"No. I thought not. She is deep inside, or only faintly attached. Which is it, I wonder? Or is it both? And why you, of all men? Was it just proximity? Should I have bathed every day in the waters of the Mediterranean? If I had, would I have woken one morning filled with the divine light? Well, no matter. Here we all are. I spent quite some time imagining that I would have you pressed like a sack of olives between two stones. There is a press here that would do very well. But...but. I think I will make you an offer instead. You are a man of commerce, after all. Do you know, first of all, what it is that you have made? What our country is like, out there in the streets, right now? Everything has come to a halt. Soon it will be dark and grim. There will be no food in the marketplaces, no petrol in the pumps, no medicine in the hospitals. There will be no clean water, even, in the pipes. Can you imagine a more horrible thing to a modern man than the discovery that the basic stuff of life—pure water, that he considers so absolutely tamed and delivered by the system in which he is invested—is not any longer his to command? That no amount of angry telephoning will bring it back, even if he could call anyone? That he has hours, perhaps days before everyone he loves begins to die if he cannot somehow restore that lost flood? And yet: he has no idea where it might be had, if not from a pipe. He has no barrel in his garden, no brook at the foot of his land. He has never contemplated this possibility. But his neighbour, now...that fellow woke a little earlier and filled his bathtubs, and he won’t share. Well, why would he? His family will survive due to his prudence and quick action. So now our modern friend has a choice: civilisation has abandoned him. Will he, then, cling to it? Or will he pick up a club, or a hammer, and go next door to do what must be done for his survival? Or will they both, like brothers, march upon the keep of the invader? The frame by which he understands the world is broken. He needs something new to judge his actions, to know what is right. Something new, or something old.