My Name Is Feilan Roosevelt?

The corridors of Columbia University's Roosevelt Institute were always too quiet.

Feilan carried the stack of files awaiting archival, his gaze passing over the famous black-and-white photograph on the wall.

It was January 6, 1941, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered the Four Freedoms Speech before Congress.

"Freedom of speech; freedom of worship; freedom from want; freedom from fear."

Feilan silently recited the four maxims engraved at the institute's entrance.

More than twenty years ago, when he had just earned his doctorate, those words had been a beacon lighting his path ahead.

Now, they felt more like antiques in a museum—exquisite and lofty, yet utterly out of place with the streets of New York outside the window.

He pushed open the heavy oak door to his office and set the files on his desk.

The automatically recommended headlines on his computer screen stabbed at his eyes once more.

<Amazon warehouse worker dies suddenly after ten consecutive hours on the job; algorithm records no break time...>

<Silicon Valley layoffs continue; engineers over forty face "technical elimination," ending up on the streets...>

<At a Philadelphia relief station, homeless people brawl over a piece of bread...>

Feilan closed the page and rubbed his brow.

He was fifty-two this year and had worked at the institute for twenty years.

From assistant professor to full professor, then to his current position as director of policy research.

He should have felt proud, yet all he felt now was an ever-growing sense of helplessness.

Roosevelt—the man he had studied his entire life.

He could nearly recite the scripts of every Fireside Chat, reconstruct the debates behind every piece of New Deal legislation, and describe the frustration and resolve in Roosevelt's eyes in 1937, when he tried to pack the Supreme Court with justices.

But what use was any of it now?

Roosevelt's final years had been lonely.

Just as in April 1945 at Warm Springs, Georgia, when his gaunt face had barely managed a bitter smile for the camera.

Perhaps even then, he had foreseen that after his death, the New Deal system he had built with his own hands would crumble beneath the capitalists' counterattack.

Those interest groups he had suppressed would return, dismantling step by step the social security system he had painstakingly established, destroying the fairness and justice he had championed, and once again shrouding the entire United States beneath the shadow of capital.

What a pity...

If he could meet Roosevelt in person, Feilan would surely seize the man's hand and shout, "Master Roosevelt, your iron fist against the capitalists wasn't fierce enough—nowhere near ruthless enough!"

"Knock, knock, knock..."

The knocking interrupted Feilan's thoughts.

"Come in."

Mary, one of the institute's graduate students, entered. Her brown eyes were filled with urgency. "Professor Feilan, we found Donnie!"

"Where is he?"

"In Harlem, near 128th Street."

The expression on Feilan's face froze instantly.

He knew all too well what kind of place that neighborhood was.

It was the most chaotic and filthy district in the city.

Large numbers of homeless people, thieves, and drug dealers lingered there year-round. Violent incidents were frequent, public safety was terrible, and even the police normally avoided setting foot there without good reason.

It was hard to imagine that Donnie—a bright, diligent, mild-mannered young man who, after studying at the institute every day, still spent several hours washing dishes at a restaurant to help support his Household—could have ended up in a place like that.

"What happened?"

"Donnie... he may have been The Kill."

The term sent a sharp pain through Feilan's heart.

The Kill was a new term that had spread virally across social media over the past few months.

It described a hidden social mechanism.

For example, an unexpected medical bill, a sudden layoff, or a lease expiring and the rent doubling.

Such sudden events could topple a lower-class Household's already fragile financial balance like a row of dominoes, dragging them into a spiral of debt, eviction, and ruined credit until they ultimately "disappeared" from society.

Some academics also called it "Social Darwinism 2.0"—systematic elimination enhanced by algorithms.

As a professor at the Roosevelt Institute, Feilan knew better than anyone that this so-called Kill Line mechanism was no accidental social phenomenon. It was an elimination system deliberately created for ordinary people at the bottom by capitalists and the incompetent, selfish bureaucrats in government.

In their eyes, the United States needed only elites, only people who could generate profits for them. The ordinary people at the bottom, those trapped in hardship and unable to resist, were nothing but excess trash, fit only to be discarded.

"Take me there."

The Chevrolet sedan drove out of the Columbia University campus, passed through Morningside Heights, and entered Harlem.

Red light.

Feilan stared at a pawnshop across the intersection. A neon sign reading "Instant Cash" hung in its window.

He remembered what Roosevelt had said during his 1936 reelection campaign: "These economic royalists always complain that we are trying to overthrow the institutions of the United States, but what they truly fear is that we are trying to deprive them of their power!"

Power.

The insatiable power of greedy capital.

A sharp screech of brakes came from the right.

Feilan instinctively turned his head and saw a massive freight truck careening out of control toward them...

Mary screamed.

Feilan felt himself thrown into the air, then sank into boundless darkness.

He did not know how long had passed.

When Feilan opened his eyes, he did not see the pale ceiling of a hospital, but dark wooden beams and elaborate Victorian rose reliefs.

The air carried a peculiar scent, a blend of old paper and faint perfume.

"You're awake?"

A woman's voice, languid and slightly husky.

Feilan abruptly turned his head and saw someone sitting on a sofa at the other end of the room.

She was around thirty, with loose golden hair draped over her shoulders. She wore only a silk bath towel, a slender cigarette between her fingers, and she was looking up at him from an unfolded newspaper.

"I... where am I? Where's Mary?"

"Mary?"

The woman raised an eyebrow. "I think you should be calling me Lucy."

"Lucy? Who are you?"

Lucy narrowed her eyes. "Should I call a doctor, Mr. Roosevelt? Though personally, I think time is the best cure for a headache brought on by alcohol."

"Mr. Roosevelt? No, my name is Ferran Thomas."

"Ferran Thomas?"

Lucy laughed, her laughter crisp. "Darling, you weren't so modest at the club last night. You kept telling everyone to call you 'Feilan Roosevelt.' Of course, we all know why."

She rose and walked over, tossing the newspaper in her hand onto the bed. "But after today, your surname will resound across the United States once again. Congratulations!"

Feilan looked down. The bold headline on the front page pierced his eyes like a bullet.

Tuesday, November 8, 1932

<Franklin Roosevelt wins in a landslide, sweeping Hoover with 472 electoral votes!>

Feilan's eyes widened. "That's impossible... Is this a prank? Or a True Person show?"

"A prank?"

Lucy took a drag from her cigarette and slowly exhaled smoke. "A prank reported by newspapers across the country? Then your uncle really is an extraordinary magician."