The cold hardwood chair in the library’s Special Collections room had already lost its physical meaning.
Leo Wallace’s body was still sitting there, but his consciousness—his entire perception—had drifted into another space, a space wrapped in the heat of an invisible hearth.
Here, for the first time, he saw Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s spiritual image “face to face.”
It was not the smiling, waving, affable politician hanging on the wall of his apartment or printed in history books.
This was a man seated in a wheelchair.
The wheelchair made no sound on the soft Persian carpet; it was more like a throne.
A thick wool blanket covered his legs. He held no cigarette holder, nor did he wear those iconic pince-nez glasses.
His eyes were the true source of light in this space—sharp as an eagle’s, seeing through everything, filled with the suffocating pressure of a strategist in the instant before deploying tens of thousands of troops.
All the playfulness and teasing that had previously been conveyed through his voice had vanished.
What remained was pure presence.
“…Our work now officially begins.”
Roosevelt repeated what he had just said, his voice echoing through this virtual space.
“The first step,” he continued, “is to admit that the set of tools I used back then is no longer enough. This country needs surgery, not a few tablets of aspirin. What we must do is begin with a transformation centered on the people.”
The people?
The word struck the core of Leo’s knowledge as a historian like a bullet.
All the absurdity, fear, and awe he had experienced over the past few days were, at that moment, replaced by an enormous academic confusion he could not avoid.
He took a deep breath and summoned all the courage of his life.
The man before him was the man he had studied throughout his entire youth, the deity of his academic world.
But he had to ask.
“Mr. President…” Leo began, his voice trembling slightly even on the spiritual level. “I… I’ve studied your entire career. I’ve read all your speeches and analyzed every one of your policies. You were the savior of capitalism, not its gravedigger.”
He forced himself to look directly into those hawk-like eyes.
“In 1936, in that famous speech at Madison Square Garden, you called those forces of ‘organized money’ the enemy. But your purpose was to tame it, not kill it.”
“The Social Security system you established, your regulation of Wall Street, the public works you pushed forward… all of it ultimately allowed America to usher in the most glorious thirty years after the war. The system you built saved this country.”
Leo spoke faster and faster. It was the instinct of a doctoral student in history.
“Why?” he asked the most fundamental question. “Why do you now want me to take a completely opposite road? A road that, to me, seems closer to the Soviet Union?”
Roosevelt did not answer immediately.
He merely looked at Leo in silence, a complicated smile appearing on his face.
In that smile were approval, self-mockery, and a bottomless sorrow.
“A good question,” Roosevelt said, his voice softening.
He leaned forward slightly, and the wheelchair gave a faint sound.
“Language is cheap, Leo. Even the language of a president will be distorted by time, interpreted and used by later generations for their own purposes. You’ve read books. You’ve analyzed my speeches. You’ve memorized every detail of the New Deal… but you are like an audience member who has only read the script. You never watched the film.”
There was weariness in Roosevelt’s voice.
“And I…” he said, “I watched the entire film, including all the sequels. Including everything that happened to this country after my death, all the way to today.”
He extended a finger.
In Leo’s perception, it was a real finger, carrying warmth and the texture of skin.
It gently touched the spot between Leo’s brows.
“Your textbooks, your mentors, those heavy historical works of yours,” Roosevelt’s voice echoed, “they told you what happened, but they never made you feel what it was like.”
“Child, close your eyes.”
“Do not analyze with your mind. Look with your heart.”
At that instant, Leo’s consciousness was yanked violently backward by an irresistible force.
The entire warm study fell apart before his eyes, turning into countless spinning points of light.
It was as if he had been thrown into a vortex of time, plummeting into the depths of history.
The vortex of time churned Leo’s consciousness until heaven and earth seemed overturned, then gently cast him out again.
When his vision stabilized once more, he found himself floating above postwar America.
At first, the earth beneath his feet was black and white, like the old documentaries he had watched countless times.
