Chapter 7
“I’m so tired,” Jo said. She yawned as she stretched in bed.
“You slept pretty well last night,” Luke said. “You went out right after we did our high–five thingy. And then snored all the way through.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” Jo said, a look of concern on her face. “Was I really loud?”
“Nah. Kind of a contented sound. Why are you so tired?”
“I don’t know. You snore too, by the way. Well, sometimes.” Then, going back to Luke’s question, she said, “It could be parasites.” She sat up with her back against the wall and rubbed her face with her hands. “When Claire first arrived here, she got really tired even though she was sleeping all the time. I told her to get tested for parasites, because that’s one of the symptoms. And she had them,” she said, looking off into space. “Maybe I need to get tested. Take my own advice. The lab is down from your dentist, so I can do it after walking you to your surgery this morning.”
“What’s it involve?” Luke asked, rolling over onto one elbow to look at her. She just keeps getting more beautiful, he thought. Or was she? Was it all in his mind, or was Jo actually changing? Whatever was happening, he knew it was drawing him to her.
“It’s the whole poop thing,” Jo said. “And I might still have a stool kit from when Claire got tested. As soon as she found out she had parasites, she got us all one and handed them out at dinner that night. Fucking bizarre,” she said, shaking her head. “But if not, I’ve got a Ziploc I can use. They love fucking baggies down here. God! The things we talk about in Nicaragua. I don’t think I’ve ever discussed my shit so much with so many people in my life. The first thing anyone asks if you’re sick is ‘How’s your poop?’ And everyone’s got a different idea of just what it should look like.” She rolled her eyes, then looked away, feeling Luke’s gaze caressing her face.
“How long does it take to get the results? Do you have to wait a few days to find out?”
“Oh no. I’ll put some shit in a baggie and drop it off when you go to your appointment at ten. They should have the results for me in a few hours, probably right after lunch. Should only be about sixty cord.”
“That’s, like, what? Two bucks, twenty cents.” Luke shook his head. “That’s one thing I don’t miss about the states—our health care system. It’s more like long–term disease management. Making money off of people’s misery is obscene.” He felt his stomach beginning to tighten. Easy, Luke, he told himself. This was the kind of stuff to hold lightly. Be aware. Decide accordingly. But remember the limits of your control, he thought as he felt the stress falling away.
“Yeah, no kidding. Walk in, give them the poop, and come back in two hours. In the states it would be such a fucking hassle and cost fifty times as much.”
“Or more.” Luke grunted.
“And then they wouldn’t get it right because they don’t have a fucking clue about the bugs down here, and they won’t listen to you if you tell them,” Jo said. “So more tests. More money. For–profit fucking medicine. They screw you at every turn, and everyone in the system has to get their cut. Charging people for medical care is about as low as we can get.”
“We’ve built up our share of bad karma for sure, in many ways,” Luke said. “If we hope to preserve our humanity through this period of insane materialism, some parts of our society have to transcend money. But that means caring for others without personal reward, and that’s a tough sell in our country.”
“So go make us some coffee and listen to me for a minute,” Jo said, sending Luke into the kitchen. When he returned, she went on. “I was thinking about what you mentioned last night, about how we can’t predict the future based on what we know now because too much changes in the process. That makes sense. I found the same thing with setting goals.”
“Go on,” Luke said. “I think I’m with you.”
“It’s like when I was into my personal development phase. Well, that’s not right. I’m always into personal development. But this was when I was reading all of the books and listening to all those fucking audio sets that came out in the nineties. Remember all those motivational speakers and their pop psychology? Setting goals for the future was a big part of it.”
“And visualizing them too,” Luke said, feeling a little embarrassed at how many of those programs he had studied like they were the height of human wisdom.
“Right,” Jo said. “So I’d come up with all of this stuff I wanted in my life, or that I wanted to accomplish in five years. And then I’d go to work trying to make it all happen. But then in the process I’d learn new things. And as I grew, my interests changed, and the goals I set in the past often took on less meaning; they’d lose their importance as I was drawn to something else. But according to the self–help gurus, that meant I was losing sight of my goal, which was a big no–no. So I would go through these fucking guilt trips that I wasn’t persevering enough, or some shit. But then holding on to them didn’t feel right either. It took me out of the flow. Kind of like my goals were tying me to the past.”
“Yeah, I found that too.”
“So what did you do, just stop making goals?”
