leading through darkness

He sat behind the large desk in the office. The office was decorated to look like the photographs of the most powerful nation's president and yet somehow, despite their best efforts it didn't manage to convey the same sense of power. Not for the first time he wondered if it was the man behind the desk who should be faulted for that. Sighing loudly he looked opened the folder on his desk again.

Clipped together were articles and photographs from the nuclear meltdown, translated into his language of course, showing the ravaged land around the plant, the mutilated bodies. At least those bodies that remained. Most everything else was just wiped out.

Beneath that was the petition, signed by his countrymen, circulated so quickly that it had arrived on his desk less than twenty-four hours after the destruction. Politics had never moved so fast before. He'd been elected on a landslide because the country was so stable, they just needed a peacekeeper to maintain their stability, and now he'd been faced with more policy change than any other democratic leader the country had seen.

The last item in the folder was the official documentation that would convert the country's energy usage to completely green resources. And not just green resources that lowered energy costs or saved a few trees. No, this was life changing policy for the country's constituents. He hadn't slept the night before, hearing that about the policy that was being moved through quickly and that it would wind up on his desk by the midday. Now, the sun was setting low in the windows behind him, and he'd read the contents of the folder hundreds of time. They were expecting him to make a decision by now.

That wasn't accurate, they weren't expecting him to make a decision, they were expecting him to make their decision. Finally, he flipped to the last page, slowly signing his name across the line with "President" underneath it.

Closing the folder he undid his tie, pulling it off and dropping it on the desk. His name would go down in history books, there was no doubt about that. The question though, would be whether it was for being the leader who led the nation into the new world or the leader who sent them to their doom.