Corruption

by Carl Dyke

This was a dream. These guys were working in some foreign country. It wasn’t clear if they were missionaries or project engineers but they were good people, there to help. And they’d gotten busted for calling in prostitutes. A lot, routinely, so much so that they were getting blackmail callbacks from the local mob and causing problems for the home office, whatever it was.

No one could understand how this had happened, because these were good guys there to help, and this was against all previous evidence of character. So they were asked why. And they said well it was so cheap, and the girls were so good at it, and just waiting around for something to do.

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3 Comments to “Corruption”

  1. Did you ever hear that old maxim “Be good. If you can’t be good, be kind. If you can’t be kind, be careful”?

  2. Channeling the unconscious of the world again, are we Carl?

  3. Ha, yes, and yes.

    I thought it was fun how neatly the dream sidestepped the whole question of morals as such, or rather situated them as local adaptations to what turn out to be very narrow conditions. As usual if you want people to act in a way, you have to set things up so it makes sense for them to act in that way.

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