Melanie had grossly misinterpreted Newton’s third law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, for sure. But she was mistaken when she expected her push to elicit an equally forceful push back. She had not accounted for the fact that most people prefer to shove harder. She had forgotten to pick her enemies carefully because the way those enemies fight is who you become.
“This is not good,” Mark says, telling me what I already know. He’s here to prove a point—many points, actually—and he’s started by barging into my office. Now, he’s standing there, waiting for me to say something, the weight of the world on his shoulders. When I fail to come up with anything that fits, he shakes his head. “In fact, Tom, this is very, very bad.”
Mark has a tendency to exaggerate. I have no idea a
