Chapter 31: Is a Man Evil Just Because He Is Your Enemy?

When I get home, I begin working on my university courses. I’m reminded of a time when I was a young Ordinary Seaman (OS) in the navy. I was tasked with downloading all the Workplace Hazardous Material Information System (WHMIS) data sheets and making sure each room in the navy’s engineering school had a book with sheets for every hazardous material in that room. I was a spectacle. Every instructor in the school came by the computer lab to watch me work for a bit. I rearranged the computers and desks in the room so that I could operate two computers at a time. I had four computers going because of how slow the internet connection was. I rolled my chair up to the first two computers and print out sheets then get the computer searching for the next sheets. Then I would roll over to the other two computers and do the same. I was continually rolling between the two sets of computers. My right hand would operate one and my left the other. It wasn’t like da Vinci painting and writing a paper at the same time. I think his brain was split more than mine is. With the monitors close together, I had no problem operating two computers simultaneously.

Near the end of the first day of this task, the Petty Officer, who assigned it to me, barges into the computer lab. He was set to chew me out for screwing up a simple task. He thought I was doing something wrong because I was going so fast. When he comes in and sees I have the four computers set up, he pauses before saying anything. He watches for a bit then says, “Bravo Zulu, OS. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.” BZ is navy jargon meaning ‘extremely well done/good job.’

When I learnt how to type, I had broken my left wrist in a motocross accident. I was in High School, taking a typing class with one hand. As a result, I learnt how to type one-handed properly. It made using multiple computers at once a lot easier and faster.

I’m not using two computers since I don’t have the room. There is only one in my bedroom and one in the office. My creative side is doing writeups and blueprints for MD and Northrop. My analytical side is writing up papers for university. It isn’t often I take advantage of the split-brain in this manner, but it is one of the few ways I can keep my mind occupied. I am thankful my young self had my full mental capacity. After the military messed my mind, I couldn’t split it for multiple tasks. I still had the split-mind. This meant there was nothing I could do to keep my mind occupied when needed. I would get to doing something to occupy myself, but always half my mind would wonder places it shouldn’t. It made PTSD and depression unbearable.

Before I know it, I look at the clock, and it is 5 am. I don’t notice how tired I am until I stop and decide to go to bed. I set my alarm for 9 am, and as soon as my head hits the pillow, I am asleep.

I don’t want to get up so early, but I have to phone our lawyers. They are extremely accommodating and agreed to meet up in the hospital room at 2:30 pm. Once I am awake, I can’t get back to sleep, so I go back to work.

I get to the hospital at 2 pm, and Grandpa is irate, screaming at me, “What the hell do you mean, our lawyers will be here in a half-hour to go over our wills? We don’t need to look at our wills. Ellen is going to pull through this and be back home in no time.”

“Grandpa, one of the first things a good martial art teaches is, ‘it is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.’ We are only making sure we are prepared for every eventuality. If you don’t need it, then you don’t need it, and there is no great loss for updating the wills.”

“Who are you to make decisions like that, anyway?”

“I didn’t. When you were buying flowers last night, Gran and I talked about it.”

“You mean you talked and she listened.”

“Calm down. You know that Gran can’t get excited, and you are making her excited. It wasn’t a one-way conversation last night. We set up some signals so she could communicate, and she agreed that we needed to bring the lawyers in today.”

By now, she has regained some strength and can move her head. When grandpa asks if it is true, she nodded yes.

I pull out a piece of paper and place it on the small meal table every hospital uses for the patients in bed. The paper is a printout of a keyboard. Both my grandparents look at me funny.

“This will take less out of Gran than trying to write while she is too weak. She points at letters, and somebody else does the writing.”

I got the idea from a friend that lost half his brain in a car accident. The entire right side of his brain was dead, but somehow, he lived. When he was first released from the hospital, the only way he could communicate was using a large printout of a keyboard.

It took the entire half-hour for me to calm Grandpa down. When the lawyers get there, I let them know they have to take frequent breaks, and they will likely have to come back a few times before they are finished. It isn’t the first time they have seen something like this, so they are prepared.

It is none of my business what they put in their wills, so I say my goodbyes and head home.

When I get focused on something, I tend to forget simple things like eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom and basic hygiene. Thankfully, I noticed the time this morning and had some sleep. I took care of hygiene before heading to the hospital. I make a snack because I forgot to eat breakfast and lunch. Then I get back to writing and drawing.

I zone right out. I don’t hear the knock on the door or Dahlia entering the house. My first indication she is here, she is standing in the doorway to my room, and she says, “Hi.” I about jump through the ceiling; she startles me that bad.

“Sorry, I get preoccupied when I am in the zone. If I don’t have somebody pull me out of it, it isn’t pretty.”

“Finish up. I want some alone time with my boyfriend since he stood me up this morning.”

“Give me five minutes.”