“No, I didn’t stop making goals. I just quit being so anal about them,” Luke said. “Back then I didn’t know how to control my discipline. I mean, I had too much of it. It became a curse as much as an asset. I was really good at staying focused on my target. But it was tunnel vision. I would forget to occasionally stop and look around and reassess.” Much less consider what I was doing to everyone else around me by placing so much importance on my stuff, he thought. “I took it so far I eventually rebelled and started doing just the opposite. Now I get anxious if I find myself holding on to something too tightly. So I just set my goals in the general direction I want to go, and then trust that I’ll make the right decisions as they come up.”
“So instead of saying you want X amount of dollars in the bank by such and such time, you would shift that to something like I want to increase the prosperity in my life, right?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Luke said. “But I’m hesitant making goals about money anymore. They seem to lead us into traps.”
“I did the whole money thing at one point too,” Jo said. “It really stuck me with some moral issues. We have to take care of ourselves first before we can take care of anyone else. I know that. I believe that. But where’s the limit? I mean, the more I had, the more I felt I had to have. The line for what I thought was needed for financial security kept getting extended.”
“And for most people the idea of security is just a pipe dream,” Luke said.
“Right. We saw that when the economy tanked a few years ago. So many people did everything right, and they still lost it all to the fucking banks. It was like lining sheep for the slaughter,” Jo said, feeling pain for the half a dozen friends she knew who had lost their homes.
“Now I just do the best I can every day and trust the future will take care of itself,” Luke said. “And I try to make decisions based more on what I feel than what I think. Life happens in that space that’s neither the past nor the future. Thinking we can control anything beyond that is insane.” And that, he knew, had been one of his hardest lessons. “But to operate in the present moment means using a different channel for making decisions. Something more instantaneous than mental reasoning. It means trusting our intuition, or whatever people want to call it, feeling into our being, and putting those insights first.” But that’s not what we’ve been taught all of our lives, Luke thought, and going against that conditioning is hard.
***
The dentist’s office was less than ten minutes away. Walking toward the center of town, Jo dangled the baggie of poop in one hand and held Luke’s hand in the other.
“Let’s go to Ometepe tomorrow,” Jo said, looking at Luke. “It’s an island in the lake. We can take it easy for a day while you heal.”
“You bet,” Luke said. “It’ll be nice to get out of the city.”
They continued on in silence, lost in their own thoughts, until they got to a black iron gate with the name “Dr. Ernesto Maximillian Garay” set in tile on the wall next to it. “Okay, baby, you’re here,” Jo said. “Good luck. And wish me luck on the poop test.” She kissed him and turned to continue down the street to the lab.
***
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When the buzzer sounded, Luke pulled open the security gate and stepped up into the small waiting room. The receptionist behind the desk smiled and pointed for him to take a seat in one of the two chairs before returning to the soap opera playing on the television mounted above her desk. Luke busied himself practicing the Spanish in the few pamphlets on dental care set out on the polished wooden table between the chairs. Within a few minutes, Dr. Garay came out dressed in surgical greens. After a brief professional greeting, he helped Luke put a green hospital robe on over his clothes. Then he gave Luke white stretchy covers to put over his shoes and his head before ushering him through the door. The adjoining room was clean and sparse. Luke took in the half–dozen diplomas in basic glass frames lining the white stucco wall behind a simple wooden desk with two chairs in front of it. Quite a step down from his dentist’s office in the states, Luke thought. And again he wondered how wise he was to have this work done in Nicaragua. On the other side of the room, a single dental chair faced a small computer screen mounted on the wall. A white X–ray machine hanging from the ceiling was pushed out of the way next to the chair, and a small stainless–steel rolling tray filled with surgical tools stood against a bare counter to the right.
“Did you take your antibiotic, Mr. Canton?” Dr. Garay asked as Luke settled into the chair.
“No,” Luke said, and he saw Garay’s face tighten. They had discussed this in the emails setting up his appointment, and it caused a riff between them just like it had with his dentist in the states. But Luke was firm, and he knew the research supported his position. Even knowing the problems humanity was facing from the rampant overuse of antibiotics, many health care providers kept prescribing them for prevention, and now we were faced with bacteria that were too strong to treat. Still, this was Nicaragua, and Luke thought that maybe he shouldn’t take the chance. So while he had decided not to take the penicillin Garay had asked him to, he had bought it, just in case. If he noticed any sign of infection, he promised himself he would start taking them immediately, no matter how much he hated killing off all the good microbes he worked to host in his body.
