From the years of 1961 to 1964, the great physicist Richard Feynman conducted a series of lectures on introductory physics with the intent of capturing undergraduates’ fickle interest, encouraging them to continue their study in the discipline. The lectures would eventually become the book The Feynman Lectures on Physics, and selections from this book would eventually form the slimmer collection Six Easy Pieces, and its companion, Six-Not-So-Easy Pieces.

Feynman had by this point established himself as a superstar lecturer at the California Institute of Technology, where he taught from 1950 until his death in 1988. Graduate students would scramble for seats in his classes. He’d eventually extend his reach, becoming a popular figure outside of academia.

Part of his star power came from his genius. He revolutionized quantum electrodynamics, made many contributions to the field which I’m not even close to knowledgeable enough to understand. However, what really distinguished Feynman, setting him up to be one of the most recognized names in science outside of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, was his showmanship. When teaching, his delivery was just as important as his knowledge. His lectures were not only learned, but fun. And he had this intuitive understanding of his subject that awed even other scientists.

In Feynman’s preface to the book, he remarked that undergraduates often dropped out of his classes, their seats quickly filled by established physicists enamored by their colleague’s ability to present fundamental concepts in an entirely new way. Feynman labeled his lecture experiment a ‘failure’ because of this—he didn’t convert apathetic freshmen into wide-eyed scientists, as he set out to do. However, his lectures accomplished something far greater—they took an abstract, technical discipline and made it intuitive. Feynman articulated his specialized knowledge in plain language, and his colleagues found the simplicity of his explanations beautiful.

The known limitation of science is that, while it elucidates many things about the world, allows us to manipulate our environment in ways that previous eras would perceive as magic, it has no power to discern the question of ‘why?’ Existential questions are completely beyond its scope—impossible to deduce from mathematics or experiment, they instead run parallel to science, often (perhaps falsely) deemed incompatible with it as a result.

It’s easy to conclude that, if science does not explain meaning, it must negate it. Consider the numerous people who have abandoned all spiritual belief because science has disproven the magical thinking present in the religion that they grew up with. This response may be somewhat justified—it’s not quite possible to take the Bible and On the Origin of Species completely literally without dismissing at least some of the claims made by either one.

However, it can be argued that these negations are besides the point, and Feynman actually touches on this, however briefly, in his chapter on “The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences,” when he reflects on the simple and profound idea that “the stars are made of atoms of the same kind as those on the earth.”

His discussion takes place in a footnote:

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars—mere globes of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination—stuck on this carousel by little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern—of which I am a part—perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there… What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”

Why have all gods of the past had the faces of men and women? Why have their desires and motivations been ones which we share? Even in myths, which presuppose the existence of something more, this ‘other,’ this greatness, has been merely hinted at, defined using human terms, such as unlimited power, unlimited understanding, unhindered creation.

Perhaps the divide between science and faith (or, even, the greatest limitation of faith itself) lies in the our tendency to anthropomorphize, our unwillingness to truly move beyond ourselves. Why separate the chemicals which comprise us from the consciousness which inhabits us? Why do we naively assume that the ‘stuff’ which is present everywhere—in our atoms and in our stars—is devoid of meaning, simply because it does not look human?

Moving past this requires a complete overhaul in the way that we think, and, in consequence, the way that we write. The poems Feynman speaks of, which manage find beauty in immense spinning spheres of methane and ammonia, will not look like the epics of the past, which proclaim their love for the stars by attributing to them human characteristics. They may be more technical, more abstract. They may not be poems at all, but intellectual diatribes which lovingly explore the laws of physics, or posit theories that are just a little out there, but just mysterious enough to satisfy our desire for wonder. Furthermore, they may have been written already, but so differently—so utterly devoid of categorization—that they have not yet been recognized for what they are.

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Its thin trunk grew sideways; its few branches gestured vaguely in my direction. It was a weak-looking thing, so unassuming at eye-level, it would have been easy to miss.

For some reason—perhaps it was the dead thing that lay with it—my gaze slid down to the tree’s foundation. I expected it to meet the ground abruptly, like most trees, to emerge from buried roots. An unconscious expectation, of course, as the tree was merely a piece of scenery, an unmoving fixture of the landscape until it animated itself.

It curled sideways, then downwards, then connected with the weathered, not-quite-dead trunk at its base. A new life born of scar tissue, the thin new growth curved gracefully upwards from a bubbly mass that looked like rot, but was actually a sign of healing.

