(Aristotle has awakened Socrates, who thought he had been dispatched with hemlock. Aristotle is having a vision of the far-future.) See Part 1 HERE
SOCRATES: Let us go on with this vision of yours. What is that collective of nations now doing to our Greece?
ARISTOTLE: They all are meeting at some place called, Paris. They are upset because Greece showed up without written notes.
SOCRATES: How embarrassing -- we developed the art of writing, for Pete's sake!
ARISTOTLE: Our numbering system could use a bit of tweaking. Those damned Romans will not provide much of an improvement.
SOCRATES: But now, what is it that this group wants our Greece to do?
ARISTOTLE: It all has to do with the bartering system they use. Apparently, for the sake of convenience, they have developed a symbolic substitute for the value of goods or services to be exchanged. It is this substitute that our Greeks seem to be misusing.
SOCRATES: Misusing? We Greeks? How is this? Why, we are paragons of propriety!
ARISTOTLE: Be that as it may, it appears things have changed. They are charging our Greeks with all sorts of excesses – even slothfulness.
SOCRATES: Blasphemy! Why, we developed the supremacy of relaxation and contemplation over physical exertion!
ARISTOTLE: That is the problem. It seems the others in the collective do not go along with our Greek thinking in that regard.
SOCRATES: Oh, posh! Say, what was that you were telling me about your students Alexander and Hephastion?
ARISTOTLE: Well, apart from the fact that they cannot keep their hands off each other, Alexander seems to go into a rage whenever we discuss his father's defeat by the Persian king Darius.
SOCRATES: Those damned Macedonians! They are such a bunch of brutes!
ARISTOTLE: Lucky for us they are – or else, our asses would have been in a sling a long time ago!
SOCRATES: Yes, yes, but go on. You were relating Alexander and Hephastion to some super nation of the future.
ARISTOTLE: Yes. In a part of the world not yet known to us, it will be possible for them to be married to each other.
SOCRATES: Balderdash! How would that comport with their future wives and children? Our Greek system serves us quite well.
ARISTOTLE: Any way, I certainly pity King Darias when Alexander becomes of age. From all indications, he is going to be the bullseye of the anger-target that little bastard is painting of the world.
SOCRATES: What is going on in that Paris place right now?
ARISTOTLE: Well, when the crisis began, the Greeks replaced their emissary, who was unsuitable to the other nations. The replacement is attempting to explain how Greece will better control its collection of those stand-in objects they use for the exchange of goods and services.
SOCRATES: How dull -- what have they done with the hemlock?!
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