How to Raise an Assassin

CHAPTER 41: SOWING THE SEEDS OF SUCCESS

"This is what your brother saw," my father said as he showed me the gritty operations of the Cosecha Meadows: the flooding of lungs with poisonous gas, the decomposition of the bodies, the disposal of the dead. "He saw what we did to the weak. He did not see what we did with the fallen."

He opened up a file of candidates with before and after photos. Labeled under the title, "The Once Fallen," it showed an image of the person on the left in the desperate state they were in before the Sower Foundation reached out to help them. Below their names was the title, "Fallen."

On the right, it showed what a year or two of job training, education, rehab, and hard work could result in. Below their names was the title of their new place in life. Police academy, firefighter, marine, teacher, chef, sanitation worker, manager, university student...

"70% of people graduated from the program and rose from pariahs to contributing citizens. They weren't the weak, they were the fallen. They simply needed a hand to lift them up." My father spoke with such calmness for having caught me snooping around his office at night. I half expected him to be furious.

"The other 30%, well they preferred to skip the job training sessions, the rehab appointments, the therapy sessions, the educational classes they indicated interest in. They gladly accepted the food allowances, the free housing, and the safe environment. However, they continued to stay weak. They relapsed into violence, drugs, laziness."

My father showed another file on screen: The Weak. Names and faces of individuals popped up with X's across their faces. "They were given a chance to rise up, but they failed even with a helping hand. They were deemed a hindrance to society. They couldn't contribute, they could only leech like a parasite."

He showed the next images of the trucks dumping bodies into a landfill of ash. "So naturally, we got rid of the parasite feeding on the host."

Images spread across the table, filled with a gas that had a unique chemical composition that would've made mass murderers shed a tear of joy. Little chemical models floated up in the air. My father swiped to the next image that showed a liquid composition with bullet notes fading in like it was being typed on the screen. Enhanced decomposition; erasure of cause of death; renders autopsies nugatory; environmentally friendly; repurposed ash can act as a fertilizer.

I almost vomited on that last point. My mind was all over the place. My father was helping a majority of the poor he took into his program, but at the moral expense of killing those who failed in order to promote a 100% success rate of those released back into society.

"I created the Sower Foundation as a means to tackle the challenge of eliminating poverty once and for all. Once it is eliminated, the hard-working upper classes who have accumulated their own stores of wealth, can be left alone to do as we please with it. We won't have governments clamoring for our cash and redistributing it to the parasites. I will accomplish what the system never could. As an assassin, I will bear the moral ambiguity to save our capitalistic society."

There was a slight pause as we both stared at the hologram. Then I asked. "Where's the contracts?" I clenched my fists. "Where's the contracts put on these dead people? Aren't we assassins? We kill for hire. We don't kill to enact social change."

"Ah, I guess I wasn't clear," my father said, flipping to the back of the virtual file. The page showed the symbol of the Sower Foundation, which was a farmer helping a person water a plant. Beneath this was a list of names, many of whom I recognized as ones who paid for contracts in the past.

"You see Za-Za, many have supported this program financially. You can consider their donations as contacts."

I stuttered reading through the names on the list. "Why do you care so much? You have so much money. Does it matter if you lose a bit?"