Aleku eyes lingered on the young student for a heavy, tantalising moment, and he broke out into his signature cheeky cheshire cat grin. “If I didn’t already know you, Rod, I would think that you were a model.”
Rod instantly blushed, smiling as widely as his thick, plushy lips would allow. Whereas Jam was a beauty perfected through techniques, through the intervention of a skilled artisian, Rod’s beauty was like a rough diamond blanketed in piles and piles of dung. Jam knew this, and thus was insanely jealous, as were all men who competed with him, for he was by nature superior to him physically and intellectually. The only advantage Jam had over him was the fact that he could claim emotionally intellectual superiority over him; but if, somehow, Rod got his hands on the Systemcare and successfully changed his personality from a bad one to a good one...well, it would truly and catastrophically be over for the prosecutor. All this Rod knew from the very beginning, for he was supremely intelligent, so much so that he could very achievably hide his genius underneath a heavy rock of of coy-dumbness. It was unfortunate, however, that Aleku's dumb remarks were the perfect rug to topple over that mystique...
Rod reached the set of traffic lights on the corner of a Weatherspoons, wherein lots of young couples sat chatting away over the clinking of drink and suckling of Sterling cigarettes. It was a sore sight to say the least, but Rod soldiered on, wandering aimlessly into the crowd of young and old, of barely dressed and fully clothed, of brown, black and white, of those hungry and fat with ill-gotten gains, of those with sense and those with the sense and the will to accomplish what most are not willing to do; those people, wondered Rod, why were they not punished?
“Oh, oh,” muttered Rod, forgetting that attached to his ear was a device which transmitted all that he said across the internet and into the ears of the man who wanted most his downfall, “oh, I cannot find her in this crowd, or that crowd...or the previous crowd which I had searched most diligently. I cannot find her anywhere! Oh, if she could only see me now, see how utterly and crazily in love I am, to see how much pain my broken heart has caused me! I am the most contemptible, aren’t I? Aren’t I? I reflect upon the few times I have accidentally ran into her on the street, or in the student union, or outside Lidl, and I am at once wrecked with the most damning of confusions, the most wonderous of delusions, the most savage of fantasies! Oh, what can a doctor do for me? What can a medical professional do for me? Isn’t that the career that I have chosen for myself? No, what am I saying? I haven’t chosen it – I have all this time professed, and I still profess, and I professed to the women in question, that the medical profession has chosen me – me – me; because, it has chosen me, I am its greatest mystery, its greatest phenomenon, the unexplainable, the unattainable, the brute that was unleashed onto the world! I am utterly, utterly cursed. No, no, no, there is still hope...there is still hope. Dare I say, gentlemen, there is still hope. For I will not leave this cursed island, I will not leave this miserable wasteland of despair, I will not give up and leave until I get answers! Answers, ladies and gentlemen, answers!” Rod clenched the thin fabric of his shirt passionately, and said louder into the bustling crowd around him, “I will become free from this society! Yes, yes, yes.”
“This cannot be healthy,” Aleku chuckled with an apparent sense of guilt. “Say, lad, it cannot be truly that bad.”
“Bad, bad?” winced Rod, his bulbous eyes almost popping out of his skull as though fingers were pushing it from the inside out. “You truly do not know what bad is, you absolute privileged vermin,” he spat.
“Speak for yourself,” snapped Aleku, his cheeks suddenly burning red like a pair of hot stoves. “Pretty privilege is a thing, you know.”
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“Not with my personality,” said he in reply, “the only justice for this disorder that I have been cursed with is if I was both stinking rich and grossly popular.”
“You do not truly think popularity will solve all your problems,” interrupted Jam.
“There is no such possibility where I am both popular and unhappy,” replied Rod seriously.
“Why?” inquired the businessman.
“Because to be known by all is to be in existence securely, for the self is constructed by the groups around it,” said the handsome prosecutor, sitting back in his chair with his thick cigar protruding out of his luscious lips, looking deeply and intently into the camera with an endearing smugness. “He cannot be alone for too very long, nor can he think alone for too very long, for he ceases to be. His behaviour is not truly done out of a knowingness. His mistakes are not really mistakes, for they were never his to begin with. How could they be? He becomes a puppet, puppeteered by those around him. He becomes a doll for the grown ups, for the authorities, for those he perceives to be in charge. The aim of life, the purpose of adulthood, neurologically and psychologically speaking, is to develop into this self the filling in of this giant hole like the pouring in of cupcake mixture into a paper liner; to realise one’s ultimate purpose – purely materialistically (evolutionarily) speaking – is to achieve this. People are afraid of this, for some reason. And pharmaceutical companies are intent in pathologicalising this process in order to profit from this crisis. People have forgotten that medical professionals were not all what they are now. Magic has been replaced by what we think is objective truth, but it is absolutely not, for science is influenced by political and economic interests. The people have forgotten that mother nature has given all that man needs to survive. Sure, modern medicine has prolonged life, but at what cost? Face it, Rod, has it been such a good idea for you to be kept alive artificially? Should you not have died a long time ago? Should you not have been brutally destroyed by the herd long ago? You were simply preserved out of pity. But what did I say earlier? ‘Pity is simply the weapon of the weak.’ Society has forgotten that compassion was meant to benefit the group. What benefit have you brought to society? You take and take from people, but you do not give back. You take and you steal and you suck all the resources out from society, but all you do is wreck havoc on those who are compassionate enough to give you chances to be their friend. Do you want to know why I am here? Why have I come in contact with you again? I have come to make sure that you do not succeed in any way shape or form in changing your fate. It is too late for you to change, my friend, and any attempt to do so will be in a direct contradiction of British law!” As he said this, his mouth frothed with hatred.
“Wait, what?” croaked Aleku with a worried look, “I can use the system however I please. The government cannot tell me what I can or cannot do with my own invention!”
“Not if you want to keep your patent!” declared Jam with a mocking smile.
“Oh, forget your help on the schematics,” said Aleku, “if I lose my patent then I am ruined.”
“Don’t worry,” replied Jam, “I will be sure that won’t happen.”
“What do you mean?” said Aleku.
“I mean that as long as you do what I say to the letter, that I can assure you that your contract with London will stay intact and all the NHS hospitals in the nation will using your Systemcare.”
Aleku sighed with relief, wiping the droplets of sweat which had collected on his brow, and laughed with unease. “How have I never heard of you when I was busy networking with the top officials in Westminster?”
“I like to lay low, out of sight,” replied Jam.
“This is not fair,” cried Rod with distress.
“Life isn’t fair, my boy,” said Aleku, leaning back into his handmade carved bed frame made from solid African Blackwood, which is among the densest and strongest hardwoods in the world; in fact, Vladmir was the sole proprietor of the particular wood, and he solely requested the deforestation of 95% the Dalbergia Melanoxylon in the southern and central regions in Africa, burning most of it to increase its value; for the African Blackwood comes from a very slow-growing and near-extinct tree. Since his interest has always been to become an alchemist, after watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, his next goal, after gaining permission from the African National Congress, is to amalgamate ivory with African Blackwood to create a new type of material.