But very quickly, as if an old film had been infused with brand-new life, vivid colors began at the ports of the East Coast and swiftly washed across the entire country.
He saw a nation brimming with raw vitality, a giant that had risen again from the ruins of war and was running at a speed never seen before.
His perspective was first drawn toward a university campus.
Beside the Gothic buildings, thousands upon thousands of young people were pouring into classrooms.
Many of them still wore the short haircuts of military camps, and their posture as they walked still carried the upright bearing of soldiers.
But what they held in their hands were no longer M1 Garand rifles, but stacks of heavy textbooks.
On their faces there was none of the confusion and fear of the battlefield, only a nearly greedy hope and desire for the future.
Leo could feel the thoughts in their hearts: I want to become an engineer, a doctor, an accountant. I want to build a family. I want to have a future that belongs to me.
“We invested in people, not war machines.”
Roosevelt’s voice sounded in his consciousness, carrying an undisguised pride.
This was the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act—the GI Bill.
The scene shifted. Leo’s perspective flew toward the industrial heartland of the Midwest.
The thick smoke rising from chimneys was no longer a symbol of pollution, but a trumpet blast of prosperity.
He saw a vast conference room. On one side sat the well-dressed chief executive of General Motors; on the other sat a group of burly men in suits that looked somewhat ill-fitting.
They were representatives of the United Auto Workers and the steelworkers’ union.
They sat at the same table negotiating, their voices loud as they argued on the basis of reason.
This was not begging, but a dialogue between equals.
Then the lens drew back from the conference room and arrived at a newly built community in the suburbs of Detroit.
Rows of neat and beautiful detached houses stood there, each with a green lawn in the backyard.
A father who was clearly a blue-collar worker was teaching his son how to throw a baseball, while his wife watched them with a smile from the porch.
A brand-new Chevrolet sedan gleamed beneath the setting sun.
Leo could clearly feel that man’s emotions.
It was a sense of security.
His wages—the wages of one man working—were enough to pay the mortgage, support his wife and two children, and still save a little money every year.
He did not have to worry that one illness would bankrupt him, nor did he have to fear that his boss would fire him at will.
He was the backbone of this country.
Then the perspective soared upward once more, arriving in New York and looking down over Wall Street.
But the atmosphere here was completely different from the one in Leo’s memory.
There was no hysterical frenzy. Though the people in the exchange were busy, their expressions were solemn.
He saw the inside of the banks. Those bankers were more like meticulous bookkeepers wearing sleeve protectors than red-eyed high rollers placing bets in a casino.
The Glass-Steagall Act had strictly separated depositors’ life savings from those high-risk investment games.
“I put Wall Street in a cage.” Roosevelt’s voice-over carried a sense of relief. “They were very unhappy. Extremely unhappy. But the country was safe.”
Scene after scene formed an era that was warm, bright, and full of hope.
This was not myth, but real history.
Leo could feel the satisfaction, security, and optimism widely present in the hearts of ordinary Americans in that era.
It was an era in which the middle class expanded as never before, an era in which class mobility truly existed.
The son of a truck driver really could become a lawyer through hard work.
This was Roosevelt’s answer.
This was the fruit he had received in exchange for choosing to tame capitalism rather than kill it.
At last, the scene froze.
It froze on a typical middle-class family’s backyard barbecue.
The father wore a ridiculous apron and was grilling hamburger patties. The mother came out of the kitchen carrying a plate of salad. Several children screamed and ran beneath the sprinkler.
An Elvis song played on the radio. Everything was peaceful, like the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.
This peak moment of the golden age stood still.
Yet at that moment, Roosevelt’s voice-over suddenly turned cold.
All the warmth and pride disappeared, replaced by an ominous premonition.
“This was a house I built with my own hands, Leo.”
“Sturdy, beautiful, able to shelter people from wind and rain.”
“But after I died, a group of well-dressed, silver-tongued termites began gnawing at its foundation.”