The Great Leap Backwards
President Herod sat slouched in his titanium chair, his jowls quivering with every frustrated exhale. Once a charismatic populist with fiery speeches and perfectly coiffed hair, he now resembled a wax figure melting under the fluorescent glare of his own ambition.
He slammed a fist against the armrest. “Chad!” he barked. “Where the hell is my Diet Coke? I press the button, Chad. That’s how this works. I press. You bring. Like a civilized nation.”
Chad, his chief advisor and walking ulcer, darted in holding the frosty can like it was a live grenade. “Apologies, Mr. President. There was a delay—”
Herod snatched the can and cracked it open with theatrical disgust. “Delay? I don’t have time for delays. Do I look like a man with decades to waste?”
Chad didn’t answer. That was a test. There were always tests.
Herod leaned back and let out a long sigh, Diet Coke in one hand, raw indignation in the other. “We’ve spent years whittling down the budget with polite cruelty—slashing benefits, raising retirement age, making paperwork labyrinthine. It was fun. Subtle. A dance. But now?”
He tapped his chest dramatically. “This old heart’s ticking, Chad. I’m not getting any younger. I can’t waste my twilight years on bureaucratic foreplay.”
Chad blinked. “So... what are you suggesting?”
“I want to skip the foreplay,” Herod snarled. “I want the whole damn opera. No more slow bleed. We need something fast. Final. A great national culling.”
Chad swallowed. “You mean... kill them?”
Herod rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. I’m talking efficiency. Not cruelty. God, you're so sensitive.”
Behind them, a muted screen cycled through news footage: dissidents being deported to labor camps, children lining up for bread, disabled activists chaining themselves to marble steps.
Chad, after a long silence, offered, “We could propose a ‘Retirement Transition Initiative.’ Euphemism, of course. Package it as voluntary relocation to ‘Legacy Sanctuaries.’ Comfortable, clean, quiet. No one asks questions.”
Herod grinned, sipping his Coke. “Now that’s the Chad I hired. Patriotism in a bottle.”
The next morning, the nation awoke to glowing headlines: “President Herod Announces Bold New Plan to Honor the Elderly and Infirm with Peaceful Legacy Communities.” The footage showed serene fields, chirping birds, sunlit porches. Hope in sepia tone.
They never showed the gates closing.
But the people weren’t fooled forever.
When the walls of the first sanctuary cracked open after a storm, drones captured the silence. No residents. Only rows of nameplates on sterile floors and one phrase etched into the steel of the exit tunnel:
“Efficiency is no excuse for evil.”
The story spread like fire. For the first time in Herod’s reign, the people stopped being afraid to speak.
His days were numbered.
And no one brought him Diet Coke again.
