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All Miles could get out of him was that it was a personal problem, or coulda just been gas, but Bill needed to come down. Which meant that Miles had to go up, at least for a day or two. Miles knew that this was always the plan, he’d signed up for it, but that didn’t stop everything from suddenly becoming a little more real. He packed a bag of basics and let his crew know the deal, even Tiana was unbashingly supportive while he gathered himself, but as last minute as it all was, nothing had ever felt more right.
He started up the ladder as he pulled it behind him, now was not the time for letting guards down, except for Bill. The treetop reunion was short lived, Bill was excited to see a face other than Paul’s, but whatever it was, had him on a collision course for getting the hell out of there. He rappelled down and Miles pulled back the rope, he was officially subletting SkyFortress for an undetermined amount of time, game on.
The sway of the trees took some getting used to, and remembering not to look down, but all was put at ease when Tiana delivered a basketful of Indian tacos. She’d gotten easier on Miles, not that she was more nice, but more like she was less not nice. Miles would take what he could get. And now that he was a bonafide Water Protector floating high above the riverbed, he almost thought he saw a smile seep out down below, unless that was just the Indian tacos.
Paul, however, was more than ecstatic to be shacked up with his old dirthouse buddy. They’d been on two very different adventures since they first arrived, but it had all circled back as fate reconnected their journey. Paul showed him the ropes, get it, and by the end of the day, Miles was in full swing.
There was plenty of time to think. About all sorts of stuff. About the seemingly global conspiracies unraveled around him, and his firsthand experience of this one. One that the followers from home were sure to consider fake news, if it ever made it into the media’s propaganda to begin with, which only made Miles reconsider the fringe theorists, now that he knew not to trust anything he’d ever been told.
He spent a bit of time daydreaming about Annie. And Annie. And the mystery girl from his prologue, still unsure if she had ever really been real, or simply a Tyler Durden of internal motivation. Either way, he’d grown unrecognizable from the trapped mouse he’d once been. He had a hard time even remembering what it was that had him so paralyzed, and from his heightened perspective above the cage, he saw clearly the mechanisms that continued to enslave the prisoners of self-preservation.
It all seemed to come down to the same bottom line. Money. Those with the least, are left scraping change to avoid eviction, desperate to get ahead of the escalator to nowhere, and certainly no time left to stand up for those most affected by the socio-ecological crisis. And the university graduates brimming with inspiration to change the world, swallowed by student loans and sentenced to a mortgage, conditioned to believe that increasing one’s debt limit equates to more accumulated adulthood, which requires the grownup decision of foregoing the most impactful career in favor of the job that pays the bills, no matter how underutilized their passion becomes, but only for the next thirty years or so.
Jobs they don’t love. Jobs they hate. Jobs created just for the sake of creating jobs, the pointless monotony of clockwatching busywork, zero chance of fulfillment as their time is occupied with wasting their life away. Jobs that destroy the health and vitality of the world around them. Or themselves. Jobs with commutes, and traffic, and demanding bosses that pressure the help into working for the weekend and living for retirement. And their children taught that school is their job, as they’re indoctrinated into a society of weekend warriors who exchange hours of freedom for credits on a slip of paper, plus a half hour lunch break.
But if they don’t play along with the colonial workload, then they’ll have no chance of ever demonstrating value, forced instead to resort to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And just how many channels of the current crime syndication can be traced back to the same root of evil?
Gangster rap sheets, for one, which clears up a good bit of the youth pushed into violence and the drug trade. But without a way to capitalize on the import of the substances destroying our population, it seems there would be little motivation for all that hard work in the first place, or for the rug required to clean up the drug deal gone bad. In fact, lots of murder weapons can be traced back to the same underlying motive, and pretty much all larcenies, as well as the whites collared for blackmail and extortion, and defrauding their bankrupt clients, who then spiral into depression and the aforementioned drug addiction, sparking a new crime wave to feed bad habits, until they either illegally take their own life away from the pain, or find themselves kicked to the streets as the victims of their own vagrancy violation. And then it gets really bad.
For what incentive other than money, and therefore basic survival, would a person be willing to sacrifice their own skin to the filthy world of the sex trade? Prostitution and all that comes with it, both legal and not, both consensual and non, all of it seems a tad implausible without a forced indenturement to the dollar bill. What else could possibly push a teenage girl into taking her clothes off for a stranger, or fuel someone else into selling her off to a worldwide network of sex trafficking? And more importantly, what kind of society allows the pursuit of paper products to supersede any concern for its disposable innocence?
It’s the same one that sends its boys off to die in the name of resource management, which inspires a return flight of terror as our victims beg us to just leave them alone, which only justifies our own increased spending as we pad the pockets of the privately owned war machine.
And the same privatized penny pinchers profit from the overcrowded cells of their excel spreadsheet. Without a just cause to break their convictions, just how many of their returning customers would lock in a deal of crime just for the fun of it? Some, maybe, though the roots of evil run deeper than the eye can see, but crimes of passion could still be a thing in a moneyless society. So at least our warden has job security, and maybe now he can prioritize quality over quantity when it’s another human being’s life in the commissary line.
Of course, that could also be said of the prisoners to capitalism, forced to exchange a life of premium ingredients for whatever cut-rate substitutes fall within their dwindling budget. How could the wealthiest country in the world feed its people so poorly, ignore its homeless so overtly, extort its sick so despicably, treat its hardworking immigrants like thieves, its veterans like trash, its women like slaves, and all while incarcerating the most nonviolent inmates in the world? Money.
Miles hadn’t really thought about it much. Hadn’t exchanged an hour of his life to pay for the right to live. Hadn’t had to prioritize the basic fundamentals of existence according to a price tag. Hadn’t had to consider some unspeakable act in order to feed his family. He hadn’t even had to feed his own dependence on tobacco.
He’d worked harder than the rest of his life combined. But without some bossman to own his time, he was able to live his own life while he did it. Didn’t even feel like work really, except for the pickaxe maybe, it was just a group of friends creating something beautiful from their collective energy. Which was how this place felt in an even bigger way. And here he was, putting his neck on the line in a way you couldn’t have paid him enough to do two months ago.
Everything he needed to survive had been built into his journey, and every step he followed his heart, not his wallet, and he’d discovered an abundance of life that is simply unachievable from within the confines of consumer spending.
He understood that money had been spent in his honor. Cap had been buying food for him to eat, Levi had paid for gas on the trip, the gifts of Spirit were coming from somewhere. So he was still contributing to the delinquent fees by proxy, not completely free of the dollar’s grasp, but he felt it release its hold over him, as it no longer had to be a primary component of his own psyche. It held no influence in any decision, big or small. He was free to do whatever felt right in each moment, without concern for some manmade concept of limitation. And nothing but brilliance had blossomed into his life ever since.
Plus, there was that whole exploration of love’s boundaries and moonlit romance that didn’t cost a dime, and it taught him how to follow his heart, and it doesn’t take an economist to know the difference between love when you follow your heart, and love when you follow the money. He’d never experienced anything even remotely as rich as the life he found himself waking into, it was as if this was who he was all along.