“I thought you said you were taking me to the others?” said Atom as he attempted to shake the puddle-mud-water from his now not-so-shiny new shoes.
“I am taking you to the others,” Cajones replied, shaking a (possibly imagined) molecule of water from his paw, “you’ll have to be patient, it’s been a while since we played this game and I’m not sure that I remember all the rules.”
“Rules? Game?”
“Rules. There’s always rules, even when they say there aren’t any,” Cajones walked away from the hotel, following a wide overgrown track of crumbling tarmac, “This is a game little man, and you (and I) are counters, avatars, pawns - best not to forget that.”
“In fact,” he looked back at Atom, “They never do say that there are rules, they leave you to discover the boundaries by yourself, boundaries that they generally patrol with pain. It would appear that the PTB has no room for subtlety.”
“Sometimes,” said atom, jogging to keep pace, “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You will, but don’t let it worry you; just remember that if you find that you’ve never run into the boundaries of authority then you really must try harder.”
“I am taking you to the others,” Cajones replied, shaking a (possibly imagined) molecule of water from his paw, “you’ll have to be patient, it’s been a while since we played this game and I’m not sure that I remember all the rules.”
“Rules? Game?”
“Rules. There’s always rules, even when they say there aren’t any,” Cajones walked away from the hotel, following a wide overgrown track of crumbling tarmac, “This is a game little man, and you (and I) are counters, avatars, pawns - best not to forget that.”
“In fact,” he looked back at Atom, “They never do say that there are rules, they leave you to discover the boundaries by yourself, boundaries that they generally patrol with pain. It would appear that the PTB has no room for subtlety.”
“Sometimes,” said atom, jogging to keep pace, “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You will, but don’t let it worry you; just remember that if you find that you’ve never run into the boundaries of authority then you really must try harder.”
6 comments:
the PTB has power only inversely proportional to ones sense of integrity — my word-a-day app told me this morning,
"Inquiry is fatal to certainty"—Will Durant
Yodood: 'integrity' is not listed in the PTB dictionary. 'certainty' is certainly an unreliable word for the inquisitive ;]
by all means, one must keep pushing until that boundary is encountered... how else to know the edges of one's horizon? how else to imagine beyond that (so-called) limit??
ya know, it seems to me that this post and the one immediately before might have a motif running through them... but, i could also just be chasing shadows...
cheers and thanks for the continuing saga.
Harlequin: How we deal with authority is definitely a theme in this part of the story (as shall be revealed). Atom seems to be learning (or perhaps Cajones is indoctrinating him with the idea) that the limits set do not necessarily correlate with personal horizons.
The game is the rules, no? ;)
Jeff: The game is devising the rules to give advantage to the rule-makers.
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