Since no one actually visits this thing anymore, I shall quietly start using it to write stuff.

Practice. And some things to get off the mind.

—

He sat at his computer, just blankly staring at his contact list. 

So that was it. A little twitch in his neurons and the whole world had changed. Was this how those brainwashed radicals felt after they had been re-educated? A little voice said in the back of his head, You can’t be brainwashed if you don’t want to.

“The war is over,” He whispered to himself, alone in his room, the air humming slightly as an unseen small fan nearby panted, endlessly dragging air over silicon and metal contacts. Was there even one in the first place? He was unsure.

Hours  spent agonizing over personal messages and display names. His own carefully crafted display names and personal messages, to the point of exquisitely timing their changes. Sleepless nights wondering whether those playful statements and little questions actually meant anything, whether it was completely unrelated – and then torrents of placid certainty as another name change took place before his eyes and spelled out just another move in the silent indirect conflict.

Was she ever aware in the first place? He tried to ignore the uncomfortable question, but it speared him through the heart, laughed in his face.

Maybe she had won without having to hit a single emotional snag at all. His lip twitched.

Frankly, if that were the case – he would be happy.

But in some dusty corner of his soul he felt a flame of jealousy growing, the firebreak that was reason barely holding, as other names on his contact list stood out. Why should they get their happy endings? Their significant others? When they had made no effort to shield the world from their personal traumas, when they had cheerfully hurt others and wallowed in ignorance and – and he stopped. No point. 

His pride spoke, quietly. The only reason those people could enjoy love was because they were not as intelligent as him. That they had not his burden of knowledge, that they were less aware of the unspoken moral responsibilities that lay on the shoulders of every member of the human race.

It failed to console him overmuch.

That he was both far above and far below them, doomed to his supremacy. A lonely god with no way to leave godhood behind, cursed like Midas.

Gloom descended, and he contemplated that to think like this, in itself, was folly. That no one thought like this.

But he had to, or he would go mad. He had to believe that he gave up shallow thought, ordinariness, and thus social interaction, for something. For the eternal pursuit of knowledge. He had thought that he wouldn’t have to pay any heavy price for his decision to chase the chimaera of thought, that that was just a fiction invented to drive a contrived plot. He was wrong.

Love was the price. He had not known, but now he saw it, in the guttering light of a failed relationship, an awkward silence that lasted a year. He would pay it kicking and screaming, but in the end there was little choice. He would pay it, and weep.

—

Oh my god my throat burns. Heartburn. Heh.

Yeah. I think so.

Tired. Again.

I better not be diabetic. Kidding. Though it’s not something to kid about. But then as Professor Sharon says in The Big U – ” War and violence is not funny – unless it happens to you. Then it is funny, because it has to be!”

Run away! Run away!