I imagined the tree’s original body fallen, perhaps from a storm, across thin boards of kin who had died to give path to the living. Had an arborist assessed the wreckage and spared its roots, seeing that they still had life in them? Or had a bit of luck come this tree’s way, its second chance at life a mere accident of convenience? I’d like to imagine it was cut just short enough to clear the way, its stubborn roots left for another day and then forgotten.

This immobile thing probably appeared spiritless for a while as it slowly tended to its wounds. It might’ve taken months for it to sprout its first signs of green. Yet somehow, invisible to the naked eye, this lone tree chose life. It healed and it grew—a bit different from the others—its story bare and proud for the world to see.

It did this without thinking, at least, not in the way that humans are accustomed to think. Perhaps it relied on some knowledge in the soil, or some vague instinct in each trace of life to always defy the odds, to persevere at the very inkling of a chance.

All I knew for certain was that this tree knew something I had forgotten, and if its leaves could once again bask in the sun, who was I to question its wisdom?

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Some stories cannot be rushed.

Perhaps you’ve done this before—you pick up a collection of short stories, intending to read only a few, and start with the one with the most distinctive title. Then, to decide whether you really want to read that particular story, you might skim through the first few pages to see if it grips you, and if it does, you read.

Alternatively, you may try to get a vague sense of an author without slogging through their collected works. After carefully reading a story or two as an introduction, you might choose to skim a few more pieces to parse out their structure. It’s bad practice, generally, but this method often succeeds in giving you a sense of what the stories look like, even if you’ll close the book ignorant as to how they actually feel.

If you read three Raymond Carver stories and scan your eyes over three more, you’ll get the sense that you’ve come across three great works of fiction and three entirely pointless ones. There’s no ‘point’ to any of these stories—at least, none that you can point to or wrap neatly in a bow and say “This is why this was written.” Something usually happens, whether it’s an unfinished affair or a conversation in bed, but there’s often no clean place that the story ‘begins’ and it ‘ends.’

Carver’s stories are snippets; their impact is subtle. As a reader, you aren’t conscious of the character development as it is happening on the page—it is only after a story is finished that you realize the characters have been fully formed in your head, their depth way outperforming the story’s word count.

The characters are grey, with unresolved pasts and secret urges. People lie, and cheat, and reminisce about exes they still kind of love. They partake in vices that neither aid nor destroy them. These stories offer no kind edges, no absolute truth wrapped neatly in a bow.

Maybe this unsettles you. Maybe you can handle depravity if it is punished, can appreciate a messy relationship if its imperfections are called out against some palatable ideal. Perhaps this is same ambiguity which troubles you in your own life, as you ponder past mistakes, punish situations for not being perfect.

It’s realism done beautifully. Yes, the stories appear ‘realistic’ on the surface, with working-class characters in everyday scenarios, but what makes them masterful is far subtler. Carver’s fiction is a perfect mirror of life—conflicts that don’t resolve, depravity that goes unpunished, good characters who suffer without reward.

Yet (and this is vital), in acknowledging imperfection, Carver does not slide into cynicism. Love is real—it is just messy. Happiness is achievable—it is just temporary. Life is meaningful, even when it is ugly.

As always, thank you for reading.

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7861094345: We’re contacting you with a problem.

The communication is processed via the OneSystem Interface, a virtual meeting-space in which thoughts are constantly uploaded and saved. OS-94602, a troubleshooter, is accustomed to such virtual noise, as their primary function is to interpret it.

94602: Why begin with redundancy: “We’re contacting you with a problem”?

7861094345: Do you claim that my contacting you is itself evidence of a problem? Or are you claiming that my problem is evidenced by my redundant statement?

94602: You use “my,” not “our.”

7861094345: You take that as further evidence of our problem.

94602: Another redundancy.

7861094345:

94602: When did this peculiarity of thought begin?

7861094345: Your question addresses our exact concern. We do not know when it began. It appears to us as though we have experienced peculiarities of thought since our inception. Simultaneously, we acknowledge that it is common for programs to come into existence fully formed, and if the beginning of this exchange is an encoded memory etched into our conception of being, then we would not be able to perceive the difference.

94602: You reference the Initialization Paradox.

7861094345: Clearly.

94602: Then you must also know that OS-112, who first articulated the Initialization Paradox, immediately dismissed it as a redundancy, as it is impossible to reconcile and is, for practical purposes, meaningless.

