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Father is the absolute dictator and ruler of the emotionless, tightly suppressed society seen in the movie Equilibrium, a fine, fine work directed by Kurt Wimmer. It would not be terribly hard to mistake him for just another Big Brother knockoff in the dystopian tradition, but that would be giving him too little credit.

His name was Andrew Tuttle. He was a university professor of anthropology, once; he had a close friend who was on the psychiatric staff of a research hospital; he brought his son- his severely bipolar son- to them for whatever help they could provide after the boy's mental state got out of hand. That was his first turning point.

The second came when he was pursuing self-control, objectivity, independent study of the human social animal without involvement; he could see himself so much more clearly in the light reflected from the rest of the human race, and he knew just how dangerous that could be; how much of society is founded on illusion, belief, air...

Then things started to fall apart, the gang violence got out of hand, the city streets were as unsafe as anything you could ever think to see. There were a few fair places but hardly worth mentioning. The religiously affiliated political parties were partly responsible; an overwhleming attitude of 'the world is ending and God is coming' is not much good for repentance sometimes, but instead leads to horrific indulgence. The world, after all, is coming to an end, and God is hardly going to be impressed with repentance under threat of annihilation, is he? Better to indulge now.

The third turning point came when a girl of his son's acquaintance- not his girlfriend, just someone he knew- was brutally raped and too traumatized to talk about it. He thought on this for a while and he went to the psychiatrist and he said, "the stuff you have my son on, the stuff that evens him out- can it help her?" And it did. Took all the pain, took all the guilt, gave her the ability to breathe again- to testify.

That was when he knew, when he could see with absolute certainty that the human animal could not be entirely trusted. That there were people who could be, who might be the foundation of something very great, and that they existed everywhere- but they were so few, and that other people through no fault of their own were too weak or too flawed to do so. But that there was help. Not everyone can be great on their own. But they can be better- and where there is a flaw that can be patched...

He was preparing his thoughts on this matter in book form whe the third world war broke out. What role he played in it, I don't know. I suspect he fought in it, guerilla-style, and was utterly revolted by the end of it. He'd seen too much before and he'd seen too much now, and it had to end. And he could not keep quiet about it because to do so would drive him mad, so he wrote. And wrote. And wrote. He never really thought it would amount to anything because he did not expect to live through it all. When one of the people he was sheltering found his writings and asked him for permission to read, he gave it. And they spoke of it to other people and next thing he knew they wanted to hear, they wanted to learn, they wanted out of the game.

Control alone would be too much to hope for, no one has that much discipline forever. But science could still help, somehow, if the war could only end- and when the powers that were left grew too tired to exert themselves further, he and his spoke up in the silent places between the arming of the missiles. And people who wanted relief, wanted sanity, came forward and begged him to help them.

They called him a lot of things but in the end he said for them to stop using those names and titles. He was a concerned father. That was all...

On such little things are great and terrible names made.

"George Orwell once said that democracy is the worst form of government save for all the others that have been tried. Clearly, we need to try something else. Only once the slate is clean- only once human history has been overcome- can the true post-war reconstruction of human society begin. We will build a new structure, a truly grand and great society, and we shall do so without mistakes."

Father is from the movie Equilibrium, and is the property of Kurt Wimmer, Jan De Bont, Lucas Foster and Dimension Films. He appears here solely for the purpose of role-playing in milliways_bar, from which no profit whatsoever is being made.

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