Dr. Garay shook his head and said nothing. He’s probably wondering if us gringos are worth the trouble, Luke thought. He could see where Garay was coming from, though. As more and more Americans moved to Granada to escape the collapse in the United States, he had probably dealt with his share of arrogant expats.
Putting the cardboard spacer in Luke’s mouth, Dr. Garay told Luke to bite down, then swung the X–ray machine around and put it up against his front teeth. Holding it steady, he told Luke to be still before thumbing the switch.
Watching Dr. Garay, Luke was surprised at the casualness of the procedure. There was no attempt to shield either of them from the radiation, as done in dentist offices in the states. Swinging the machine out of the way, Dr. Garay pulled the spacer from Luke’s mouth and turned to examine the computer monitor on the wall.
“As you can see, you have very little root on these teeth,” he said, pointing at the picture of Luke’s two lower front teeth on the monitor. “So I can pull them today, and then put in the implants right now. We won’t have to wait for the bone to heal. You’ll be a little sorer than normal for the next day or so, but I’ll give you the name of some pain medication you can get at any pharmacy. You can handle some pain, right?” he asked, showing no expression as he looked at Luke.
“Yeah,” Luke said, wondering again what he had gotten himself into.
Keeping his eyes closed, Luke focused on his breathing as Dr. Garay operated on his mouth. These were times for meditation or prayer. It all depended on one’s outlook. Luke alternated between thanking the universe for blessing his dentist and using his breathing to flush his body with the clear healing light of Spirit. While he wasn’t sure if blessing someone actually affected the person, he did know it uplifted him. How could it not? Anytime we care for another person, it helps us reach higher levels of compassion, and the more private it’s done, the better.
The operation went smoothly, and in less than an hour Luke had rinsed his mouth and was taking a seat at Dr. Garay’s desk to settle his account.
“These are the medications I want you to go buy,” Dr. Garay said, writing on a pad of paper. He explained that one was for pain and the other was for disinfecting his mouth. “Your next appointment is in a week, and I’ll take out your stitches if they haven’t already fallen out. If you have any problems before that, call me.”
Luke nodded and murmured an okay, trying to move his mouth as little as possible.
“And take your antibiotics,” Dr. Garay said, giving Luke his sternest look as he pulled out a handwritten account ledger from a manila envelop. “Today’s fee is one thousand one hundred forty dollars. That covers everything to this point, pulling the teeth and putting in the implants. When we do your crowns, it’ll be another fourteen hundred dollars total, okay?” he asked, and Luke nodded.
***
Jo continued down the street and took a right on Calle Real Xalteva. She couldn’t get her mind off Luke. A week ago she had no interest in men, and now she wasn’t interested in anything but him. He was a man with many sides, and it was obvious some of them had been self–created. Few people lived life with such breadth, and through it all he had stayed true to his desire to help others, to leave the world better for his time on it. How fucking cool was that? She found herself smiling when she thought of him, and she was sure he was falling for her. At least that was what she felt when they’d rest in each other’s arms after sex. But at other times, she found him lost in thought about things she didn’t know. And that could be good or bad.
Jo walked through the open double doors of the clinic and squinted as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. An elderly woman behind an old wooden reception desk was handing a receipt to a young pregnant lady, and an older couple was sitting in the small waiting area.
Seeing the baggie in Jo’s hand, the receptionist pushed forward a piece of scratch paper and told Jo to write her name.
Jo was paying the sixty–cord fee as a woman wearing faded blue jeans and a dirty kitchen apron came in from the back room and took her baggie with her name now taped across it. In less than five minutes, Jo was walking across the street to have a cup of coffee at Café Expresionista.
***
“I told Claire and Aubrey we weren’t up to going out tonight because of your surgery. They can join us up here on the roof for pizza instead,” Jo said.
Luke just nodded in response. Everyone had their own way of dealing with pain. Luke became stoic and crawled inside of himself, focusing on keeping his jaw clamped and his stomach tight. This gave him a serious expression that caused most people to keep their distance.
The sun dropped down behind the ruins of the old hospital on the skyline to the west, and the rooftop settled into the twilight. Bombas shattered the peace at irregular intervals, keeping Luke more on edge than usual. Bats started dropping down from the rafters over the bar, swooping through the patio in search of their evening meal.
