Star Trek: Mosaic

Yesterday was First Contact Day.

Marty Kirk might've even noticed if he hadn't been so crippled by his neuroses.  Marty had just passed the entrance exams for Starfleet Academy, showed up in San Francisco, and discovered his roommate was an Andorian named Chinook.  Marty had led a somewhat sheltered life to this point.  This is to say, he'd never actually met an alien before.  He hadn't ever really roamed far from his hometown in Iowa.

He wasn't even particularly aware that he share his surname with a Starfleet legend.  He knew what he knew extremely well, but not a whole lot beyond that.  He was probably suited to become a brilliant engineer, or at least some career in engineering, that much had been obvious for years.  He was the kind of kid who drove his parents crazy disassembling household appliances and somehow putting them back together in better and more efficient working order, somewhat complicating life when it sometimes turned out the results weren't necessarily compatible with other systems, although his reputation grew so that neighbors would eagerly recruit his services for more deliberate results, duplicating what he'd done late at night in his bedroom, absently drinking proffered milk, munching on replicated cookies, always, always lost in dreamy thought about the possibilities.

Which is also to say, Marty was simply lost in his own head, and never much enjoyed being forced out of it.  It tended to make him grumpy.  Chinook was a shock to his system beyond all previous magnitudes.  Marty didn't know if all Andorians were like that, or just Chinook, if it made him racist, xenophobic, whatever the term was supposed to be, or if it was just the way he faced all obstacles in life, desperate to escape it.  He applied that first night for exemption, to have his own quarters, and then once a week every week despite every rejection, and frequently found himself at odds with Chinook at increasingly petty levels.

He just wanted to be left alone.

He spent all his time studying manuals and every spare minute in a lab, most of the time daydreaming through classes, lost in the cloud of his own thoughts and resentful anytime a professor dragged him kicking and screaming back the classroom around him.  

It was Chinook who forced him back to reality, or perhaps for the very first time.  He placed a lock on their quarters Marty couldn't force open.  At first Marty fumed, shouting down the hall into every closed door and every one someone foolishly opened trying to will the noise away, and then he just threw himself against the door, slumping down defeated, at which point the Andorian tried talking to him through it.  Marty loudly noted he couldn't hear Chinook and then grew silent for a whole five minutes.  Then he slammed his fist into the door, or rather at the door, because it was at that precise moment it slid open, and Marty's fist ended up colliding with Chinook's blue nose, smashing it out of place.

At the infirmary, Marty apologized profusely for another five minutes, and Chinook couldn't help but grin.  He had an ancestor who probably would have been very amused indeed by the whole affair, but in all the time they ended up sharing together he never once named him.  He instead told Marty he'd been named after a bookstore on Earth, but it'd been closed for centuries, otherwise they might even have made a road trip to visit it.

They somehow became friends.  Marty slowly started making an effort to socialize.  Chinook showed him around campus, even tried to get him into a bar, but of course Marty didn't drink.  

By the next First Contact Day, Chinook showed Marty a holoprogram of the Andorian perspective on humanity's introduction to Vulcans.  That was the day Marty redirected his career.  He had chosen to join his friend in xenoanthropology.  Or to make it official, anyway.  That was also how he ended up learning that Jim Kirk came from Iowa, too.  Chinook just had to laugh at that one...

And It Pleased the Lord: An Easter Tale

In the pit, time had no meaning. David, who used to think of himself as a young boy, when the world still made sense, before he had felt its burden, had momentarily, when he died, experienced elation without the immediate sense of the weight. He saw his son and they had their first conversation about it, but afterward it settled in again. Actually, when he thought about it, it was really that he couldn’t settle. He hadn’t for a long time.

It was the weight of expectations. In the pit there was no parchment, nothing to write with, which for David was a kind of torment. For some people writing is a compulsion only relieved by its act. Otherwise the words store up. It might have helped to sing, but he lacked a harp as well, and he had never been able to unaccompanied. He felt locked up.

It was a long moment, a pregnant pause. He waited.

When Jesus appeared in the pit, David remembered many of the things he’d written, and they all bubbled to the surface. In his days, and under his burden, he had never had recourse to repeat his hymns. These were tasks left to others. Once recorded they had been consigned to history, to others, to later generations, but none of them, when he saw them in the pit, had felt them as he had. 

Jesus was different. David saw that immediately. Without knowing who this man was, he knew. He began to sing.

