A Falling World:Chapter 8 Part 2 A Conversation In A Bar

With the conversation open to the public Luther saw their plan dissolve before his eyes. Moving between the two he interjected “I think what she is trying to do, David, is clear up some tension that she’s been feeling so we can all work together.”

Like many of his other responses David’s reply was short and sounded tired “Sure. I think that’s wonderful.” David walked away to have his meal and finished within a couple minutes before excusing himself from the room.

Before David left the space Luther called out asking if he wanted to go to a bar later that night. David hesitated but agreed just telling him to text him the place and time to meet up.

Marcus was quite during the encounter but spoke up when the room was clear “Why don’t we just leave him alone? He obviously doesn’t want to be here and it doesn’t sound like he’s interested in any of us. Sarah, you’ve been stressing out about him for a while but it almost sounds like he’s scared of you. Is there anything we should know about? Like what the hell is up with you two?”

Sarah kept herself from lashing out at Marcus but only partially succeeded “There’s nothing up with us. He’s always been a weirdo. Who knows what goes on in that head of his and honestly who cares. I tried, everyone saw me try and welcome him so if he wants to create a scene like he did then that’s on him. I’m done.”

Luther replied “Of course Sarah, you did everything right. Thank you so much, and Marcus I think that is a great question that you can ask him tonight. Afterall he did say he would join us so he does have some interest and we shouldn’t discount that. However, I say this with no disrespect, but maybe it might be best if you don’t join us Sarah?”

Sarah didn’t have any disagreements and when Olivia was asked she responded that she didn’t want to be the only girl there.

The bar Luther chose was close by with decent reviews online. It was an arcade bar with an assortment of classic games and in the corner he could swear he saw a setup for a virtual reality station while he and Marcus ordered drinks. David it seemed had impeccable timing as he took a seat when the waiter brought the order.

“David!” Luther exclaimed, “Just in time. The gang’s all here. Hey man, do you know what you want? First round, I got you.”

“Yeah sure, but real quick what kind of get together is this?” David asked suspiciously.

“This is just the three of us guys having drinks, some food and relaxing. I don’t know about you but I’ve gone a little stir crazy spending so much time in that house. It’s impossible to get a signal anywhere.”

The table was square and had enough space for 4 to sit. Marcus and Luther sat on the same side though at opposite ends giving Luther all the space he needed to move and stretch comfortably with his broad shoulders and lengthy arms. Marcus covered the edge but his space took up both sides despite sitting on the same side as Luther. When David took his seat he positioned himself in the middle and pushed the remaining chair to the corner edge where it awkwardly rested out of the way only serving as a small cushion for David’s crossed leg to bounce off of with his occasional foot shaking. Between the three of them the table was filled and none of them would complain if a larger one was offered to them.

The waiter was patient while David positioned himself and asked if he wanted a minute to look at the menu. David rejected and to the shock of Luther and Marcus David ordered an obscene amount of alcohol. Three shots of vodka, two double shots of whiskey, one tall glass of beer, a glass of red wine, and one water.

“Uh, you aren’t planning to drink all that yourself are you?” Marcus asked.

“Don’t worry,” David responded “I know it isn’t fair to ask anyone to cover for this. I’ll cover my own food and drink tonight so don’t worry. I wouldn’t do something like that to anyone.”

“That wasn’t what I was talking about. I mean the drinks, that’s a lot to drink!”

“Ah,” David responded dimly “yeah, I am. I hate the taste of alcohol but I do like the effects so if I’m going to drink I’m going to make it worth it. Personally, I like to do my drinking all at once and just coast the rest of the night and hey, sometimes I stop being able to taste so that also makes the drinks I have later on go down easier.”

It took a minute for the waiter to return. When he did the drinks were carried on a large circular tray which he carried with two hands. He gave the drinks to David who grouped them in the same order he requested them. The waiter asked if they wanted anything else and was slow to leave as David tried to take a drink with two false starts as the momentum in his arms stopped before the glass touched his lips.

With a slow deep breath David tried a third time and pushed through once again confirming his repulsion of alcohol. He chased vodka with vodka before moving on to the whiskey, the beer, and the wine. In under a minute the glasses were dry and in under a minute David rediscovered the bitter and horrid taste unique to each of these beverages. Luther and Marcus watched as David downed every glass with barely a breath between each one before slowing down with the water.

Luther was exuberant “You are going to be shit faced in like 10 minutes. I cannot believe you did that!”

