Your grand plans. The best you could ever hope to achieve...
A failure.
A failure to strike fear. We are unafraid.
A failure to change our way of life. Future marathons will undoubtedly have record sign ups. I wish I was running NYC tomorrow, in fact.
A failure to deliver any kind of message. We are loud. You are silent.
A failure in execution, as loss of life was so much less than it could have been given the crowd numbers. Right now, our experts our dismantling your weak attempts to hurt more of us, lifting prints, executing searches, tracing receipts, reverse engineering cell records. You will be found and brought to justice.
We will bury our dead, treasure their memory and they will forever be revered as empowering symbols in the struggle to protect the freedoms you sought to vanquish. Their lives will not be lost in vain, and in their name we will continue on.
We will heal the injured. Many will run a year from now. Injured bystanders who have never run a day in their lives are waking up today in hospital beds resolving to complete the race next year, and many more after that. You have failed to do anything but embolden them.
In the end, your life lived alone, suffering whatever private pain you selfishly felt the need to inflict on others, will have been a complete wasted effort. It is similar to the lives that past hatemongers have led. You will only ever be cared about as a footnote to our history--a meaningless and empty nomenclature that failed to be human, to connect, to love and be loved.
Undoubtedly, you are our failure, too. Somewhere along the line, we ignored you, passed you over, and failed to recognize your sickness--or perhaps that you even existed.
For this, we are truly sorry. In the end, in a society where we believe anyone can achieve greatness, your life will have meant nothing, and you will have accomplished nothing.