Project Purple

22 - The Governor

"I don't think we've found our commercial niche yet."

The Governor, Wallace O'Keefe, lit his pipe. It was nearing the end of summer, yet Wallace, like an acrobat pondering how to juggle that one more ball in the air, was always ready to consider another project for his colony.

"What else can we do to make this a viable venture in the year 1613?"

The Preacher took his hat off, wiped the sweat away, and gave Wallace a doleful look, "Most of the colonies failed."

The Buckskinner sneered. "Yeah, but a settler just went back on a ship. Our situation seems a little different, don't you think?"

It was a sarcastic comment that held a good deal of significance, especially since Wallace considered the Buckskinner one of the most capable men in the colony.

"I don't remember ever reading about the Yakutsk colony," Woody the Woodcutter quipped, stroking his long, wandering beard, "Was that, like, the fourteenth settlement?"

The consensus of the fourteen colonials seemed to be they had been drugged up on that casino stage back in May, and then transplanted to the Siberian tundra to conduct some mysterious experiment that many had now lost faith in.

Not Wallace-The Governor remained steadfast of the project's legitimacy.

All those months of painstaking, elaborate preparations by their sponsors, and then the long and careful recruitment of the right mixture of academicians and skilled labor, to then be followed by several months of back-breaking work, and mud, and stink, and self-denial, all for what? - Some despicable, thrill-seeking lunatics? - No! Wallace refused to go down that line of thought.

What they were doing was important-They were teaching the world the glorious roots of American democracy. This was a classroom. This was a lesson-painful at times, but far more enlightening than anything as base as some mere titillation.

Of that he would not be swayed.

But at night, now alone in his bed, and with his servant, the Badger, asleep on the floor of the hut, Wallace opened the door to more dispiriting thoughts.

"We wanted to return to a simpler, purer point of our national history," he uttered into his diary cam, "But we're weak and tired-emotionally, mentally ... I think we may all be finding that we're not as pure as we thought we were."

He reached to turn off the little camera, but then the gadget replied to him:

"Purity's got nothing to do with it, Governor."

Wallace never cared for these sudden, private encounters with their team leader-which felt more like cross-examinations-always leading to demands for harsher punishments, the last thing his people needed.

"We've found a few more, uh, inconsistencies in your dissertation, my boy!"

Again, they were attacking his research! "I resent these insinuations of plagiarism!"

In the small viewer, team leader Manny Barbieri shook his head, as if scolding a child, "This is more than just sloppiness, Governor, and you know it."

Wallace drew a breath and tried to calm himself; getting upset with these people was counter-productive, he knew that. But it was just so insane! - They were hostaging his career, threatening to make real trouble for him in the department if he didn't punish the other colonists-by beating up on them for their silly infractions.