Harvard 2

"Our economy is at a standstill. Nothing is going to get us through this," One horseman stated while drinking scotch.
"We'll get through it. We got through the Great Depression. We'll get through this." Percy answered.

"It's really starting to hit us personally, Percy," another horseman entered, " It's not some phenomena we don't have to worry about anymore. And we are not in the information business like your family."

Percy really never thought that he and his friends would be affected by the downturn in the economy. Things had changed now. They were affected.

Percy took a drink from the expensive scotch bottle. How would his life be affected? He took a look at Trisha. You could trust no one, he thought. Could he trust Trisha?

"We'll get through it. Yes, it is true that the information business is not hit as hard as other businesses, but we will get through this and we will defeat this thing. Never give up," Percy affirmed.

"Never give up!" One horseman asserted.
They all shouted, "Never give up."

Trisha took a shot of scotch and gulped it like a fish drinking water. She was drinking more than usual lately. She did not want to belong to anyone, especially Percy. Often, she felt that he treated her like a piece of property rather than a real person. She had always felt like this toward Percy, but she was still very much attracted to him and loved him, but she also loved Gabriel for some odd reason that she could not fathom. All that she could really think was that she loved Gabriel's rebellion and related it to Jewish rebellion somehow although they had nothing in common.

"Never give up," she heard herself shout. That was Winston Churchill's speech against the Nazis she presumed but everything from the past had an ironic "boom" to it. We were nothing like the generation that had survived and lived through the Great Depression. We were nothing like the English who had fought so hard against the Nazis. Americans were the last to enter the War against the Nazis. America had always sacrificed so little, and tried to gain a lot more. At the close of World War II, the US had helped rebuild Japan. During the Cold War, America had helped rebuild S. Korea. The Soviet Union had crumbled because the Communist economy could not go on indefinitely. These were their victories... in East Asia and the fall of Communism. Vietnam, Iraq... this was our legacy. We were trying the old tactics without gaining any advantage from them. We were no longer sure of ourselves, and certainly not sure of any one course of action.