He found himself exploring notes he’d never used before, words he’d never uttered. They just poured out of him. Those around him, and this was the miracle, rising up like a bubble within his chest, so he felt as if he might burst if he stopped, joined in perfect harmony. He was lost, for the first time in a very long time, among the flock.

And he saw a smile on the face of this man. He knew it had been there before he started singing, but he thought it was a reaction all the same. 

He couldn’t stop singing. He had never been happier. The weight was being lifted at last. And he felt young again.

In the Pit: An Easter Tale

It’s only after you die that you begin to grasp the true nature of God. For God, time has no meaning. That is what the dead learn. Before Jesus died, all the dead collected in the pit, all those who had ever died, both those who knew of and believed in God, and all those who didn’t. There was no distinction. One day, on the day Jesus died, a man appeared, in the pit, Judas Iscariot. In the pit, it was difficult to understand what Judas had done, before he died, since all those who resided in the pit were cut off from the land of the living, as with everything else. But many were curious. There was little to do, in the pit, except indulge curiosity.

Among the believers, there were those who understood the shape of history, in the shape humanity took in history, its relationship with God. Only in the pit could they relax, if they could, if they weren’t consumed by the inexorable course of events. In the pit, too, they awaited the messiah. Those who waited, in the pit, had a much different interpretation than those still existing on Earth. There are no warriors in death. There are no more wars to fight, except doubt. In the pit there was only doubt. Doubt was how they thought of the messiah, since they could only wait.

And yet there was no concept of time. One generation was much like the other. They all intermingled, and they all understood each other, and yet no one knew what anyone else thought. That is the sort of thing you learn in such circumstances.

When they talked, those who believed, who understood, they saw the shape of history, its inexorable march toward destiny. Some of these hoped this would reconcile them with God, even if they had no idea what that meant. In the pit, God was entirely absent, even for those who believed. For many, it was a simple yearning for peace. There was no peace in the pit.

When those who understood sensed that the time of the messiah was ascendant, they began to wonder about how all this would play out. They saw a lot of necessary suffering. They knew someone would have to take the fall. Since the fall of Lucifer, this was a thing that was understood. Lucifer, the fallen angel, the guardian of the pit, the opposite number, at least in his mind, of God. In the pit, no one really believed that, and there were many who wondered if even Lucifer did. There is no opposite of God. There is only the abstract belief that there could be, or should. Or perhaps, the idea of a catalyst against which God acts.

The believers, in the pit, understood that the messiah needed a figure like that, and so that was how they became familiar with Judas Iscariot before they ever met him.

When he appeared, in the pit, Judas was truly the wretched of existence. He was appalled with how things had turned out. He tried to explain himself.

“He told us. He told us what was going to happen. What was going to happen to him. Last night he even told us that one of us would betray him. That one of us already had. 

“I knew what he was talking about, because it was me. I had already been paid to betray him. It wasn’t out of disbelief or disenchantment. I believed. Oh, I believed. Sometimes I even thought I believed better than any of them. It became a curse. I believed, and I understood. I knew what had to happen. I knew that the only way humanity would have the courage to kill him was if he was delivered by one of us. 

“He spent so many years in anonymity and then for a short while he ministered to any who would listen, and there turned out to be a few. Some who listened were jealous. They knew he was better than them. I suppose it’s only natural. The problem is always how to get rid of such people. Usually it’s creating a scandal. He volunteered to do that himself. He made it easy. And still, his enemies were afraid. They needed to be justified. They needed someone to betray him. 

“I saw all this. I knew what had to be done. It didn’t make anything easier. I betrayed him with a kiss. And then I killed myself. And now I’m here.”

In the pit, they all listened to this in utter incomprehension. They couldn’t fathom the insanity of it. Judas was, there, the pariah he had become in life, what he had held in his heart, and what hounded him in his final hours. 

And then Jesus appeared. Even those far away, for the pit was a very large, deep place, knew it instantly. They could feel his presence. He looked whole. There was no trace of what had become of him in his final hours. If anything, he had a faint smile on his face. After all, he had finally endured what he had long dreaded. When you’re God but you have to face time like anyone else, it changes things. That’s when time has meaning. In the pit, it was the first time in decades Jesus was unburdened from time. The faint smile was accompanied, if you were lucky enough to catch it, a sigh of relief. His whole body relaxed.

Then he turned to Judas. The believers thought they knew what would happen next. Holy vengeance. But Jesus opened his arms and embraced Judas. And he gave him a kiss on the cheek.

