“That’s exactly what I mean!” said Orwell to Cait. “That’s the point! The Buddha had to strike out on his own before he even understood the concept of community. Peacock puts it very well in his book. These individualists—heroes, if you like—have to follow the call to adventure, which means rejecting all the silly small-town values they have been brought up with and leaving the comfort of home. Then eventually they bring back greater wisdom for the community. Wisdom the community wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

“Well, I kind of feel like communities can get all the wisdom they need from the local library and reading groups,” said Cait, eating a large fry. “This hero’s journey stuff is all about men wanting to go around thrusting with their big swords while everyone else gets on with real life.”

And girls, thought Effie. Girls sometimes have big swords too. But of course she couldn’t say anything.

“Also,” said Cait, “if everyone went off to ‘find themselves’ then there’d be no community left. Just a lot of individuals cluttering up the roads. Like a mass gap year.”

“But how can you help others if you don’t know who they are or what they want? How do you know anything until you know yourself? And you can’t find yourself without leaving home and going on a journey.”

“But—”

“Listen to this bit. . . .” Orwell took the book off the table where it had been sitting next to him the whole time, presumably so Effie couldn’t get it. “Um . . . Oh yes. ‘And weaklings watched and soon they thought/“This life is better than mine own”/And motivated now they wrought/Their own path out of steel and stone.’ ”

“What does that even mean?” asked Cait.

“It means that strong people inspire weak people to actually get off their backsides and do something about their situation. What was it that politician supposedly said a hundred years ago? ‘Go away’?”

Cait narrowed her eyes. “Yes, and then look what happened to the world. The second-worst period in recorded history. The return of fascism. The Third World War. The rising of the seas. The mass extinctions. You know full well that the world wouldn’t be such a mess now if it wasn’t for all those selfish people back then. They were saying on the news the other day that there’s a new theory that the worldquake happened because the sum total of data being carried in mobile networks actually exceeded the mass of the sun for the first time. And then. Boom! The poor world couldn’t take it. All those individuals—”

“In one massive global ‘community.’ Still, everyone agrees that since the worldquake, global warming has been reversed somehow.”