“Besides money and recognition?” said Rod, raising an eyebrow. He put a finger to his chin and began to tap his beard as he pondered what he might ask the billionaire. Growing more confident, he said, “Say, it is mighty strange that you own almost half the real estate in this city (and others up and down the country) and yet you have never once offered to let me stay rent free. I want you to void my rent and refund me of all that I have spent thus far.”

“A travesty!” cried Aleku with disgust, “that I can simply never do.”

Rod frowned and shook his head. “And you call me a terrible friend,” he tutted, peering through the sprawling and shaking twigs at the riverbank as he walked on slowly. He came to an iron gate, and a much narrower concrete pathway behind the back of some terraced houses. A black, velvety silhouette of a young woman appeared in front of him, almost half-way down the alleyway, the cuffs of her pants flaring like vintage bell bottom jeans, and he was stricken with terror; it reminded him of a previous memory of her – of a late Monday evening - in which she overtook him quickly on the street, half-glanced at him, and walked away leisurely. He often wondered since then where she was going, concluding that she must have been meeting a man on a date. For a split second a red-hot anger swelled like an enflamed balloon in his chest, but it quickly dissipated when he remembered that it was he who suggested she date other men, and that he did not mind it (he suppressed it), for he thought she was going to do it anyway, and at least in this way he could retain some semblance of control over the situation that he felt was overtaking him.

“Is it possible,” Rod began, a slight hesitation in his voice, “to use the system to block out memories?”

“Certainly,” replied Aleku, “I don’t see why not; but usually we want to restore or modify memories.”

“Modify?” said Rod, intrigued. “And it’s safe?”

“Safe as can be,” said Aleku. “What? You want to use it on yourself?”

“And what of it?” exclaimed Rod, rubbing his chin.

“Well, nothing...it’s just that it’s a very invasive surgery. It’s not exactly very comfortable – or at least it doesn’t look it. We tried on monkey’s you see...the screams were maddening.”

“I should think that you conducted your trials ethically, Aleku. But according to my own gut instinct I don’t think that’s the case.”

“Oh, my good friend, Rod, I am a friend of the animal kingdom. I saved an elephant from a poacher the other day.”

“Really?”

“Headshots the both of them,” laughed Aleku.

“How funny,” groaned Rod, rolling his eyes. “But it’s safe, yeah?”

“Safe? Of course it’s safe... I should think it’s safe, anyhow.”

“Oh, bother! Do you really not know how safe the procedure is to implement the product you put out?”

“I don’t agree with your callous disregard for recklessness,” said Aleku amusingly, “and, what is more, Rod, I have gut feeling you don’t care for it either. You simply want to argue with me. Isn’t that right, boy?”

Rod strolled down the dark alleyway, his fingertips slowly grazing the gritty stone slabs on his right. “I think that you are worth arguing against only because I still care about you. Many people have told me in the past that I argue too much, but I only argue with those I care about. Why else would I waste time arguing against a wrong point someone has made unless I truly care for them to come to the same truth as I have already reached? Oh, I know already that you will argue against this very point, so let’s move past it, shall we? Tell me, oh businessman, why you and our good friend, Jam, no longer talk to one another. Has he too noticed that money changes a man? No, what am I saying? Money does not change a man – it merely reveals who he really is.”

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“And of women?” said Aleku teasingly.

“What of women?” asked Rod with a flat expression.

“You used the masculine pronoun. I assume that you were specifically talking about the masculine race because why else would you use the masculine pronoun if not specifying that specific gender,” he said with characteristic smugness, “unless you were trying to put forth a specific point using an archaic, heavily masculine denotation to refer to both men and women; because if so, my dear learned friend, you would be committing the ultimate sin in this day and age - that of being wrong.”

Rod’s muscles tensed in his face, and he gritted his teeth. “You-you,” he stammered.

“Yes, I can be a jackass too,” exclaimed Aleku in his obnoxious, whiny voice.

“Answer my question,” said Rod.

“People grow apart; what more can I say?”

“You are hiding something,” replied Rod.

Aleku paused for a few moments. “He became too out there,” he answered finally; “Yes, that’s it, though I am not sure how to phrase it any better than that in the common tongue. He became too, how should I put it, off the rails; his opinions, dare I say, his opinions became too unmanageable, too unwieldy, too dangerous. He became, forgive me for saying this about a common friend (or is it, ‘mutual’?), politically untenable. I know that it was perhaps wrong (for I do feel guilty about it) but I did offer him a way out of it – to keep our friendship; he could have kept it, he could have kept it, he could have kept it. Are you listening to me? He could have kept it, but no, the leftists got him. The damn leftists got him. I knew he was a lefty. Of course, I was as far right as you could get on the political compass. But we made it work all those years because it was all ironic, you know? It was all painfully ironic,” Vladmir voice cracked, and he coughed miserably down the mic. “I genuinely feel bad about it,” he continued, “Now, as a rule, I do not make friends with those who are politically out of alignment with my own. Now and then I do chat to a lefty here and there, and I do respect some, most notably the communists in Oxford University, and we even agree on certain key principles. Most often, however, I destroy them in my own particular brand of argumentation I call political argumentation (the only correct type of argumentation) and they get slaughtered by the brute force of facts, to which they know none. Then I experience, Rod, I experience a euphoric feeling not so dissimilar to those mind-altering portions they have begun to sell on the deepweb; I experience, Rod, I experience the beautiful sight of seeing a person I so much detest lit on fire, dancing miraculously like a tribesman.”

Rod sighed, placing a hand on his burning forehead. “You are so very racist, Aleku. How on earth are you a billionaire I do not know. Each second knowing you makes me want to be a communist, for at the very least men, no, people like you would not be allowed to exist with such resources as now you command so frivolously. Oh, how can anyone not become a communist after meeting you I do not know. To tell you the truth, Aleku, I despise you even more after having this conversation.”

“You do?” chuckled Aleku. “I am not surprised. Weak men without a lover of their own, Rod, are apt to take up dangerous ideas,” he added. “Perhaps your goal, instead of blocking out memories of the past (and thereby continuing to live in it) should be, as I have told you countless times before, simply to acquire a new girlfriend of your own. You will soon forget about her, I guarantee it. It is a horrible thing to go through, heartbreak, although I cannot relate to it personally myself. The most I have felt is a week of heavy drinking after breaking up with my first girlfriend and a quick chat with the boys (of whom you weren’t a part of specifically) and then back to manual labour at my dad’s company. There is no doubt a man is meant to outlive a broken heart (can heart’s even break? Not in my experience). This is because, and I have come a long way in forming this opinion (so please do not make fun of me for this as you have often done in the past), I have come to realise, like a man turned forcibly away from the illusive show on the cave wall, the frailty such a belief in the intrinsic strength of monogamy entails; for it is like a knitted top – a quick tumble dry and it all comes apart at the stitch.” And Aleku erupted into a belly laugh, “And I was raised to believe in the integrity of the family unit!”