Rachel Eckermann 9

Gabriel was in heaven or so he thought. People were looking at him: "Is he a good Jew?" someone asked. "He sacrificed himself or at least it seems so." "It's far too early to tell." Gabriel opened his eyes. The people were not physically beautiful but their souls were radiating. "Who are you?" he asked. "We are the Universal Humanists." "Universal Humanists? Don't Postmodernists kill those people off?" "No. not really. And who are you?" "I'm Korean, but I've been the Wandering Korean, the Korean-hating Korean, the self-loathing Korean, etc. Sometimes I feel like a Jew, but then, I am a little condescending toward the Jews." "At least you're struggling with your identity." "Yes." "Do you believe in God?" "I sacrificed my ego for God, and I ended up here." "Just because you don't have an ego, it doesn't mean you lose control. As Nicole Kidman said in "Days of Thunder," "Control is an illusion." "Then is everything beyond my control?" "Some things are still within your control. You know, we're trying to do the best job that we can." "What do you do?" "We try to prepare the future so that everyone is happy." "That's a noble goal." "Have you met Marx?" "No." "He democratizes everything he reads." "Here is Nietzsche. He makes everything elite. Here is a Fascist and the Reverse- Fascist." "You're trying to achieve balance." "Actually, things just happened this way. We didn't plan any of this, you know." "Yes. So how do I fit in?" "How do you fit in?" "I don't. I don't like life anymore. IF I can't win, it's not worth living." "You sound like a child." "All my best friends wanted to kill me." "You're in the killing game. You need to move up." "How do I move up?" "Only you can know that." They wouldn't treat me like this in Asia." "You don't know that. Besides, just because Asians don't have Western egos, it doesn't mean that they can shaped and formed in any manner." "You're right." "So what do you want?" "Peace of Mind." "You already have that." It was true. He did feel peace. He felt reconciled with all those people he had hurt and yet, he wondered why other people were not punished for hurting people and also why people were so forgiving of him. Not Deborah though. Not Claire. Not Rachel. Did he want Rachel? He was so arbitrary now. Nothing mattered anyhow and he wondered why the fabric of culture had to be so complex.