2048. MY INAUTHENTIC PROFILE

MY INAUTHENTIC PROFILE

My inauthentic profile graces that coin

in your hand - it was done a long time

back in a town called Reading, at the foot

of a not very big hill. They told me to

look out, and stay still. Along the path

beside me, the sorry miners kept

trudging by. It took about three hours;

the master-craftsman working quite

hard. Behind my head you can see the

line of trees and that hill which they've

turned into a mountain somehow.

I guess it all goes with the storyline :

how I came from nothing, worked hard

and prospered. None of it's true, you

realize; it was just all my money that made

them think so. No one mentions all the

men who have died in my employ, doing the

work I demanded, digging the soil, cutting

the rock. This isn't even my hilltop at all -

they just say I live here, high atop my holdings,

to make more of the story than there really is.

I am a wizard of nothing, a merchant of death,

and a doctor of drudgery for others. For that,

I'm worth a coin? A coin with the face-value of

something like two-seventy-five? I'd like to

think my breath alone was worth that much,

but maybe, as it goes, it's not worth much at all.

My inauthentic profile only goes to show.