I didn’t mean to, but I zone out again. The next thing I know, Dahlia is shouting my name, “TRENT, TRENT, supper is ready.”

I think for a moment, then say, “I guess I am famished. Sorry, I zoned out on you like that.”

“Don’t worry. It was fascinating, watching you work like that. I didn’t know it was possible.”

“There are reports of many people in history being able to do it better than me. Granted, they had a lot more practice than I have had. My family didn’t exactly nurture my intellect.”

“Supper is getting cold. We better eat.”

She walks me to the dining room, and we take our seats. She has prepared my favourite, rib eye steak with fried mushrooms and sautéed onions. There is no need for vegetables because they are the toppings for the potato and steak. There is almost as much onion as there is steak and half that of mushroom. Then there is the potato. It is overfilled with bacon bits, green onion, cheddar and sour cream.

“You’re being unfair to the other girls. You obviously found out the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

She giggles at that. The rest of our meal isn’t as pleasant. The conversation is on darker things, mostly what is going to happen to our companies when Gran dies. She is the primary signatory for all our paperwork. Since we are all minors, few things are legally binding with our signatures. Sam will always question everything he signs. He doesn’t have the education or intellect to understand the ramifications of signing things. Worse yet, he doesn’t understand the damage he will cause by putting off signing. Grandpa is our only hope. If I can get Gran to tell him to trust me, he will fall in line and do as I ask. Failing that, we will get the other parents, one to a company.

“Now that I think about it, it is better if we have a different parent listed as the CEO for each of our companies. There is going to be at least two years where we will be busy with something else, and it would be good if we had the parents to fall back on.”

“Busy doing what?”

“One of my secret projects, you will learn about it when the time comes. When we graduate, you will learn all about it.”

“You do know that you have a group of friends that you don’t have to keep secrets from?”

“I know. It isn’t a secret. It’s a surprise. We have other more important things to think about at the moment. I did all my investing through Gran. I don’t trust her broker. We do enough trading we can hire somebody who is licensed to operate in one or more of the stock exchanges. We can create stock portfolios based on my knowledge of the future.”

“That will make us a ton of money.”

“Not as much as you might think. Most companies don’t have their stock prices skyrocket overnight. Most have a slow and gradual climb. There are a few exceptions, but then there will only be a limited amount of stock we can buy in each of those. We will do better than most, but nobody is getting rich overnight.

“The parents and you girls will need to use it for savings. Up until now, you could leave your money in a savings account, and every seven years, your money would double. The banks take no risk since they are allowed to lend out 10 times the money they have. The banks get greedy. Soon they will charge you for the privilege of having a savings account. It isn’t enough that they loan out your money ten times over. They charge you so they can have the privilege of making money off your money.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s the way the world operates. Greedy corporations will continue to push boundaries until somebody stands up to them. By then, the corporations are so big; they steamroll anybody that tries. There is nothing one man can do about it, even knowing the future. It is a matter of people not standing up when they should, then wondering why things get out of control. People blame the corporations, but in truth, the people are just as responsible.”

“There must be something you can do.”

“The only thing I can do is what I am doing with the defence industry. I am slowly taking control of the companies that later merge to become super arms merchants. I may end up making a super merchant, but it will be one I control, and so, I can weed out the corruption and immoral practices. Then I will put safeties in place to ensure their continued morality after I am gone.”

“You can’t control morality like that.”

“Actually, you can. In 2017 China begins a social experiment. At first, it is only implemented in a handful of smaller cities. It is a point-based system where you get points for donations, volunteering and your contribution to society. You lose points for every crime you commit and bill you are late in paying. If your point level is too low, you are denied access to the tram systems and are forced to take the bus: the higher your points, the higher your credit rating. You can apply for a government job, and the guy better qualified for it may not get it if you have a higher point rating.

“Most experts around the world were like you and said, ‘You can’t legislate morality.’ Well, it turns out you can. In 2019 the program expands by 2030 all of China participates.”

“And it really works?”

“Talking to people that were forced to live it, yes. Even a lot of people that were rated low enough that they weren’t allowed to take the train agreed with it. I met this one boy that cosigned a loan for his sister. She defaulted, and he didn’t know until it was too late. The bank seized some of his assets and his score tanked. He ended up volunteering in shelters and soup kitchens. It was something he never would have done otherwise. The experience taught him a lot about humanity and he saw the need for the system. It was sad that he was penalized because of his sister but he was a better person because of it. He admits the system isn’t perfect. He even admits, he should have been penalized so harshly for signing for his sister when he shouldn’t have. No system is perfect, and they are the one nation that tried to combat the decline of morality.

“The guy is also thankful he was forced to volunteer because of all the experiences he gained and the things he learnt.”

“Wow, China did that. Here I thought they were just a bunch of evil communists.”

“DAHLIA, I’m surprised you would say something like that. You think somebody is evil simply because they were born on a different part of the planet?”