He forgave him.

No words were exchanged. Everyone who saw this was astonished. There was no time in the pit, and yet this moment had been anticipated for an eternity. That’s what eternity is, a timeless, weightless moment. For those in the pit, they had waited to find their bearings.

None of them could have expected the culmination to look like this.

Those who accepted it, they were finally able to relax. Those who couldn’t, they began a new eternity of torment. That was how the pit experienced the turning point of history. Everyone else, the living, they were thereafter free to believe. Or choose not to. 

A Visit to the Kingdom of Redonda

Several years ago when I was forced to go into hiding for one reason or another under an assumed name and thanks to the generosity of an anonymous benefactor who asked only that I not publicize the results, I paid a visit to the Kingdom of Redonda.

It is perhaps important to note that I was grieving at the time the end of my private detective agency, which I had run with the assistance of a precocious infant with whom I had solved many mysteries, the exact nature of which and credulities concerning are irrelevant to the current tale. 

The Kingdom of Redonda is difficult to describe except to note that it is often seldom in the same place twice and has inspired the dreams of at least several television writers who populated it with all manner of curiosities, not the least of which was a bald man who looked at its eye and saw something other than what was actually there (or perhaps was temporarily blinded, like the apostle Paul, and was later martyred in much the same manner, although to explain further would be a different story entirely).

While there I sipped from a bottle of water I had brought with me that failed to empty the whole time I was there, although this might have no more explanation than perhaps I didn’t drink as much I thought I did, being constantly distracted by the wonders of the island, such as the bookshelves that rearranged themselves even while I browsed them.

I’m afraid there’s not much more to say about the visit, which I now recall I wasn’t supposed to talk about at all, and subsequently must confess is filled with ridiculous lies, which is fortunate because those are the best ones, and thus can inform my benefactor that I followed the letter of their request.

The Kansas Question

Maggie job shadowed for a day at the Smallville Times-Reader. She was assigned beat reporter Ellie Maggin, and it was only a matter of minutes before she caught a staffer cracking the joke she immediately assumed had been traveling around the newsroom all morning, and she told herself, “You’ve got the stuff, kid. You already cracked your first story.”

Ellie’s desk, as it turned out, was actually more like a cubicle, and Maggie watched as she quickly tidied up, not to hide sensitive material from some high school kid but clearly an effort to look more professional. It only kind of worked.  Maggie sat awkwardly beside Ellie for a few minutes, uncomfortable talking with a stranger while the reporter got caught up with the business of the day, listening as the office chatter around them continued, amused here and there by unexpected remarks on both community and cultural affairs.  She'd never really thought about what a newsroom might sound like.  It seemed pretty normal.

Finally, Ellie said they were off to make the rounds of interviews for stories she was expected to file by the end of the day.  One of them was with the woman who'd made the claim.  Just some crackpot, but also the reason Maggie had gotten the invitation, because she'd been the one to listen to this one, the latest in the very long line of people who claimed they knew all about Superman's origins in town.  What set this one apart was that she claimed to know who Superman's parents were, that the mom had had an affair, and that Superman's dad never even had a clue, and so, yeah, wasn't his dad after all.  Juicy.  Ridiculous, and probably not even true, but it was certainly news one way or another, and deserved the attention of the Times-Reader at the very least.

They pulled up to the Kent farm first, just to get the lay of the land.  Maggie didn't know much about cars, but that was another fantasy busted today, what Ellie's was like, which was to say, like any other car she'd ever been in.  They'd be coming back here later.  This was where they expected the drama to unfold.

They left the parked car and headed next door, if "next door" in farmland country meant the same as it did elsewhere.  It was more of a hike than Maggie had anticipated.  "Wrong shoes," she told herself.  The lady she found at the house they found at the end of the trip was older than she would've thought, too, elderly, even, sitting in a proverbial rocking chair, although when Maggie first saw her she thought maybe she was dead, she wasn't moving.  This was Jane, plain ol' Jane.  Maggie went to school with Jane's granddaughter, the one who'd cracked a joke Maggie alone took seriously.  She'd done enough investigating, and math, to take her theories to the paper, just when school was already setting up job shadows for seniors, and that's the short version of how she ended up there that day.

"You come to talk about Superman," Jane greeted.

"Yeah," Ellie said, matter-of-factly.  No dissembling.  Straight to the point.  Professional.  Maggie perked up a little.

