He’s weary. Everything in his life, he’s devoted to the cause. Anger, frustration, indignation define him. He can’t move forward unless his goal is accomplished, and his goal can’t be accomplished until the state is crushed.

He’s been married three times, and his children don’t speak to him. His clothes are dirty and don’t fit him properly. His arrest record prevents him from getting most jobs, so he earns money by working for other members of the movement.

At night, he reads theory, texts as thick as phone books. He longs to discuss them with compatriots, but even staunch members of his movement avoid him when he brings up the literature. He longs for the founders of the movement, the long since departed visionaries, to sit at their feet and be instructed.

Violence is always with him. He doesn’t believe in mercy; the old order would never be defeated without force, and they would always return until they were crushed and buried forever. He thought of what he would do to the overseers constantly, how he would show them his strength, his unrelenting purpose.

Speeches are his entertainment. He walks for miles, or hitches rides, just to hear leaders speak. He recites their words back to himself, everything that he can remember. When he talks to himself, he sparks their words, so that he can become like them. If he could tattoo all their speeches over every inch of his skin, he would.

The meetings he attends make him furious. He seethes and twists his hands during the petty bickering and the endless motions and non-actions which are taken. He wants to crush the state, and these functionaries are content to play their little games and hold their tiny offices. They haven’t the vision the leaders have, they haven’t the faith. He wishes he could crush them and their weak spirits and replace them.

In his quiet moments, he remembers his past, how minuscule the State had made him feel. In his military service, then his years in prison, he had learned what it cost to follow orders. He had met the victims of the state, witnessed the injustice, fought for the right, and been slapped down, hard. He bears the scars of what they did to him, and he waits to inflict the same on them, with vengeance. Once he was soft, he was good and pure. Now he had been transformed into something stronger, crueler than anything he could have imagined.

He wants to be a martyr, to strap a weapon to himself and burn up as a glorious sacrifice. He wants war, he wants to see the faces of his enemies and step on them. Yet with each day that passes, he grows older, and he despairs more and more that he will see the new Republic in his lifetime. He thinks he will be forgotten, that history will move on, and that no one will remember his name.

Still he hopes; he breathes fire; his purpose will be accomplished.