological acuity exempted him of any economic contribution. Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter served as commandants, which provided avant-garde military conditioning for an evergrowing militia, after gaining massive momentum as novel methods of communication emerged. What started as one thousand, became ten thousand, one hundred thousand, and by January tenth, twenty thirty one, it had become five million voluntary combatants, with ranks below the main commanders. All lined up outside the capitol.
"We are like mice to them! Their deception has to come to an end. Today marks the end of all the depravity and madness. I will be blunt and extremely frank. Blood will be shed. Executions will be carried out. The New Cerulean Republic of Sovereign Unification will be what restores order to what was once the leading example of prosperity. We have given states too much power for far too long. That ends. One central head is necessary for homogenous thinking. For the new empire to emerge from the ashes of treason. The rest of North America, South, and even Europe will not hide from the amount of hell we will unleash. And to the president who is probably scared shitless: your head will be served to my council on a luster platter, and we will feast on the empty calories found in your cranium. Burn it down! Long live the Cerulean Republic!"
The address was short but to the point. Many platoons belonging to the Guard were deployed, but the quantity overcame the quality. That day, remembered as Dawning Retribution, in documents, or Battle of the Obelisk colloquially, drained America of her blood, along with half an army and ten million citizens. People recount seeing heads encrusted along the fence of a once white house, eyes of lieutenants and sergeants alike, obviating their ranks and cementing an everlasting camaraderie. Casings became as common as pebbles, with gunpowder becoming a permanent but grotesque perfume. A new Cerulean monster was deemed ruler, merely five days after the worst had happened. With the military falling short, she took a fatal blow and subsequently sunk into some metaphorical mat of longevous perdition.
Nantes saved what he considered most savory for last. He had frequent fantasies of this idea and it was finally coming to fruition. Cerulean militants parted, leaving a long stretch as to not incur more losses. Promptly, they toppled the Obelisk, causing it to collapse. Nantes grabbed the top extremity, which gravity had scaled by method of physics for him, punched a haggard president in bondage, and erotically ran his extemporary dagger along the tracheal region, spurts of treacherous substance spurting from the wound. Fate was then solemn. The United States had taken her last breath.
What followed was an altruistic representation of caustic irony. Extreme frankness and cruel consequences. The Constitution was dissolved January sixteenth. By January thirty first, all one hundred senators and four hundred thirty five members of the House were executed. They were given two options: suicide or a machete blow to their temporomandibular joint, coined the Ventriloquist. By April, every public opponent to Cerulean rule was assassinated. All of the events that transpired were reported by Nantes.
"Today, May first twenty thirty one, we celebrate death. Ceruleans have successfully eliminated all the filth that plagued governmental institutions before the restoration of morality. We do not foster delusion, we proceed with actuality. Anything that transpires under what I deem the epitome of justice and distribution, will be proudly announced, exemplifying the model of authority every state worldwide should adopt. Believe it or not, we are for the people. However, that must be reciprocated. Utter a single syllable, threatening to destroy our monument, the weight of one thousand dolmens will rain upon you. Long live the Hexagram!
A deluge of bullets, infecting the pulchritudinous summer clouds, resonated across the former capital. By the middle third of September, a once prosperous superpower was unrecognizable.