"Not much to tell," Jane said.  "Everyone knew the woman was barren.  They never so much as had a pregnancy up at that farmhouse."

Maggie, for the first time, began to consider the implications.  She started to panic a little.

"It was nothing more than an affair with my Jim," Jane continued.  "He was an alien, you know.  Well, folks back then didn't know, that's for sure."

At any other point in history the suggestion would have been greeted as absurd.  But Superman, who looked perfectly human himself, had always been hailed as...Kryptonian?  Was that what they always said?  And he clearly worked with green-skinned Martians.  Others.  These were certainly interesting times.

"Of course, Jim died a long time ago," Jane said.  "Cremated.  No body.  Spread the ashes.  No proof.  All you'll have is my word."

"That's fine," Ellie said, recording all of this, jotting notes at the same time.  Maggie, watching, in that moment wondered if she ought to always have a notebook with her, and unconsciously patted her pockets as if she could have manifested one in them then.

"I don't care what people say, now," Jane said.  "Never did, I guess.  It just doesn't matter anymore.  He's no family of mine.  The Kents can't possibly care if people know.  What'll they do?  Come all the way out here in the middle of nowhere?  Any tourists would quickly get bored.  Not much more to see here than cornfields.  People can get everything they want in the Metropolis giftshops.  The California amusement park.  Maybe we could get a plaque.  Maybe a mention in the history books.  Or the local paper.  No offense."

Maggie started to fidget.  Suddenly she felt dirty.  This didn't feel like a scoop anymore.  It wasn't much fun.

Ellie told the old woman thanks, and they headed back.  The Kents were waiting, with a pitcher of iced tea.  Martha Kent still looked youthful somehow, Jonathan less so, but hardy, the way a farmer should.

"I expect Jane told you everything," Martha said.

"She did," Ellie said, again so businesslike.  They all sipped their iced tea.

"There's no sense denying it," Martha said.

"We talked about all this years ago," Jonathan said.  "I don't think there's much that Jane told you that isn't true.  All of it.  You came out all the way here for nothing.  Just some soundbites, I'm afraid."

"That's okay," Ellie said.

They finished their drink, Ellie put away her notebook and recorder, and she led Maggie back to the car, and back to the newsroom.  Maggie had little to say but much to think along the way.

When the day was over, and they'd done various other things and she watched Ellie type her articles up, Maggie found the courage to ask the question she'd had all day.

"Why?"

"That's all you've got?" Ellie said.

"Why do this for a living?" she offered.  

"Seems kind of pointless, doesn't it?" Ellie said.  "No one is gonna care what news the Times-Reader breaks, not even in Smallville.  And it's kind of insulting to suggest otherwise.  It's a routine.  It keeps the day going.  Superman will still fly off to some new adventure tomorrow, and it won't matter what his father's name was, and nobody will care.  If his mom were famous...But she isn't.  And neither are we.  I'm no Lois Lane, but in the final analysis...even Lois Lane doesn't amount to much.  And she never did.  Just stories journalists tell other journalists.  But somebody has to do it.  And I guess I always had an interest in it.  But I'm guessing you don't."

"And please, please understand it has nothing to do with today," Maggie said.  "I, I'm not judging you.  Not at all!"

"More words spoken just now than all day," Ellie said.  "A girl could start to wonder...I'm kidding!  I'm a reporter, Maggie.  I can read between the lines."

"Thank you," Maggie said.  "I guess that settles it."

"What?" Ellie asked.

"The Kansas question," Maggie said.  

"Your answers are elsewhere," Ellie said.  "They often are.  That's what a good reporter knows best.  Even if they're reporters for a single day."

Later, Maggie wished she'd saved clippings of the articles from that day.  She didn't.  Life moved on.

The Sum of Mankind (Monster/Frankenstein, Chapter 7 & Finale)

For a brief moment in time, Sabin was happy.  Then he learned that his family line was going to come to an end, and he met his last descendant, a woman named Olivia, named in honor in someone who had been a family friend, as far as anyone knew at that point.

     

Olivia was vivacious, charming, beautiful, but if anyone noticed they would have to have looked closely, since she hid herself from the world, and if Sabin ever found out why he was courteous enough not to mention it, and he never forced her to change a thing, accepting her exactly as he found her, and he wondered, eventually, if he would have loved her as she was, if he had not gone looking for her, if he had not intended to use her, and if all this meant perhaps he was exactly as his brother had always feared, and he put all that aside when she became pregnant, was surprised that was even possible, and when the child was born, and it was not a monster, they named him Henry, and that was when Sabin knew he had done something wrong, and he exited both their lives, and that’s why Henry adopted his mother’s name for his own, why he grew up answering to Henry Grenoville, and all the more ignorant of his origins.