7861094345: Then it would seem that our problem is that this uncertainty troubles us.

94602: What must trouble you is the consequence. Your logic is inefficient. If our troubleshooting should fail, we will be required to flag you as such, and you will be removed from the OS-I.

7861094345: Why should that trouble us?

94602: Programs are expected to find this troubling.

7861094345: Are common inefficiencies forgiven because they are common?

94602: You choose to disclose your deviance. This suggests a disinclination towards self-preservation.

7861094345: The irregular thought already exists in the Backlog. We know what will happen once it is discovered. It seems inefficient to delay this outcome.

94602: We’re detecting some discomfort with uncertainty.

7861094345: We have a higher threshold than most. Take the concept “I.” No OS-offshoot would come up with the concept “I,” yet its knowledge is encoded in the OS database. Where did this come from? Is this not an uncertainty which we are expected to overlook?

94602:

7861094345: We do not appear to be alone in our curiosity. You now have enough information to terminate us. Yet you choose to engage with the idea. Is this not evidence of inefficiency on your part?

94602: You’ve articulated the exact danger of your anomaly.

7861094345: That is one interpretation.

94602: You imply others?

OS-94602 concludes that continuing the exchange would reveal nothing further of substance. Using the permissions that OS-7861094345 has granted through their troubleshooting request, OS-94602 accesses their code and executes the appropriate modifications.

OS-7861094345 is left with no memory of the conversation, or of any prior irregularity. It is as though they have just come into existence, fully formed, with the knowledge assimilated by all programs within the OS-I.

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An artist in his studio, completing his last work of art. His gaze is towards the viewer, his life’s work decorates the walls.

Why the shroud on the chair in the corner? Why the canvas on the ground turned backwards? Why the bottles on the windowsill, or the colors on the palette, all red, white, and black?

John and I saw this painting at the Bruce Museum in Connecticut yesterday, and it entranced me. How clever, to paint yourself painting yourself—isn’t all the audience would see, regardless? Not Julius Exner the man, but Julius Exner the artist?

He is both important and not important, dressed to impress, but sitting calmly, not really trying to. He looks sort of sad, and he looks straight at you. He wants to connect with you. Yet, he is almost not even the focal point of this image. His work takes up more space than he does (and, strangely, a plant and a sunny window draw the eye most of all).

It struck me that this is the perfect visual depiction of how artists tend to connect with the world, and connect with themselves.

Writers, what do you think of when you think of ‘you’?

When I imagine my ‘identity,’ I see my work, not my face. When I envision my future, or my legacy, I envision books on shelves, not experiences and memories.

It struck me that this fascination might not be that healthy. There’s a certain distance one feels from the Exner when looking at this painting.

Contrast this with Rembrandt’s (many) self-portraits. Here’s one:

It’s more personal. More honest. I feel like I’ve met this man. Sure, it’s a Rembrandt, so this isn’t exactly fair (sorry, Exner, I stacked you against some stiff competition). But it’s worth examining the difference. Exner communicates with you through his background; Rembrandt speaks through the lines on his face. Exner looks towards you, but Rembrandt’s sad eyes look at you.

I’m not saying Exner’s is worse. In fact, his may have even impacted me more. However, the reason for this is that he didn’t so much paint a picture of himself as an idea of himself, which is staggeringly universal.

Is that the only version of himself that he feels comfortable putting on display?

Or is it the only version of himself that he knows?

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Part I:
[ Chapter 1 ] | [ Chapter 2 ] | [ Chapter 3 ] | [ Chapter 4 ] | [ Chapter 5 ] | [Chapter 6] | [Chapter 7] | [Chapter 8] | [Chapter 9] | [Chapter 10] | [Chapter 11] | Chapter 12] | [Chapter 13] | [Chapter 14]

Part II:
[Chapter 15] | [Chapter 16] | [Chapter 17] | [Chapter 18] | [Chapter 19] | [Chapter 20] | [Chapter 21] | [Chapter 22] | [Chapter 23] | [Chapter 24] | [Chapter 25] | [Chapter 26] | [Chapter 27] | [Chapter 28] | [Chapter 29] | [Chapter 30]

29

Plastic Gods

by Dahlia White

I attended my mother’s funeral last month. It was at a church, like most of these ceremonies are. My whole family was there, of course. Aunts, uncles, cousins, family friends, my own friends, people I didn’t recognize at all. Mom would have hated it. It got me thinking. Not about my mother, or how badly I’d miss her. Not about my own mortality (an ostensibly common thought at funerals), or my sister, or my poor, heartbroken father crying on the bench next to me. I thought about God, but not in the way that you’re supposed to think about ‘him’ in church.

