The Pittsburgh Mayor’s Office.
On the large desk, files awaiting his signature were piled high.
These docunts were personnel appointnts, financial authorizations, and drafts of executive orders.
Leo Wallace sat behind this mountain of paper.
The pen in his hand glided across the paper, leaving one na after another in its wake.
Each stroke of the pen signified a transfer of power, another control node being wired into the city’s nervous system.
"This one is the order to terminate the contracts of the forr municipal consultants."
Ethan Hawke stood before the desk, handing over a new docunt with brisk movents and speaking rapidly.
"And this is the authorization to launch the ’Hundred Days New Deal’ special task force."
Leo signed it and placed the docunt on a separate pile.
"Ethan, wait."
Ethan’s hand was reaching for the next docunt. Hearing Leo’s voice, his arm froze mid-air, and he looked up, puzzled.
"What is it, Mayor?"
Leo didn’t answer, just watched his chief of staff quietly.
Sothing was off about Ethan.
This Harvard Law Doctorate, who had always remained calm, rational, and even a bit scholarly during the campaign, now looked like a boxer who had just been injected with an overdose of adrenaline.
His tie hung loosely around his neck, his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his eyes glead with a fanatical light.
"You seem... excited," Leo said. "Did sothing happen?"
His words were like flipping a switch.
Ethan took a deep breath, as if he had been waiting for this very mont.
He spun around and rushed to the large whiteboard on the other side of the office.
"Leo, you have to see this."
Ethan dragged the whiteboard in front of Leo, picked up a red marker, and heavily circled several areas on it.
"I was up all night, restructuring the city’s entire administrative frawork and budget allocation model."
His voice trembled slightly with excitent.
"Our vision before was too limited. We were just focused on fixing roads and building houses. That’s not enough. Not nearly enough."
Ethan’s arms waved through the air.
"What we hold now is executive power, the power to propose legislation, the power of the purse. We can do more than just make physical repairs. We can carry out a complete social restructuring."
He scrawled a series of terms on the whiteboard: Community Autonomous Entities, Participatory Budgeting, Urban Wealth Fund.
"We can break down the existing community boundaries, reintegrating neighborhoods torn apart by race and class."
"We can rewrite the tax code, make the speculators who profited from rising land values spit that money back out, and establish a permanent fund for all citizens."
"We can push for brand-new curriculum reforms in the education system, so that the children of workers receive the most advanced civic education from a young age."
Ethan spoke faster and faster, flecks of spittle flying in the sunlight.
"Leo, think about it. Here in Pittsburgh, in the heart of the Rust Belt, a place seen as backwards, we can conduct an unprecedented social experint."
"If we succeed, we will redefine modern urban governance."
"This is sothing I never even dared to dream of in Washington. Even in Senator Sanders’s office, we could only talk about these things on paper. But now, I have the chance to make it a reality."
Ethan turned to face Leo, his eyes burning with intensity.
"This isn’t just about changing a city. This is about making history."
Leo looked at Ethan.
He could feel the wave of heat washing over him.
It was a pure, unadulterated idealistic passion.
But within this heatwave, Leo felt a sliver of unease.
The unease stemd from the perspective in Ethan’s words, one so grand it felt distorted.
In Ethan’s description, Pittsburgh was no longer a city of three hundred thousand individuals, but a blank slate to be drawn on at will, a laboratory for testing so profound theory.
’Watch him closely, Leo.’
Roosevelt’s voice echoed in Leo’s mind.
’Your chief of staff... he’s in a dangerous state right now.’
’I call it power-induced vertigo.’
Roosevelt paused, then continued.
’Intellectuals from elite backgrounds like Ethan, when they’re just aides, just advising from the sidelines, they’re usually calm and objective. Because they know they’re just a cog in the machine. They have a healthy respect for reality.’
’But, the mont you put a hamr in their hands, the mont they feel like they’re in control of the machine...’
’...they imdiately run a fever.’
’In their eyes, the whole world becos a nail.’
’They beco infatuated with perfect blueprints, with logically self-consistent theoretical models. They start to think that reality will bend to their will with the simple push of a button.’
’This feverish state is extrely dangerous.’
’It makes a person ignore the resistance of reality, the complexity of human nature, and the coarseness of the old bricks.’
’They’ll try to use their perfect blueprints to forcibly correct a distorted reality.’
’And the result, more often than not, is that either the blueprints shatter, or reality gets smashed to pieces by them.’
Leo watched Ethan, who was still rambling on in front of the whiteboard.
He had to cool down this overheating machine.
"Ethan."
Leo spoke.
He picked up his pen and tapped it lightly on the desktop.
TAP.
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