“I’m going to arrange some of these tables,” Jo said, “just in case Liam and—oh fuck! Shit! I just had a fucking bat hit my head!” She spun around and looked into the darkness, her hands on her head holding down her hair. “Fuck, that freaks me out! They’ve never done that before. God, I hate fucking bats. Dirty, hideous fucking things,” she said, her whole body shuddering.
“I didn’t even see it,” Luke said between his teeth, looking into the sky beyond the patio’s light. “You didn’t get scratched, did you?” He immediately started thinking about rabies.
“I don’t think so. It felt more like its wing. Thank fucking God for that,” Jo said, still holding her head and looking out into the night. “God, that fucking freaked me out. Sorry, but I hate fucking bats,” she said, sounding to Luke like she was close to hysterics.
“You’re handling it better than I would,” Luke said, trying to calm her down without opening his mouth too much when he spoke. He opened a new box of Clos, squeezing it too hard and spilling wine on the floor. After filling their glasses, he took the sponge he brought up from his kitchen and bent over and wiped up the wine.
“Oh, Luke! You fucking idiot!” Jo said, a shrill edge to her voice. “You can’t do that here. Don’t ever touch the fucking ground if you can help it. This place is just too fucking dirty!”
“What?” Luke asked, taken aback by Jo’s tone. Why is she yelling at me? he thought.
“You don’t touch the fucking ground here,” Jo said, her voice still raised. “And you never use your sponge or towel to wipe up anything off of your floors. Whatever touches the floor goes in the garbage. Got that, Luke?”
Luke said nothing, wondering what had set her off.
“Those fucking streets out there have too much shit on them,” Jo went on, pointing over the balcony to the city beyond. “And I mean shit. Dog, bat, bird, donkey, human…whatever the fuck lives here shits on the streets out there. And then we walk on them and bring all that crap inside our houses, no matter how careful we are. During the rainy season, when I get caught outside and the water’s swirling around my ankles, all I can think about is how much fucking shit is getting on me. And then I have to throw out my sandals. Fuck! My friend Megan had a fit when she caught her maid wiping up something that spilled on the floor with her sponge from the kitchen sink. She went fucking berserk. Fired her on the spot.”
“Easy, Jo,” Luke said. The pain in his mouth had eroded his patience, and he was tired of the lecture. “I think I can take care of myself.”
“You know what, Luke, fuck you!” Jo said, getting her glare returned from Luke. “You’re fucking irritating me right now. Go ahead and do what you want. People get a scrape down here and they end up losing a finger or a hand. Fucking tough guy.” She turned away and walked to the railing to light a cigarette.
I need another codeine, Luke thought. He popped one out of the plastic bubble and swallowed it with a gulp of wine. Not the recommended combination, but it worked when checking out was the goal. As long as he didn’t check out too far.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, Jo,” Luke said. “But my mouth’s really sore, and I don’t want to argue. Especially about this.”
“Fine. Don’t argue then. Take care of yourself,” Jo said, shaking her head. Going back to setting up the tables, she wondered why all of the sudden she was so angry with Luke. It was like she just wanted to scream. Not necessarily at him, but at anything.
Luke poured himself more wine, then walked to the railing and looked down at the yard next to the apartments. The story was that the Nica building code was supposed to stop people from designing homes in a way that let others see into their neighbors’ yards, so all of the rooftops had walls limiting the view of the properties around them. The height of the wall was determined by how tall the building inspector was. If he couldn’t see over it, that was tall enough. If he could, the wall had to be built higher. But somehow the owner of these apartments had gotten a break and didn’t have to build a wall along the south and west sides of the roof. Staring into the darkness below, Luke tried to cope with how mad Jo had gotten at him. And it had happened so fast. Not a good sign. Feelings from past relationships were welling up and now twisting his gut. He knew it was abuse, and he had promised himself he would never let a woman do it to him again. Sadness settled over him as he started to think that this relationship wasn’t going to work. Maybe he’d hold it together up until she left, he thought, but then it would probably be time to move on.
“Oh shit! Luke! It’s the fucking no dick!” Jo said, yelling at him from across the roof.
“What…?” Luke said, not following.
“It’s the fucking no dick,” Jo repeated, walking over to Luke and looking at him like he should know what she meant.
