I Have A Theory

Chapter Six, Darius Alone At Night

I'm barely mad at Jeong-Su. Awed by his coldness, stricken by his violence. But mad? What do I have to get angry for? All of it is my fault. I toss and turn in the covers and feel her absence with this much space in my bed. Every breath is a jarring reminder that she's not here to share it. Every motion is a wasted one.

The aching gets harder when darkness comes, and I never sleep anymore. Little cuts of purple flesh below my eyes are ample evidence of that. Simple cause and effect--she dies, and I am reduced to nothing.

Thought I was something before I met her, but maybe that was all a lie.

I remember telling Kimberly that everyone had a foil; I remember turning cockily to her on the bus and describing my theory--the first notion that I had. I've always been one to make theories of things where there's none to be made.

But Eva was indeed my foil. My fall.

How could he shoot her so casually? How could murder make so much sense? That's the thing which really gets me--that I have no counterpoint. I thought you'd lose the game if you broke the rules, but the math prodigy's pissed on them and come out perfect. He walks around with a spring in his step sometimes, like nothing can touch him any longer.

It's because he makes sense.

Not makes sense. Makes it. From chaos, from turbulence, he generates a smooth flow.

And the nonagenarian who's supposed to be disrupting all of that is drooling in his bed right now, unperturbed.

So Yaren Unbrecht is ineffective, Robert Daniel Robertson is questionable, Greene's dead, Kimberly's dead, Eva's...

That one sinks deeper into my chest, making such a huge cavity. Making me sick and mute.

Well, at least I have myself.

My mom had herself to depend on, then got with my dad, who'd raped her. Where does self-reliance get a person? Does it give them glory in the end, absolve them in the end? Does it change them into something stronger?

I feel hollowed out.

If I were entirely self reliant, I'd collapse under my own weight.

The self is smaller than the whole minus its parts. It doesn't even make up for the small gap in mass between those two things. The self is a tissue clamped over our noses, which we blow belligerently into on occasion, just to remind ourselves of its smothering presence.

It has no substance, but weighs so heavily.

I wish I weren't myself.

The hours tick by. I ask myself whether Eva's death should kill me. Probably... The hours tick by, and my answer slowly changes.

I say a quiet prayer and forget her.

Grab some coffee from Robert Daniel Robertson, because it's morning now.

I didn't used to drink coffee, but now everything's different, and I don't have any plans.

I walk to the observation deck and stare at it.

The thing we fight for.

It makes me feel so stupid that I'm fighting others over something this big, this smooth. Like a lunar sea, it stretches, far as Europa's icy crust, cool and textureless. And slick and disgusting.

And if I fell onto it from this height, I would be fine.

Somewhere out there, Kimberly enacts her theory. She's left us all with Park Jeong-Su --abandoned us, alone. I take a deep breath, and feel truly alone. And the last coffee that was my company vanishes down my throat.

And I know what I have to do, but I don't have the strength to throw the game.

It's all roses.

I'll explain later.