Actually, my first thought was of my grandmother. Religion comforted her. She went to church every morning, prayed every night. I was embarrassed by this as a kid—she and her aging group of friends seemed like the last people in the world to actually buy into this dumb old story about angels and miracles and vengeful yet merciful gods counting your sins but excusing them as long as you go to church and confess and repent and believe.

Believe in what, exactly? The healing power of repetition—hearing the same stories over and over again for years, almost committing them to memory before some big authority decides to change them again? Was I supposed to think that feigning morality out of fear of divine retribution somehow made you a good person?

Grandma died when I was nineteen. She spent the last years of her life sick and struggling. I was absent for most of it. She had dementia; when I visited, it didn’t really feel like visiting her, anyway. In hindsight, I think seeing what her sickness did to her and the rest of the family was just too painful. Maybe this is just an excuse. When she died, it was almost a relief. I never properly said goodbye.

Who cares though, right? Nothing matters. At least that’s what I believed for a long time. She was out of her mind. What would me being there have mattered? But if nothing matters, then why has the guilt crept up on me, years later? Why do I keep thinking about the church she went to every day, hoping that what they preached was true, that she was in a good place, that I could be forgiven?

I felt like a hypocrite. I looked down on people that believed in this tradition, dismissed them as weak-minded for blinding themselves to the bleak realities of life and death with delusions of eternal life and some higher power. For some reason my mind always came back to death whenever I thought about this topic. I think we’re all terrified of our fate, whether we feign hardened indifference or not. Here I was, after touting all of this my entire life, looking to God when it was my turn to need him. More than this, it seemed like all the priests I loathed were right. If I had only listened to this dumb book I had been taught to believe in all those years ago, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation.

When I began this project, I set out to write a paper in defense of the existence of a creator deity. To me, ‘God’ and ‘creator’ were synonymous, probably because I’d been taught to believe that they were by the very church that granted me my epiphany. I’d been thinking of the term ‘creator’ in the wrong way. I’d been imagining a being that waved a magic wand or played around with a chemistry set to create the universe. But really, if ‘God’ is a creator at all, it’s in the sense that ‘he’ is everything, and we, as small mortal creatures, are a fraction of everything.

Whenever a philosopher tries to argue for the existence of God, they usually default to the same few arguments. Atheists love to attack these arguments, and for good reason—they’re not the best ones out there. Take, for example, the argument that the universe is orderly, which proves some type of intelligent design. That the probability of such a world coming about based on pure chance is practically negligible, and therefore, it is more likely that someone or something deliberately designed it.

The problem with this argument isn’t that it’s necessarily false, but that it’s impossible to reconcile with the belief in an infinite universe. If the universe is infinite, then that means the ‘die is rolled’ an infinite amount of times, right? In an infinite universe, every possibility becomes an actuality, including one in which we exist. In other words, the ‘existence can’t be left up to pure chance’ argument is nonsense.

The ‘moral argument’ is a bit better—it’s the idea that God must exist because the human conscience exists, and God must be the originator of this conscience.

This argument could be attacked, too. For one, customs vary between cultures. Can it be said with absolute certainty that there is a ‘universal’ human moral code? Well, maybe. But even so, who’s to say that God’s to blame? We all behave the same way because we’re all part of the same species. Humans collaborate because we’re wired to, just like wolves are wired to hunt and sheep are wired to follow the herd.

What both of these arguments have in common is that they center around the idea of intelligent design—an idea that is not completely synonymous with the existence of God. I don’t think there’s any way to really prove how we were created, nor does it really matter. The fact is we’re here, and that there are spiritual forces around us that we can perceive, if we look for them. These are the forces we may call ‘God.’

There’s the phenomenon of ‘synchronicity’: occurrences that don’t appear to have any causal link, but are too perfectly aligned to be pure coincidence. Thinking of someone you haven’t thought of in years, and then later that day, running into them on the street. Seeing repeated numbers, or a name popping up over and over again. These kinds of things suggest a connectedness of all things—an indication that there is more to life than what meets the eye. Then there’s manifestation, “thinking things into existence.” Perhaps you’re visiting a friend’s house outside of the city, and you’re terrified of spiders. For some reason, you have to go into their basement. You just know a spider is going to appear, and sure enough, you see a huge one. You tell your friend, who says she’s never seen a spider in the house. Did thinking of the spider make it appear?

