Rufus Richards | Capitol | DONE

He’d just grown bored of everything that earth had to offer.

Listen to him explain it, and Rufus would make it sound like he’d built the capitol up all by himself. Never mind the platinum and tungsten mines his parents had owned. That inheritance was the first of many bootstraps he’d have to pull up in order to get where he was going.

He’d been the one smart enough to bet that tess-coin would bubble up, and even better when he’d dumped his whale’s share at the strategic moment to make even more ridiculous amounts of money. Not that he hadn’t heard from his friends that there’d be a sell-off and the peak had been coming. They all looked out for one another, just as they’d been taught. It was their duty to the world to make sure there hadn’t been any drastic shifts in wealth from generation to generation.

Did some poor sap lose his life savings now and again? Did they strike like vultures on a carcass when they saw an opportunity to blow up their own net worth? Even if it meant destroying something that gave other joy or perhaps reasonable food and shelter, at the end of the day, their worth was what kept the country running. They created and innovated – investigate in new technologies and provided the necessary capital so that there were plenty of jobs that even districters could hold.

But all of that was easy, and easier still when the number of zeroes to his net worth kept growing. It almost took the fun out of it to know that no matter how many bets didn’t pay of, he’d still have a penthouse here, a chateau there. He’d eaten at all the finest restaurants in the capitol, he’d seen he array of images from satellites hovering overhead – the secret other countries and their pathetic excuses for military might, how they could be easily crushed with the flick of a switch – secrets that even most government officials didn’t have access to.

Rufus provided the metals and the money, the labor and the support, the quit witted rejoinders in classified briefings, the free flow of booze and access to afters, navigated up and down the world because it was his, all of it his, he just needed to say the words and he would get exactly what he wanted. Even if someone said no, he could invariably get to yes by buying the answer. Fuck the world, fuck the system, fuck anyone who thought they could ever outbid him, outplay him, or outlast him.

They were all fools, and dreadfully boring. Their obsession with death was understandable – this was all they had, and so it would be terrifying to lose it. But it was precisely because they had nothing to lose, nothing to stay that kept them in some infinite loop. Drinking and eating and fucking and killing and dying, until at last, the next generation rose, and the cycle all started again.

What a waste. What a bore.

Forty-plus years and he’d already swam deep across the hedonistic pool of the capitol, down toward the bottom of the deep end that the mention of some great new thing rarely turned his head. Saturn City and all its delights couldn’t compete with the unfettered money he practically printed, the doors opened to a handsome man with the most valuable thing of all – access.

Watching the poor and desperate compete for a miniscule prize on television or certain death hardly held a candle to the times he’d flown over the open ocean piloting a helicopter, shooting at men swimming toward the shore, seeing how accurate he could get. The rush of being able to know the unknowable, see the unseen – the trove of old, undead locations scattered across panem that he’d restored. An amusement park that collected dust with mouses and ducks and frozen in time. Running like new and only available to those he showed.

Perhaps the only thing that ever brought any real pleasure was when he could watch someone squirm asking for his power and his assistance. They’d kiss the ring, all right – or feign that he was beneath them, new money, a sociopath – he’d get them all in the end. That’s how the world worked. Everyone needed something, and when he’d grown richer than god, it meant he needed hardly anyone at all.

What about politics?

Well – he’d thought about a seat on the council but that meant sharing, something Rufus was loathe to do. They’d all been back biters, nothings, has-beens who somehow had managed to fill the void that Snow had left behind. But what had they truly done, other than squabble and let out a statement here or there about the blessed economy that people like Rufus were building them?

And entering politics meant he would have to be held accountable to someone. They’d start investigating, they’d audit and he’d have to testify as though they’d ever understand what sorts of projects Excelsior was really working on.

Which led to his true love –

No, not his on again, off again girlfriend. She gets these two sentences in his biography out of a sense of obligation, but their length is the determinate amount of love he feels for her.

Excelsior was founded after he’d shotgunned a beer and ripped a bong hit with some of his fellow tech entrepreneurs at his fortieth birthday bash. (It had been dark days themed, complete with the slaughter and surrender of districters that had been rounded up and dressed as rebels. The promise had been if they managed to get to the edge of the battlefield re-enactment they’d be freed. Which was true, except no one made it past the artillery they’d placed).

Space.

He’d sent time and again studying the stars, the solar system and galaxy but had not contemplated much more than the progress Panem made sending satellites up to the skies. Why was it so hard to build a rocket to send people out into space? Couldn’t they get out of this shit hole with enough effort? What untamed worlds lay beyond their reach, ready to be cultivated and explored?

They’d build their own satellites to head into space, first. And then their own rockets. And beyond that, they’d start off to the stars until they’d build their own world out beyond the stretches of earth – a floating hotel, a colony on the moon, a city on mars – he got an erection just thinking about all the untapped potential.

The little matter of the government was quickly resolved as it always was: his money would overwhelm whoever stood in his way, and following that, he’d partner with them on weapons projects that would protect them for years to come. Hadn’t they wanted to develop a weapons array that would demolish any threat from District Thirteen? (And the shocked looks on their faces as though they couldn’t contemplate him knowing of its existence).

Excelsior would scream toward the skies and rain down hellfire on anyone that stood in its way.

And at its helm, its captain and man of the hour? One Rufus Richards.

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