How to Raise an Assassin

CHAPTER 21: MY BROTHER FIGHTS FOR CHANGE

My father's voice can silence an already quiet room. It was like the projector displaying the hologram stopped humming. The wind from the lake grazing the window stopped howling. Even the sound of Noa's heart seemed to be whispering in order to avoid giving away its position of defiance.

Then Noa turned around and faced my father. He pointed at the holographic files. There was an edge of hurt in his voice that was coated in a shell of utter dissent. "Tell me you're not a part of this."

My father smiled. He stepped up to the hologram and skimmed to the last page—the credits. Those responsible for compiling the data, organizing the plans, and leading the project.

My father's name was listed in all the categories.

"Your thirst for their blood wasn't quenched, so you went and devised concentration camps for them?" Noa pointed a finger at him. "These people need help not death."

My father looked up at the scythe hanging up on the wall. "Sometimes, a quick and painless death is the best help one can receive."

Noa was shocked into silence. His body was shaking in fury. I never saw him this angry. Not even the time some kid in his class pushed me into the ground because he was angry that Noa was stealing glances away from his girlfriend (I know right, big man to push down a little girl to teach her older brother a lesson). The aggressor was absent from school for a week nursing two broken arms after that.

"In the Bible," my father spoke while pulling the very book off his bookshelf. "Jesus's disciples got angry when a woman used expensive perfume to wash Jesus's head. They argued that such perfume could've been sold for a high price and the money could've been donated to the poor."

My father shook the book in front of Noa showing him the passage from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 26. "But Jesus corrected their mistake. He explained to his rather liberal disciples that 'the poor you'll always have with you, but you will not always have me.'"

My father shut the book with one hand but held it out like a plate on a platter. "What the disciples viewed as waste and extravagance was rather different from what Jesus saw. Because, no matter how many people fail to see it, you can give and give money to the poor, and they'll keep on taking and taking. And the moment they get it in their head that they can survive by doing absolutely nothing but begging for other people's hard-earn rewards, they are doomed into the life of poverty."

My father returned to the bookshelf, where he kept the Bible smacked in the middle of the bookcase. "And poverty is a disease that no amount of money can cure."

Noa stammered as he tried to look for the right words to say. He fell upon disbelief. "I can't believe how low you've sunk."

My father returned to the holographic table opposite from Noa. "You'll soon see how your pitiful take on the poor is in the minority. When the people of Chicago start seeing less homeless people on the streets or on the L, they will be relieved. In fact, they won't even notice they're gone."

"No..." Noa said, a bit shaken. It seemed like he was starting to realize how our father was right. Who will notice the lonely vagabond disappear? Who will file a missing person's report when no one even knows his or her name?

"Then once the homeless are gone, the destitute will follow. The ones in the ghettos and projects. Entire families will be wiped and still, no one will miss them. Their employers will hire someone else. Their teachers will think they were the results of another negative statistic. Their politicians will turn a blind eye because sweeping up the grime from the streets is something that gets you elected over and over again...no matter how dirty one must get."