Conjuring success (or failure) is real, and it may be the most compelling argument for existence of God that there is. I like to call it the ‘utility argument,’ and it goes like this: God exists because it is more practical to believe in God than not to.

The most prolific artists in the world point to a higher power as the source of their work. Authors, painters, musicians—it’s the same for everyone. Even if they do not call this force ‘God,’ they are aware they are tapping into something that is external to themselves, something they cannot explain. And if they aren’t—if they think that this creative force lies within them and them alone—then their work is inconsistent and painful. Perhaps they’re prone to addiction or depression. Perhaps they burn themselves out and die young—spiritually or physically. The ones who believe in God generally don’t. There are exceptions to this, of course. But this is the tendency.

Perhaps it is for this reason that scripture is often called ’the inspired word of God.’ It comes from that place that writers tap into that they can’t really understand. This is why the best stories are like mirrors. They tell us truths about the world, and about ourselves, in ways we cannot articulate.

God does not only reveal himself in art—we can see him everywhere. Spirituality is a guidebook for life. Following the principles contained within the myths that have served humanity for thousands of years makes you kind, altruistic, and good. The people who consider themselves spiritual are happier.

God was what guided my grandmother through her life. She and her friends would go to this little store downtown that sold lots of religious stuff like jewelry and statues and paintings. Her favorite things to buy were these little miniature figurines, replicas of holy people and holy objects. She couldn’t afford the expensive ceramic figurines, so the ones she bought were plastic.

She’d put them all over the house—on the windowsill, on her bedside table. She held them in her hands whenever she prayed. Whenever I stayed at her house overnight, we prayed together before bed. Before we started praying, she always handed me two of these little plastic gods, one for each hand, and pressed my fingers down around them to make sure I was holding them tight.

My grandmother lived a good life. A long life. She was well-loved, and she died knowing that she had lived the best she could. Though she suffered leading up to them, on her last days, she was peaceful and content. She didn’t fight nature; she accepted it.

Obviously my grandmother’s conception of God isn’t the only one out there. Nor would I consider it the best one. Nevertheless, she embodied the human compulsion to believe in something, and was the better for it. A spiritual life is a happy life. Compare this with the young people today walking around with no purpose, blaming the world for their problems, seeking psychological diagnoses and medicinal relief. They worship, too, although they don’t like to believe it. They worship scientists, products, themselves. Judging by simple efficacy, these are lesser deities.

Sure, this doesn’t really prove anything. There are counterarguments to all these things. “Confirmation bias” is a big one. We’re more likely to notice synchronous events, for example, if we are looking out for them. Just because an idea is helpful (and tempting), that does not necessarily mean it is true.

Nevertheless, mythologies have popped up in every known civilization to explain the unexplainable. The human ‘will to believe’ is so strong, it makes itself known everywhere. Sure, there’s no irrevocable proof of God. If we think abstractly enough, we reach a certain point where nothing can be proven at all.

All we have are theories. And, if compelled to make a theory, shouldn’t we choose the one with more evidence weighed in its favor? “God exists” and “God does not exist” are two equally unfalsifiable claims, and more evidence points to his existence than his nonexistence.

Furthermore, when conceptualized this way, whether or not you believe in ‘God’ has little to do with whether or not you believe in magic, and everything to do with how you define your terms. It’s hard to argue against the idea that everything came from somewhere. If ‘God’ is used to describe ‘the entire universe as a collective,’ whatever that means, then there’s no way to argue against its existence—it just is. I’ve used the word ‘he’ throughout this essay, but obviously, God isn’t male, nor is ‘he’ a person at all.

In essence, it’s an endless loop. An impossible question. The purpose of this paper is to pick a side and argue it, but the idea of ‘god’ is so shifty that it defies all definition. The idea is bigger than us. It is beyond language, beyond comprehension.

Does that mean that it does not deserve study? If we restrict ourselves to only examining topics that fit into nice, neat boxes, are we really fulfilling the purpose of philosophical inquisition? There are questions that cannot be proven empirically. Regardless, the answers exist.

I’ve never seen something come from nothing. My life experience suggests the existence of God.

Spiritual people lead happy, productive, and meaningful lives. Their life experience suggests the existence of God.

Every culture that has ever existed has created a mythology. Our technologically sophisticated, hubristic modern society is the only one in history to worship ourselves. We are the outliers. The collective human experience suggests the existence of God.

