AMALTHEA

[soulping]

[The lights dim and you are no longer in a classroom, but a low key bar. An older gentleman from behind the counter is looking at you as if waiting for your next order. La Torre's voice comes from nowhere in particular:]

Let's pick up where we left all, shall we? You are sitting in a bar. Why are you drinking?

Comments

SORT OF DISCUSSION?????

[menially]

[Leaning right against the counter and talking straight up to the ceiling.]

I don't know, why doesn't our polite host fill the newcomers in???

[inthenude]

Oh, hm. Were you not here this morning? All you foreigners look alike...

[There's a weary sigh. How unfortunate. And then, the story:]

Today I have a story for you. Have you ever heard of the Human Condition? It's a conceited study of what traits innately make a human being a human being. Some say it can be defined as humanity's capacity for good and for evil. If a person has an infinite capacity for good then, like a mirror image, they must have an infinite capacity for evil, right?

There was a man. He was sitting at a bar. He couldn't accept the reality of his world. It was his lot in life to wish for a different lot; he was a selfish, small man. He drank. He drank to forget. He drank to obfuscate his understanding. He drank so he didn't have to accept.

You are sitting at a bar. Why are you drinking?

[codecmoment]

Don't enough people in Kyriakos have alcoholism? Geez.

[menially]

Probably.

I'm not sure that's the point of the story, though.

[codecmoment]

Doesn't matter to me. It becomes a form of self-medication and therapy. A poisonous one.

[menially]

And you're thinking that whatever this game ends up accomplishing is just going to make others' poisons that much stronger, right?

[codecmoment]

Enabling, more or less.

[menially]

Yeah.

Well, it's not like it's a groundless concern. But there's nothing we can do about it other than hope self-control is still a virtue.