The Monopoly at the Crossroads Was Unravelling. And as It Unravelled, the World Had Begun to Love It
Gemini 4 Argon became generally available on 13 October 2026. Google added it to the AI Mode options for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.
How I came to speak well of Google
About a sceptic of monopolies, a well-argued answer from AI Mode, and the strange kindness that appears when a colossus begins to falter
The meal after the hram
It had reached the hour at which a Sunday meal between two related families moves past the polite stage and into the sincere one. The plates of sarmale — cabbage rolls, the dish without which no Romanian gathering counts as a gathering — had been cleared, the cozonac, the sweet braided loaf that ends every feast, remained half untouched, and the Turkish coffee was making its rounds through the house, brought in on a tray whose metal rim had been worn dull by years. I was there because the hram — the patron saint's feast day, when every Romanian village and neighbourhood gathers at one table — had brought everyone together: the in-laws come from the countryside, the cousins from town, an aunt whom nobody could say any longer exactly in what degree she was related to us, but who had, like all aunts in the world, the right to say anything about anyone.
The conversation arrived, as it always does, at the people of the village. Someone mentioned Mr Vasile, the man who had kept the general store at the crossroads, the only one for several kilometres, for nearly thirty years. And then the thing happened that stayed with me: the whole table began to say only good things about him.
— A man of real humanity, said my uncle, setting down his cup. He kept us on the ledger a whole winter, when we didn't have a leu to our name.
— And he'd bring the flour right up to the gate, added my sister-in-law. He never asked for anything extra.
— And at Ionuț's wedding he sold the wine at cost, concluded the aunt, in the tone of someone closing a file.
I listened, I nodded, and for a few seconds I felt very comfortable in the role of listener to a beautiful story. Then I felt something unpleasant, like a stone in a shoe. Because I remembered something else. I remembered that ledger. I remembered that the debt on the ledger never quite died, that the prices were a few bani higher than in the town nobody went to, because the road cost more than the saving. I remembered that, when a man from the village had tried to open a rival shop in a garage, Mr Vasile had been the first to find out who owed him money and who did not. I am not saying he did anything illegal. I am saying he knew exactly what power he had and used it sparingly, the way those who never need to raise their voice use it.