“What are you talking about?” Luke mumbled through clenched teeth, feeling his patience at the end.
“NODIK!” Jo yelled. “Spelled N–O–D–I–K. It’s the medication for my parasites. I don’t know if that’s the brand or what, but that’s what we call it. I started taking them this afternoon as soon as I got my lab results back. These are the pills that just take three days to work, instead of ten like the others.” Luke was watching Jo, still not sure what she was talking about. “But they make people fucking crazy. I remember this from when Claire had parasites. She pissed off everyonebefore we figured it out. That’s why I’m being so ornery, Luke. Oh, darlin’, I’m so sorry. Between your mouth and my stomach bugs, we might be in for a rough couple of days. Are you sure you still want to go to Ometepe tomorrow?” she asked, looking more like a lost child now.
“Well, at least it’s named right,” Luke said, ignoring her question. He put his arms around her and looked into her eyes. “Because I’m sure as hell not letting you around my dick when you’re like that.”
Jo smiled and pushed aside the urge to rip his head off.
***
Jo had arranged four of the smaller tables into one large square in the middle of the rooftop terrace. The box of pizza sat on the serving bar, and everyone took their plates to the table. Liam and Ady sat together directly across from Jo and Luke, with Claire and Aubrey on the sides. Luke could tell Liam was agitated by the way his jaw was clenched and he kept looking over his shoulder away from the group, not participating in the conversation.
“So how do we get people from around the world to agree on anything?” Liam asked as Luke pushed his plate away and reached for his wine. “How do we cross the religious and cultural barriers keeping us apart? It all sounds pretty ridiculous if you ask me.”
“Yeah, I know,” Luke said. His mouth was finally numb from the wine and codeine, and it was easier to talk, even if he had taken a while to finish his pizza. “But even though that’s the case, it doesn’t mean humanity can’t create an overarching set of guidelines for life in the world. A framework based on higher–order values that many of us can agree on, even if we can’t come up with them on our own.”
“You’re totally losing me,” Claire said.
“I mean there are people all around the planet who are reaching higher levels of thought, universalist values that transcend our differences and instead embrace our commonalities.”
“Okay,” Liam said. “And then what? They all get to some point where everyone agrees with one another? That doesn’t make sense, mate.” He shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest.
“It’s not that specific,” Luke said. Here we go again, he thought, seeing the defensiveness in Liam’s body language. “This is about finding the general principles that unite us and using those overarching values to say how we, humanity, expect life to be conducted on the planet. Look, we’ll never get rid of conflict. Some people will always hold deep–seated beliefs that they’ll never compromise—beliefs that are so important to them that they’re willing to die for them. But the difference now is they don’t have to kill for them anymore.” Luke looked at Jo before turning back to Liam. She was nodding her head in agreement. “That’s a big distinction. It’s a huge step for our world. And it’s where international nonviolent conflict comes into the picture. It’s how we can still work through the tensions between us, without destroying ourselves or the planet in the process.”
“So then, how do we speed this up?” Aubrey asked. “I mean, what can we do to get more of us higher up the ladder, or whatever you call it?”
“Well, there’s some research out there suggesting meditation speeds up the process,” Luke said. “And I agree. But it also comes from people who meditate, so of course we’ll think it does. What gets missed, though, is that any true growtha person achieves has to be realized through the forge of experience, and that takes time on the planet. Years of engaging the world with awareness and not isolating ourselves from it. So no matter how yogi–like a person acts, if they lack time and breadth in meeting life’s hardships, it’s all a façade.” Things like learning to compromise in a marriage, Luke thought, or meeting the challenges of raising children, or developing a career, or dealing with the death of a loved one, or having considered or embraced violence all have lessons we cannot learn elsewhere. “That’s probably why the highest levels of development we’ve identified are not seen in people before their mid–forties or later. It takes at least that long for most of us to experience enough of life to lock in the growth needed to stabilize at higher levels of thought.”
“So you’re putting experience ahead of meditation,” Ady said. “Is that right?”
“Not really,” Luke said. “Just relying on experience for growth is as lopsided as relying only on meditation. It usually means we beat our heads against the wall a lot longer than we need to. Combining both life experience with meditative insight seems to work the best. But remember, there are many ways to meditate. You don’t have to sit at the feet of someone claiming guru status, which is a contradiction in itself.”
“Give us an example of some of these overarching principles you’re talking about,” Claire said. “What do we need to do?”
