In this parallel universe, I bounce the ideas you give me against the protagonists wandering around waiting for instructions on what they're supposed to do next with their lives.
A single word changes the course of these fictional characters' purposeful campaigns.
Should I let them continue on toward more concentration of riches, exclusive information ownership and bigger, stronger, more luxurious gates/walls preventing access to the masses?
I am an individual who works in this imaginary world but does not live here.
As the information gatekeeper, I have access to both of my imaginary friends' worlds.
I will not live to see how their scenarios here completely play out in comparison to the real world.
"Is this a morality play?" I ask myself when a word spoken in imaginary and real terms has the same (or equal) effect.
I try to convince myself that I don't know what I or my colleagues in the real world are talking about.
Empires come and go. No one lives forever here or there. Languages spoken and not written are forgotten.
In this imaginary world, friends tell me that they feel betrayed by their popularly-chosen leader. Since they don't have a "vote of no confidence" or a call for new elections to force a change of leadership, they're banking on other methods to voice their lack of confidence and desire for a new leader.
They believe local leaders who are emboldened by this current superregional leader are using redistricting and school closing methods to cause a "flight" of specific populations from neighbourhoods so the local leaders can get their own friends into the neighbourhoods (and more cheaply, too).
I'm glad all of this is imaginary because, if I had the slightest inkling that it was true, well...
I asked my associates Sal and Vince, who provide bodyguard personal security services for the Committee of 7.5, if they had heard any of these rumours, they being in on the know and the know-how that ain't nobody's business no-how.
They said, yeah, they'd heard it, too. They was watching the real estate prices like all good investors - houses, flats, estates, commercial properties catering to the military, that sort of thing - seeing as how it never hurts to turn a tidy profit when no one ain't looking.
They asked me why I was interested, me being all about the species and the big picture and all that.
I told them it was simply a matter of a subplot in a story I was writing. They nodded. Enough said. They knew all about digging up plots and turning them into subplots.
You've seen how they operate - a burning cigarette accidentally dropped on the carpet and a high-rise burns (boins) down, a brake line breaks and a car careens out of control down a hillside, a Hollywood type don't pay her dues and she gets what's coming to her, some "kids" tear into a laboratory for kicks, leaving graffiti around and a virus spreads unchecked.
Life is full of mishaps that resemble art.
Their priest tells them to turn the other cheek but he don't say nothing about what they're supposed to do when they're looking the other way with their cheek turned.
That's why I don't judge my friends, colleagues and associates. Business is business. Money makes the world of money go up and down. Favours make sure we all got something to hide and the means to pay for keeping them hidden.
If you want another Houdini, Chamberlain or Hitler, I can't stop you. History if full of history about people who can't learn from history.
Besides, this is just fiction. It's not like my friends are trying to tell me the truth.
I mean, if you picked up a metal object on the road and the object had one end split in two, would you call it a tuning fork or an eating fork missing a couple of tines? Some of my old mountain friends would call it a miniature divining rod. I would just call it a fork in the road.
The decision's up to you. You can START negotiations now or put them off until the future. If you put them off, can you prove you did so because you were investigating a trail of information that someone was trying to hide from you before ratification was completed? Would the people believe your story about the reasons for saying no on the crucial day when you needed them to say yes for you one more time?
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