Free The GOD Box by Melissa Horan Page B

started out really slow as any old man without exercise experience was prone to do. Just when he started feeling relief some twenty yards from camp there were slow muffled foot steps behind him. Gabe was going so slow that this big fellow could catch up to him with regular sized steps. Gabe’s chest immediately tightened. And he glared behind him briefly as he went. Well, they weren’t going to stop him from running. Shortly after the attempt to continue, he just didn’t want to keep trying. He knew it was depression creeping in. Should he just keep going in effort to keep himself sane? He certainly tried, and there’s merit in that. He stayed moving as long as he possibly could, probably going no more than a fourth of a mile.
    Feeling dejected and like a failure, Gabe returned. Back at camp, Jonathan was engaged in a calm conversation. Hm. Must’ve taken his meds. As a matter of fact that’s exactly what they were talking about. Jonathan held one pill up and feeling like something he had to say was interesting to them was encouraging. May seemed concerned with it, looking skeptically from the pill to Jonathan’s eyes. Miek was sort of listening and was also distracted by a cloud…
    Hopefully they would like the idea and see the kind of intelligence they were coming from and trust them a little more. Wishful thinking. Gabe frowned and watched as he stretched. He tried not to think how he looked, because he hadn’t stretched for years. However, he was trying to put on a show that he was still in charge of himself, that they can’t control his habits, because he was a well-organized, healthy person. That, and he wanted an excuse to listen without being bothered. He was hoping that Jonathan had really thought it through and made an intelligent decision to share those things. Not likely.
    A few minutes later, May and Dane were engaged again in patient conversation. Jonathan hadn’t noticed that she left. Gabe now listened to them instead. Right now they were quiet, allowing each other to think and ponder. The couple wasn’t paying a lot of attention elsewhere. May was zoned out at the ground and Dane was looking with grave concern at the food on a large banana leaf.  They sat that way for some time. What a weird relationship they had.
    May tightened her eyebrows, “But didn’t Talvo talk about that subject in “Origins”? He covered the history since the “beginning” of time, expressing that if we could understand where we came from we could find confidence in where we are going?” May’s finger quotations around “beginning” were undoubtedly a recent addition to her theses.
    “Yes, but I think he was mostly referring to economics and social growth.”
    “Sure, but perhaps it could be applied here.”
    Dane nodded and considered. “I agree, though that seems like a lot of information to sift through.”
    May nodded and before Gabe even realized it, she was watching him as if she’d been aware of him the whole time. She had a book in her hand and a finger in the place where she was. She looked back at Dane. She shrugged, frowned, and said sarcastically, “It’s not that much, just thousands of years we don’t have access to.” She paused, “Well…” she said practically, rethinking her statement. “We really only have two hundred years’ worth of human life and thought to work with ... And whatever these two know and want to tell us.”
    “We’ll tell you. We’l l tell you anything,” Jonathan started, so immediately ceasing one thought about the pills and beginning the other that they weren’t sure who he was talking to at first. Then, he looked at them, “as long as you don’t kill us.”
    Gabe nodded enthusiastically as though it was a brilliant deal he’d never thought of. He liked that. Unexpected, friendly volunteering from Jonathan, too. Great . “What’s that book you got there?” Gabe asked May. She looked at it and then showed the cover,
    “The Purposeful Existence by Orna