anders selberg | d5 | fin
Jun 28, 2017 1:06:32 GMT -5
Post by Lyn𝛿is on Jun 28, 2017 1:06:32 GMT -5
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anders selberg
Anders Selberg was not a man many would describe as careless.
Running a business had its risks, of course. But those risks were calculated; the chance of a recession, the growth of a new sector, the shifting population demographics that determined supply and demand. The years had taught him how to predict a market's ups and downs and manage his own resources accordingly.
His run for Mayor had been calculated, too. No pain, no gain, he told himself as he woke up even earlier than usual, so he could spend time campaigning even before he headed to work. The Mayor position, after all, was just a different market to predict, a market that depended on selling a platform of policies and promises instead of a product. Just like with the industrial sector, success depended on convincing others of his strengths and disparaging his competitors.
And it had all gone well, at first. After his speech, he had left the stage to cheers and applause from the audience; a young mother held her baby out to him, and he bounced the infant against his arm as cameras flashed and the child goo'd and gaa'd in wonder.
(Not that letting a kid grab fistfuls of his hair correlated to success in running a district, where one had to be firm and make hard choices, but hey, the public ate those sort of pictures up. The kid was well-behaved, too - Ripred knows his own children were a lot more temperamental when it came to such large crowds.)
The media was the key here, after all. With a little bit of persuasion, they had published the choicest details of his debate with Castle Ruined. It hadn't been difficult for them to portray her as inexperienced and him as the Ripred-fearing, solid, successful man that the district needed. He had watched the papers like a hawk those few days, feeling a thrill of affirmation every time a review of his speech, his platform, or his debate popped up in the headlines.
Reflecting back, he wonders if maybe this is where he began to go wrong. The media had predicted that he would win, and he began to believe it even as he reminded himself he must not get overconfident.
Confidence was inspiring, of course; too little was just as bad as too much. And it did not mean a lack of cautiousness, for he knew the stories of mayors who had to resign from office after whistle-blowers implicated them in black markets and district scandals. He would not let down his guard in that way.
So maybe he was a little jealous when the art critic gave the other candidates an award for their campaign posters. Maybe he worried a little bit about whether his simplistic design was not eye-catching enough. But those were minor issues, and so far the fame he had gained from campaigning had been rather good for business relations.
Then, on a day so normal it would have otherwise barely been a footnote in the election, he discovered a woman's dead body, a puddle of blood, his son missing, and everything had all gone to hell.
Well, he'd gotten his wish. There had been no scandals he was implicated in, for he was too busy keeping the media away from his daughter and wife with a few well-placed responses.
"I refuse to negotiate with terrorists," he'd told them, face expressionless, for he could not be seen as giving in in front of all those cameras. The perpetrators would undoubtedly be watching and take any sign of weakness as a crack to further exploit, and he imagined them laughing at such naive behavior before hacking into the district's screens to execute his son live on television.
(Even if he quietly slipped to the Justice Building and pleaded with the investigative Peacekeepers to analyze the body, the paint, the anything. Even if he ran the political message painted on the wall over and over through his mind and did some looking through the back alleys on his own. Even if, had there been a simple ransom note, he would have gladly handed over all $1,000 of campaign funds he'd raised, and more besides, for his child's safe return.)
Anders Selberg was not a careless man, but still, he had miscalculated.
In business dealings, treachery would often be part and parcel of operations. Bitter rivals would undercut each other to eliminate the competition, or would dig up dirt on them to discredit them and sow doubt in customers' minds. As much as some naive idealists may complain, they were first and foremost designed to make a profit, and not even a CEO was completely immune to the whims of investors and shareholders.
When deals went sour, they led to layoffs, to ruined careers, to truckloads of wasted product. But never kidnapping.
Playing politics means putting much more than his own life at stake. And as much as he hates admitting failure, it slowly sinks in that he was in over his head.
He barely registers Io Wie's victory. Stumbles through his concession speech, suspicious of her, suspicious of Rose Valfierno, suspicious of the ex-Peacekeeper woman with a silver tongue. Suspicious a little bit, even, of Castle Ruined, even if she seems like the most straightforward out of all the candidates. Questions if, perhaps, one of the other candidates had pulled such a ploy trying to make him drop out of the race.
A part of his mind idly tells him that he should analyze the election to see where he fell short. If he had been too tough in his speeches, if he had tried to appeal to the wrong demographic, if he had underestimated the damn campaign posters' crucial role in this year's election. But he's too tired, and it hurts to recall the weeks leading up to the election, weeks when he had been so convinced he was doing the right thing.
