I took a stroll over to the saloon. Situated directly across the road from the old apothecary's shop, it allowed me to keep an eye on the Doctor without being too conspicuous. Dodging a few tumble-wires along the way, I noticed that the air was picking up speed. Then I saw Joe Manco come around the corner of the saloon. He was wearing a brightly-coloured sarape, beat-up old hat with a telescope crown, and tanned cowboy boots. He is unshaven to the point of sporting a full beard. His trademark cigarillo is lit, hanging out of his mouth. He enters the saloon moments before me, pretending that he doesn't know I'm right behind him. I sit down beside him at the bar and order us both a whiskey.
"Blondie, let me stun you senseless with cosmopolitans."
One of the patrons begins to laugh. Then another. Soon we are all laughing together while Joe continues to smoke his cigarillo and squint at us nonchalantly. Cool as a cucumber, he says out of the side of his mouth, "I knew somebody like you, once... and there was no'ne to help." He smiles crookedly blowing smoke in my face. I stare at him without blinking and say, "You know what you are? You're a whore."
"Takes one to know one, darlin."
"I do my best, pardner." I return his crooked grin.
"What are you doin back in town, Carey?"
"Time to get down to business, my friend."
"Everything ready?"
I can't see his eyebrows, but I know that they're raised. I ignore his question and ask my own.
"You still thinking about going home?"
He pauses a moment before answering.
"I never found home that great. Hey, remember America?"
"America, oh who discovered yer ass?"
"Land o'the free?"
"Land of the BRAVE, not quite. My friend -"
"You knew it was finished before it began?"
"We gotta have this conversation again?"
"O'course, maybe this time it'll finish the right way."
"Not bloody likely."
"You see, the thing to be remembered is this, Carey. America wasn't like anything that ever happened before. Oh, maybe your first Romans, but I doubt it. No, ma'am. America was sui generis -"
"Ain't nothin generous about it, suh. How would any American know what existed before..."
"The strong devour the weak every time... "
"Americans got everything by cuttin the Indians' throats and stealin whatever wasn't nailed down."
"And that's the way of the world."
"Terribly Malthusian of you, dahlingk."
"Well, what the hell point of view do you presume to speak from? You think you're speakin on behalf o'the goddam proletariat?... Yeah, don't hear your bourgeois ass laughing now. Marx was fuckin bourgeois too. Did you know that?"
"So what? He was still defending the rights of the workers who -"
"The workers who fuckin supported his ass? Did Marx ever see a day of manual labour himself? Isn't that exactly what he was supposed to be fighting against? So, it's ok for him to lead the proletariat in a revolution but it's not ok for any other bourgeois leaders to do the same."


"Stop. STOP! Dr. X, this is not how the simulation is s'posed to go."
"You want to win this argument, Carey? Then fuckin play the game."
"Oh, come on. Dr. X yer not playin fair. I specifically chose certain parameters that were within my -"
"Knowledge base?"
"I was gonna say, 'skill set'."
"Carey, if you feel yer gettin out-played here then you can always PAUSE, study-up, and then come back to the conversation."
"It's not a conversation. This one always turns into an argument and I feel like I need to win it in order to move on."
"Do what you have to do, Carey."
"Dr. X, I didn't think this was s'posed to be about winning or losing."
"What do you think we're doin right now? Yer tryin to convince me o'something outside the parameters o'the game. If you win, things within the game will change. If you lose, they'll stay the same. What you don't seem to realize is that it's still a fuckin game. Change the parameters all you want. At the end of the day..."
"It's s'posed to be about the play, the process. Why does it have to be so adversarial? Is that all there is? Me against the next guy. I survive and he dies, or the other way around. Nothing in between. Is there no cooperation in life?"
"What are we cooperating for, here?"
"Collective well-being."
"Fine. You tell the story then."
"Very funny."
"More cooperation, huh? I think we can work with that."
"Thank god."
"Ha ha. Very good. You give me so much at one time..."
"Dr. X?"
"Yeah?"
"It's hard, making your mark on the world."
"It certainly is. It certainly is. People spend most of their lives trying to make their own mark indelible and then once that's achieved, a good deal of them spend the rest of their lives trying to erase it."
"I know what you mean."
"Well? Back to the game..."