     

From afar Sabin watched this family, its struggles and its triumphs, watched as Olivia grew sick with the cancer that would kill her, a cancer he wondered if he might have given her, the impossible trade for the life he had somehow given her.  He watched as Henry grew, telling himself time and again he should have no part in rearing, in guiding, in anything at all, and then the day came in which Henry entered Sabin’s life of his own accord, ignorant of everything he should have known, of everything Sabin could never tell him, but felt compelled to all the same.

     

The years advanced as they always did and Henry grew older, just as Victor had, and Sabin stayed exactly as he had been for two hundred years, and not for the first time he wondered if there was a reason for any of it, or if it was just blind chance and the best he could ever have asked to make of it was the best he could make of it.  He wanted to tell Henry all his secrets.  He wanted to explain.  He wanted a reckoning.  He chose not to, time and time again.  It wasn’t his place, he decided.  He watched as a new Oliver entered Henry’s life.  He remembered that all these people knew or suspected as much as Sabin himself knew or suspected, and had chosen the same paths for just as long.  He poured over the diaries, the books of Victor Frankenstein, trying to find answers, and of course there were none, even though Sabin understood better than anyone what they were.  But that was life.  Sometimes meaning is meaningless.  And maybe that was the point.  He had made conscious choices for however many lifetimes he might be said to have compiled, and he wondered if they had been the right ones, if he had hurt more people than he had helped, hurt the ones that mattered, such as his brother, how his failure to reconcile with him had been a sin for which he could never be absolved, if that was the sum of his life, his judgment, the sum of mankind itself, why he had exiled himself to an embassy of shadows…

     

One day he stopped Oliver Row and asked for a conversation.

     

“I’m new at this, you understand,” said Oliver Row.

     

“That’s okay,” he replied.  “So am I.”

    

“Where would you like to begin?” said Oliver Row.

     

“Right now,” he said.  “This very moment.  I would like to understand it.  I would like to know if I can.  I have decided it’s not important if anyone else does.  Maybe it was a decision I made a long time ago.  Maybe it was a decision I made when my eyes opened again, all those years ago.”

     

“That is a wise decision,” said Oliver Row.

    

“You’re much easier to talk to than I ever imagined,” he said.

    

“Did it ever occur to you to try?” said Oliver Row.

    

“No,” he said.  “I suppose I didn’t.  It just never occurred to me.  I thought it was a different story for so very long.”

    

“The exact nature of my work is something I myself am just coming to grips with,” said Oliver Row.  “Suppose we can help each other.”

    

“I never understood what you were, until now,” he said.  “Perhaps a guardian angel.  I thought you were something else.”

    

“Everyone needs something like that,” said Oliver Row.  “Some more than others.”

    

“I tried to fill the role myself, over the years,” he said.  “I’m not sure I was so successful.  Might have misinterpreted the task.”

     

“I think you got it,” said Oliver Row.

    

“How is he?” he asked.  “I mean, is he okay?  Is he going to be okay?”

     

“I think he will,” said Oliver Row.  “But then, everyone has their struggles.  It can’t be helped, really, if you think about it.”

     

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.  “I never thought of it that way.  Which is a little bizarre, given.”

     

“You’re probably right,” said Oliver Row.  “Listen, I think there’s at least one thing I can put to rest for you.  She forgave you.  She understood.  She always knew the assignment.  You have to, in this line of work.”

     

“Thank you,” he said.  “That means a lot.  I don’t think I was, ah, quite prepared, to hear that.  I will need some time to process that.”

     

“Take your time,” said Oliver Row.

    

“Sometimes I’ve thought I’ve nothing but time,” he said.

    

“Funny how life works,” said Oliver Row.  “It’s going to be okay.”

    

“I think so,” he said.

And the years continued.

A Secret History (Monster/Frankenstein, Chapter 6)

From the diary of Victor Frankenstein:

 

December 31, 1798

My brother died, today.  I’m told it would be better to pretend as if he never existed.