“I’ll be fine.” David responded wishing the waiter was still there. He really wanted some carbs to get the taste out of his mouth. He started navigating through the menu looking for anything with bread or chips so when he had another chance to get something he would be ready. He was halfway through the second page when Luther hit him with a question that David wasn’t immediately aware was meant for him.

“So I have to know what do you do everyday when you leave.” Luther asked.

David felt a numbed warmth on the back of his neck and eyes with a slight sensation on the edges on his hands that made him wonder if his reaction speed was already compromised. He flipped a page in the menu and didn’t notice any delays yet in his hands. Refocusing he answered “Nothing exciting I’m afraid. All I do is fill out job applications after I finish those lessons. Like you said, it’s challenging to find a good wifi spot and as we both discovered after I ordered all the parts for that table there aren’t any outlets in the mansion either.”

“Damn, so you really plan on leaving?”

“The first chance I get. My only filter for these jobs are that I’m able to work from home and that’s it. Nothing else matters to me.”

“And why is that” Marcus interjected.

“I don’t know why the two of you are here but for me a god damn rift would open up and stop me from leaving my apartment anywhere save for this god damn state. It would randomly appear and it is real hard to do your desk job when you are trapped at home. So guess who recently got fired? This guy did. I don’t buy for a moment that portal being an accident. It was intentional so if I’m going to adjust I need a job that enables me to work from anywhere because I am convinced that kind of interference is going to start up again the instant I leave.”

“Why are you so keen on going back to work. We have free rooms, and food. That isn’t even including what we’re learning.” Marcus was genuinely curious what could be more important than what they were already doing.

“Right,” David responded “Like I was telling Sarah earlier before coming here I was really close to accomplishing a really hard goal of mine and that is to be rich. I am decently close to hitting one million dollars.

“Let me tell you, I am all for self improvement as in I will actively try and find my faults and remove them but when I discovered the stock market oh boy did I not realize I had a gamblers side. It took me a while to beat that part of myself into the ground, but through divine levels of luck I did make off well.

“No joke, the stock market is like a forest that’s always on fire that everyone heads to looking for gold. Everyone goes in with a certain amount of gold already and everyone is hoping to leave with more. What people don’t realize though is that if you aren’t careful that fire will burn you and that smoke will asphyxiate you and you will lose everything you started with. I got lucky, I got so lucky. I have no idea if I was about to financially choke but when I found a medium sized fortune I ran.

“There’s something called a 4% rule which is that you should expect to live off of 4% of your money if you’re invested in the stock market. If I can bring my seven hundred k up to four million that gives me one hundred sixty thousand dollars per year to live off of. But that takes time and research that I can’t do right now. I’m definitely playing it safer with the money but it’s hard when you know that diversification will protect your money while concentrating it is how you build it and also lose it. I did manage to find someone with a much better track record than me so when he says to buy something I buy it and when he says to sell something I sell. But that isn’t a position I like to be in.

“What I have is so much money, but it isn’t enough to live off of. Not for my entire life. But I am close. It is possible. The thing is though I still need to invest more money to get where I’m going so I need a job that I can live off of and where I can put aside a decent amount of extra cash. So yeah, I’m not really interested in learning skills with unknown restrictions that may or may not be useful at some point in the future in an environment where I am actively prohibited from pursuing my goals.”

Marcus considered for a moment about what he and his family could do with a spare seven hundred thousand dollars. To save on costs he still lived with his family and helped out around the house, helped make rent, and keep his siblings invested in the community. Becoming a lawyer was supposed to change everything but his specialty just didn’t pay the same as the others. Money was tight as ever and whenever he thought they were getting ahead the car would need repairs, or someone would get sick or worse need surgery. It didn’t help that his sister was getting ready to go to college and soon after her his brothers would be too.

Luther continued “so we have this grand prophecy and you’re just going to nope out for money?”

“I have few thoughts on prophecies.” David responded. His arms were lighter than they were before and his neck and back felt looser. The taste may be awful but he enjoyed how the drinks worked. It may be just an echo but he might have felt happy when it hit. Beyond the physical feelings David felt his mind shift and start veering off from how it normally worked. Instead of working to complete a conversation David felt himself prioritize the act of having a conversation instead. If Marcus and Luther wanted to talk about money then David could talk about money. If they wanted to shift to prophecies it didn’t matter if he had more to say about the stock market what mattered was the conversation itself. “Prophecies need to meet three criteria otherwise they are complete trash. First they have to be specific. I can’t just say that in time a great war will ravage the land and many will suffer. We are a war species of course there’s going to be a war but when and where and who are conveniently missing. Without that information people just fill in the gaps with what they want and I end up being correct.