“Okay.” Luke paused for a moment. He’d already come up with a dozen or so ideas in his head, and he knew he was going to have to give Claire and the rest of the group the specifics. He leaned forward and looked around the table. Time to take the leap, he thought, feeling his stomach turn over. Beginning, he started to count off on his fingers. “First, we need to agree that humanity is one race made up of many variations, all of which enjoy equal status on the planet. Two, that within our race the primary differentiation is gender, and since our physical differences cause us to see and enact life in different ways, we need an equal representation of men and women in leadership throughout every level of society. Three, that our planetary resources are communal property to be used, shared, and protected by all people on the planet. Four, that all people have basic rights to life, self–expression, lifestyle, and the pursuit of happiness that can never be infringed on by those in power.” Luke had lost any inhibitions he felt earlier as he saw his vision come into focus. He felt the adrenaline surging through his body, and a lightness in his chest. Pausing for a moment, he caught his breath. “Five, that for the common good, all people have the right to basic universal health care throughout their lives, paid for by the public fund. Six, that, for the common good, all people have the right to merit–based universal education paid for by the public fund, based on their ability and willingness to engage an appropriate amount of public service afterwards.” Luke tasted blood in his mouth and took a moment to swallow. There goes a stitch, he thought. “Seven, that, for the common good, all public elections from the local to national level will be paid for by the public fund, with no private money or outside influence allowed. Eight, that for the common good, the minimum working wage will be based on the minimum living wage for that particular location.” Luke knew he was dominating the conversation, but he didn’t care. His volume had gone up a couple notches, and he was grinning—or as much as he could without tearing more stitches—as he saw the possibilities ahead. “Nine,” he said sitting up straighter, still counting with his fingers. “That war is abolished, all nuclear weapons are destroyed, all standing armies are disbanded, and we use our past military capacities to form a joint global response force to deal with natural disasters and international problems requiring our combined efforts.” There it was, he thought. The one vision that so long ago had started this journey, and he finally was at the point where he could state it, and without feeling like a fool. “Ten, that we accept our status as members of nature with rights and responsibilities consummate with our ability to affect the world. Eleven, that we recognize we have been gifted with this world from our ancestors, and we commit to passing it on to our children in a healthier, more peaceful, and more sustainable state than when we received it. Twelve, that all religions and all people, whether they choose to believe in a god or not, enjoy equal status under that god. And finally, that the animosities of our past, regardless of the harm committed, are bygones—that we do not forget the lessons from our history, but we do forgive the horror done in learning them.” Luke sat back and looked around at the others. He was breathless, like he had just ran up a flight of stairs, and it was all he could do not to thrust his fists into the sky and yell, “Yeah!” He felt like he had just delivered the most important speech of his life and nailed it.
“Fucking idealistic bullshit if you ask me,” Liam said, getting a hard look from Ady. “And just how would all of that stuff from the so–called public fund be paid for?”
Luke looked at Liam and felt his excitement diminish. He was suddenly tired, and he could feel his mouth starting to hurt from talking too much tonight. “I don’t know, Liam.” Luke sighed. “I’m not an economist. But I do know we’ve created many different economic systems throughout history as our race evolved. We had to—different ways of seeing the world require different ways of structuring it. Capitalism is just another stage, not the final destination. So if we do move from competition to cooperation as the basis for the world system, then we’ll need another economic system to meet those challenges. And as usual, it’ll probably include what we’ve learned from the past, and we’ll add something new to it.” Luke stood up. It was one thing to discuss these issues, but Liam’s constant negativity was getting old. He picked up everyone’s plates and took them over to the serving area. He was done for the night.
“It’s starting to make sense,” Jo said, still feeling irritable but better able to handle it now that she knew why. Luke had been more excited just now than she’d ever seen him before, and Liam had been such a prick to diss him like he did. Looking directly at Liam, she said, “I don’t know how the fuck it’d ever happen, but Luke’s right.” Try fucking with me, asshole, she thought, and I’ll slap that smug grin right off your face. “We do have the technology to bring people together and identify those values that respect our commonality. That much is clear. And if we could put those ideas into a framework for guiding our leaders, then we might see some positive change.” But we shouldn’t be holding our breaths, either, she thought and got up to help Luke with the dishes.
End Chapter 7.
Bob
Buy, The Boétie Legacy, and a World in Peril, HERE.