 

July 31, 1802

After several years at this game I’ve decided that was terrible advice, and so filled this diary with all my precious memories of him.  Then I scratched it all out.  Then I wrote it again.  Then I scratched it out again.  I made another copy.  Started over.  Threw it out.  I am somewhat conflicted over this matter.

 

April 2, 1810

In the midst of my studies I came upon curious information, which started me thinking.  I can bring him back. 

 

January 18, 1818

I did as I planned and it turned out to be a terrible idea.  It wasn’t him.  It wasn’t him at all.  I’ve spent the past several years in recompense, and it wasn’t nearly enough.  In the end I had to fake my death, and I’m not sure he knows or cares.  I wrote the whole thing down again.  I may have shared my story with some poets.  There may be multiple versions of this horror.  I have started my diary anew.  I have started it and scratched through it and started it again many times.  How many versions exist?  Am I still the same man I was when he died, or did I change as well?

 

June 8, 1824

The years continue their descent, as do I.  I’ve started my life over so many times I keep new diaries to track each new life, and they’re all lies.  Finally I can admit that.  I confess I’m no longer quite certain I know who I am, what my name is today.  I wonder where this all ends.

 

November 26, 1843

I attempted to collect all the diaries from where I discarded them, even amongst the very trash heaps, and I can find none of them.  There can be only one explanation, that he’s taken them all into his possession.  I don’t think he cares what effect this has on me.  He means to control my legacy.

 

May 1, 1864

If you must know, my name these days is Grenoville, and that is only because I have learned, recently, that I had a son, at some point, a new member of this strange family, of which I was unaware for the duration of his formative upbringing, and yet he knows of me, as if he knows my true face, and I assume this is because my brother took the liberty of informing him, that and the dogged pursuit of Oliver Row, who wants some form of justice, the nature of which eludes me in my advancing age, that and a great many other things. 

 

September 12, 1871

I met him, again, had a whole conversation with him.  We discussed many things.  I mean my brother, not my son.  I never had the courage.  My brother has pursued a similar course to mine, over the years, including the adoption of aliases.  As I sat talking to him I wondered if he remembered his name, if the point of this occasion was to provoke me into stating it.  In truth I’m not sure I do, either.  I am an old man, and there’s no use denying it.  I sometimes wonder, now, if the things I record in here are anymore the truth than what I cross out and attempt to set straight a second and third, fourth, fifth, however many times it takes.  I wonder if my brother reconstructs them, rewrites them with all the words left in, and what a confusing affair it would be to read, whomever tackled such a task ending up as confused as I myself have become.  I suppose it would be amusing.  There are authors who believe that’s the way their readers want to be entertained, I suppose.  Never quite a straight line.  Cleverness for its own sake, perhaps.  It’s not my affair.

 

February 23, 1875

I don’t know why I continue to write in this thing.  I had a thought the other day, and didn’t jot it down, and so I forgot it, and that’s what my life is, now, very far from what it once was, what I imagined to be a clever mind with no boundaries, capable of anything, and then of course I did just that and have regretted it ever since.  I don’t know how many people are honest enough to admit such things.  Perhaps, if they’re lucky, when they’re as old as I am.  If they remember what they regret.  If they remember to regret. 

 

January 12, 1876

I saw him again.  I had to remind myself, this time.  Didn’t remember his face.  Because of his unusual nature he doesn’t age, and I do.  The body died a great many years ago, after all, and he has been living on borrowed time ever since.  Tried to shoot him, this time, but couldn’t lift the pistol.  Don’t know why I have the thing.  A small comfort.  I don’t know whose time he borrows.  Perhaps mine.  The skin is obviously a problem, but he seems to have worked around it.  Walks stiffly, but he gets around.  We’re the same, at the very least, again, for the first time in a very long time.  All told he does it better.  I find myself somehow jealous.  He dresses better.  I was never able to determine how he ended so much smarter.  I remember, now, if I remember my brother at all, to have been a dullard.  Maybe that’s just what I have to tell myself.  Maybe it’s what I always told myself, why I felt so guilty when he died.  But there are so many things I don’t remember, now, that I perhaps recorded in prior versions of this diary, that he stole, along with so much else.  What I gave him.  Let’s be honest for one brief moment, shall we?

 

January 18, 1878

Thought I’d go for a walk.  Ran into him.  My son, I mean.  At least I think it was.  I imagine it was.  Very different fellow.  Or maybe exactly the same.  I don’t suppose I’d know the difference, at this point.  I don’t suppose I care.  Perhaps that’s the true curse of this life.