"Yes, it is time for the denouncement. Tell me, you feel that now you are through? You have fulfilled your function?" "Yes. Yes." "Now you will have but to lean back, as it were, so to speak, and see me suffer?" "<i>Yes.</i>" "No. Can't do it, old man. Can't. <i>I</i> know. You're too human, too like me. The one thing a man can't accept is a passive state, a state of uselessness. Not if he can possibly avoid it. Something has to be happening to him. He has to be happening to something. You didn't kill me because then you would have nothing left to do. You'll never kill me." "Of course not!" Victor stormed. "Fundamental safety cut-off!" "Rationalization. You don't <i>want</i> to kill me. And you can't stop challenging me at every turn. That's your function." "Stop talking and just think about your miserable life," Victor said meanly. "Your friends won't grow and mature with you. You won't make any new friends. You'll have me to constantly remind you of your uselessness, your constant unrelenting sterility of purpose. How's that for boredom, for passiveness?" "That's what I'm trying to tell you," Manet said irritably, his social manners rusty. "I won't be bored. You will see to that. It's your purpose. You'll be a challenge, an obstacle, a source of triumph every foot of the way. Don't you see? With you for an enemy, I don't need a friend!" End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Make Friends, by Jim Harmon