Perhaps his grief does not matter, in the long run. After all, isn't he the one who always believed that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
Yet one question still haunts him, burning over and over in his mind -
Was it worth it?
Running a business had its risks, of course. But those risks were calculated; the chance of a recession, the growth of a new sector, the shifting population demographics that determined supply and demand. The years had taught him how to predict a market's ups and downs and manage his own resources accordingly.
His run for Mayor had been calculated, too. No pain, no gain, he told himself as he woke up even earlier than usual, so he could spend time campaigning even before he headed to work. The Mayor position, after all, was just a different market to predict, a market that depended on selling a platform of policies and promises instead of a product. Just like with the industrial sector, success depended on convincing others of his strengths and disparaging his competitors.
And it had all gone well, at first. After his speech, he had left the stage to cheers and applause from the audience; a young mother held her baby out to him, and he bounced the infant against his arm as cameras flashed and the child goo'd and gaa'd in wonder.
(Not that letting a kid grab fistfuls of his hair correlated to success in running a district, where one had to be firm and make hard choices, but hey, the public ate those sort of pictures up. The kid was well-behaved, too - Ripred knows his own children were a lot more temperamental when it came to such large crowds.)
The media was the key here, after all. With a little bit of persuasion, they had published the choicest details of his debate with Castle Ruined. It hadn't been difficult for them to portray her as inexperienced and him as the Ripred-fearing, solid, successful man that the district needed. He had watched the papers like a hawk those few days, feeling a thrill of affirmation every time a review of his speech, his platform, or his debate popped up in the headlines.
Reflecting back, he wonders if maybe this is where he began to go wrong. The media had predicted that he would win, and he began to believe it even as he reminded himself he must not get overconfident.
Confidence was inspiring, of course; too little was just as bad as too much. And it did not mean a lack of cautiousness, for he knew the stories of mayors who had to resign from office after whistle-blowers implicated them in black markets and district scandals. He would not let down his guard in that way.
So maybe he was a little jealous when the art critic gave the other candidates an award for their campaign posters. Maybe he worried a little bit about whether his simplistic design was not eye-catching enough. But those were minor issues, and so far the fame he had gained from campaigning had been rather good for business relations.
Then, on a day so normal it would have otherwise barely been a footnote in the election, he discovered a woman's dead body, a puddle of blood, his son missing, and everything had all gone to hell.
Well, he'd gotten his wish. There had been no scandals he was implicated in, for he was too busy keeping the media away from his daughter and wife with a few well-placed responses.
"I refuse to negotiate with terrorists," he'd told them, face expressionless, for he could not be seen as giving in in front of all those cameras. The perpetrators would undoubtedly be watching and take any sign of weakness as a crack to further exploit, and he imagined them laughing at such naive behavior before hacking into the district's screens to execute his son live on television.
(Even if he quietly slipped to the Justice Building and pleaded with the investigative Peacekeepers to analyze the body, the paint, the anything. Even if he ran the political message painted on the wall over and over through his mind and did some looking through the back alleys on his own. Even if, had there been a simple ransom note, he would have gladly handed over all $1,000 of campaign funds he'd raised, and more besides, for his child's safe return.)
Anders Selberg was not a careless man, but still, he had miscalculated.
In business dealings, treachery would often be part and parcel of operations. Bitter rivals would undercut each other to eliminate the competition, or would dig up dirt on them to discredit them and sow doubt in customers' minds. As much as some naive idealists may complain, they were first and foremost designed to make a profit, and not even a CEO was completely immune to the whims of investors and shareholders.
When deals went sour, they led to layoffs, to ruined careers, to truckloads of wasted product. But never kidnapping.
Playing politics means putting much more than his own life at stake. And as much as he hates admitting failure, it slowly sinks in that he was in over his head.
He barely registers Io Wie's victory. Stumbles through his concession speech, suspicious of her, suspicious of Rose Valfierno, suspicious of the ex-Peacekeeper woman with a silver tongue. Suspicious a little bit, even, of Castle Ruined, even if she seems like the most straightforward out of all the candidates. Questions if, perhaps, one of the other candidates had pulled such a ploy trying to make him drop out of the race.
A part of his mind idly tells him that he should analyze the election to see where he fell short. If he had been too tough in his speeches, if he had tried to appeal to the wrong demographic, if he had underestimated the damn campaign posters' crucial role in this year's election. But he's too tired, and it hurts to recall the weeks leading up to the election, weeks when he had been so convinced he was doing the right thing.
Perhaps his grief does not matter, in the long run. After all, isn't he the one who always believed that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
Yet one question still haunts him, burning over and over in his mind -
Was it worth it?
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