“Second, it has to be unique or at least uncommon. If I go into a restaurant and order a medium rare steak and I prophesize that the chef will mess up the order and I’m correct that isn’t a prophecy because correctly cooking that type of steak is really hard.

“Third, the prophecy can’t be self-fulfilling. I can’t just prophesize that a great tower will be built and then hire a bunch of people to build that structure and claim that I am a great prophet. Now I don’t know what this prophecy is because I don’t really care but regardless of how it’s structured I know for a fact that Henry is actively working to see it through which immediately means it’s self-fulfilling. Which means it’s not a prophecy. I’m sure you two are more familiar with the details so I’ll let you two decide if the other conditions are violated.”

When David finished it took Luther a few seconds to cut through the silence “Right, I can see where you’re coming from David but whether it’s self-fulfilling or not what matters is the end result. If you have four million dollars in one room and your friends and family in another and the end of the world was coming to crash into one of them would you really choose to save the money?”

“Are you trying to trolley problem me?” David asked genuinely perplexed “Because that is the single most disingenuous moral question out there. A straight up catch-22 that only serves to confuse any interesting conversations about morality. Listen, I get the feeling you are trying to figure out what worldview I have that is putting me in a position where I’m not on board with everything like the rest of you are. So if that’s what you want I’ll go ahead and answer it but I will do so while one hundred percent raving about that damn trolley problem question.

With a swig of his drink Luther leaned back into his chair and encouraged David to continue. It was unlikely, he figured, he’d change the direction of the conversation at this point anyway.

“Awesome,” David retorted “before anything else though you need to know that I am going to use slightly different moral terms: moral hills, moral valleys and moral plateaus. For something this simple a hill is a good choice, a valley is a bad choice, and a plateau is an amoral choice there are differences between them of course but that only manifests when dealing with complex interactions.

“Right, so in a normal trolley problem you are given the choice between having a trolley kill 3 people or 5 and it’s presented as only having two choices where you have to pick a so-called correct moral choice. This is a catch-22 because you’re given the task of choosing the moral hill where there exists only valleys.

“Beyond that, the question is dishonest because it’s presented in a way where you think there are only two selections when you actually have three. The first choice is when you choose to interact with the system or not. It’s only after that choice is made that the other two can be selected from. I’ve heard people argue that no matter what you choose to do you are selecting who dies and if that’s how they want to phrase it I don’t care. What I care about is whether I’m in a valley, a hill, or a plateau and when it comes to that trolley problem the highest moral position you can find yourself in is the amoral choice of not interacting with the system at all.

“But oh, why would this question stop there? Not only is it a catch-22 and dishonest it actively confuses and stops any interesting conversations about morality because it steers people in wondering if the moral valley they chose makes them a good person. It only makes things worse when the same people are followed up with the same question however, instead of dealing with strangers they are asked to save their friends and family. If they keep their answer the same they would be condemning their loved ones to die but to change their answer – does that make them a bad person?

“This question is always posed in that frame where people are asked to make a correct choice where none exists and where they are forced to ask if that makes them a good person. This stops any interesting questions because the trolley problem is categorically not that type of question. It is a question of values and if it were framed honestly the only question that would be asked is something along the lines of ‘are you willing to engage in a moral valley to save 5 people at the cost of 3 lives, or are you willing to engage in a moral valley to save 3 of your friends at the cost of 5 lives’?

“So lets swap it up and ask it’s antithesis without those dishonest qualities, but for giggles I’ll keep the part that questions if you’re a good person or not. There is a house on fire with a crowd outside watching. You are a part of that crowd. You see an opening and enter the house. Let’s go with something extreme to hit the point home. You have a choice between saving a child or saving a cat, but you can’t choose both. Are you a bad person for choosing to save the cat?”

“Yes,” Marcus answered “You are absolutely a bad person if you choose to save the cat.”

“I disagree,” David answered “because this is a situation where there are no moral valleys. You aren’t choosing who to let die you are choosing who to save. The moral plateau is where you stand outside and watch the house burn. The moral hill is where you chose to engage with the system to help someone while putting yourself at risk while you do so. So I don’t think it’s possible to be a bad person in that scenario.”