Garcia was around so much we often took her for granted. She was often just the default.

Occasionally we would be too busy with our own issues to notice her, and maybe those were some of the few times she truly left us. We weren't totally helpless without her. There were plenty of things in our immediate environment we could control - a saucer here, a cup there. Maybe it was only when we were enjoying ourselves that she left to do her own thing, whatever it was.

We would go looking for her when our control of our world was not enough to meet with our own satisfaction. Sometimes to fight her, sometimes to ask her for help. Garcia wasn't always a friend. At least sometimes we couldn't tell if she was on our side or not. When we didn't think she was, that's when we would fight.

She could be a great friend or a tough opponent, depending on her mood. Underestimating her was always a grave mistake. She had her own set of allies she could call who would always surprise us with their ingenuity, for good or ill. Sometimes it seemed as if she was just trying to teach us that our own goals and desires were unwarranted, that in reality we were only fighting ourselves.

Some claimed that she moved in mysterious ways, but we could never be quite sure if such ideas were just being spread by her own friends, for whatever reason. Our lives didn't revolve around her though, not all the time anyway. We usually invited over, or went to meet mutual friends. Sometimes it would seem like new fights would break out over whether we would have more influence over these friends, or if Garcia would have her way in the end.

Because she was hard to predict, it was exceedingly difficult to find common ground and work on mutually beneficial projects with her. If her goal was just to make our lives difficult, maybe there was no real hope of some kind of understanding, besides accepting the fact that life would always be challenging with her around.

Sometimes we did dream of a future when her power might be better used for everyone, but maybe we never truly trusted anyone with such power besides Garcia herself, and her assorted consultants. That didn't mean we were going to give up though. Garcia didn't seem particularly concerned. Maybe this was just one of her lessons and challenges, who knows.

She knew we could be easily distracted whenever necessary. Too often all we did was distract ourselves, sometimes in better ways than others. Our biggest challenges came not from fighting ourselves, but from trying to fight her. Then again, maybe the only reason we try to fight her was because our own internal battles resulted in the wrong victories.

Peace could be found, but was it ever a peace we would be satisfied with? It seemed it was something even Garcia was pushing against. We couldn't be sure if she was the source of our own dissatisfaction, or if it was internal to ourselves. Perhaps we fed off one another, and the original source no longer mattered - only that it was now something circulating throughout the system, with no fix in sight.

Maybe if we're lucky, she'll give us a solution one day, instead of trying to sabotage us just as we're about to reach the answers on our own.

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