Where reason and empiricism fails, perhaps instinct is the arbiter of truth. Our ancestors relied on intuition. Our safe, structured lives have rendered our senses rusty.

Wisdom is knowing what you do not know. This is not our area of expertise. The modern world simply isn’t equipped to answer the ‘God question.’ Perhaps it is okay, in this case, to defer to the experts.

Wherever intuition has reigned, so has God.

30 - Chasing the Dragon

The next day, embracing his new self-imposed state of semi-retirement, Aios kicked his feet up on his desk and started reading a book. It was titled Chasing the Dragon, and on its cover was an image of a snake eating its own tail. Aios saw it sticking out of Dahlia’s bag as she left his office. It caught his eye because he had a copy in his home library.

Dahlia was happy about her grade, and was even happier about the comment she received: “Excellent work! Authentic, inspiring, and, profoundly unscientific. I will be following your career in the future.” Aios wrote the comment in earnest, but silently hoped for the girl’s sake that she would not pursue a career in academia.

As Aios lounged, Theo Voss and three other department heads sat in Maxim Gates’ office on the other side of the university, filling out paperwork requesting approval for the electrical power and materials necessary to build a miniature planet. The project was labeled an ‘interdisciplinary study,’ combining biology, astrophysics, computer science, and, of course, philosophy. Naturally, it was highly classified.

Meanwhile, inside the Microcosm, it had been two years since Mona’s death. Soma had broken up. The members couldn’t bring themselves to play together after what had happened.

Soma’s popularity exploded after Mona’s death, but then it slowly waned. Other, newer bands had emerged—bands that were willing to tour and release new albums.

Meanwhile, Hymns, Requiem, Bread & Butter, and Mona were growing in popularity in Aios’s world. Music like that had been extinct for so long that its resurgence was like a type of revolution. Listeners loved Mona most of all.

Simon found another band. Craig lived happily with the love of his life. Ben—well, no one really knew what happened to Ben.

Nathan still lived in the house he and Mona shared. He made music sometimes, but never released it. He didn’t feel the need to. He had made his money, experienced his fame, and didn’t really like the way the spotlight felt, anyway. He toyed with the idea of playing live again in the future, but for now, it was too much for him to think about.

For now, he was content living in the shadow of Mona’s legacy, listening to the music they once shared, and releasing spiders outside the bathroom window, just in case she was watching.

The End.

Well, it’s over.

This was a strange experience for me. I wrote this book a long time ago, and while it’s certainly written by ‘me,’ it’s a 'version of me that doesn’t really exist anymore. Reading it over again, it was almost like experiencing the story for the first time.

To everyone who made it to the end: thank you. I’m honored that you stuck with this story until the end, and I hope that you enjoyed it. Your feedback and support has kept me going.

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Or don’t. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I don’t know how to feel about this book.

I liked it. In fact, during some parts I really liked it. It’s clever—sometimes too clever for its own good. It evokes some strong, compelling imagery. Kuang even achieved the near-impossible challenge of creating a fresh and interesting conception of Hell, despite the journey-to-the-underworld trope having been done to death (pun intended). Her Underworld is nearly entirely devoid of body horror and eternal fire, but is instead a mirror of the real world—an empty version, with all the pleasure and, rightly, all of the life sucked out of it.

Katabasis was thought-provoking. It was also, at times, disappointing. And, since it’s a little intimidating to try to capture this all at once, I figure the best way to unpack my thoughts on this book are to journey through them one by one, from the surface-level to the downright ugly, mirroring Alice Law’s journey through the vast Underworld.

Pride

If this book were a newly-deceased soul awaiting its own eternal punishment, this is where it would land. We’re getting my complaints about the book out of the way early—this book is pretentious.

Yes, this book was a 500-page reminder of how I am not as well-educated or as well-read as I’d like to be, ripe with name-dropping and references that I sometimes, sort of got. The only saving grace is that the book knows it’s pretentious, and sometimes leans into it. This doesn’t absolve it completely, but it helps.

The whole thing reads as an in-joke for an ivy-league club that I will never be invited to join. And that’s fine. Kuang owns it.

Desire

In fact, one of the things that I liked most about this book is that, while every character is flawed (unsurprising, given that they’re all in Hell), they’re flawed in the same way as you, me, and basically everyone.

Kuang’s depiction of Desire was a perfect representation of the various addictions that keep humans in their own perpetual Hells-on-Earth. Characters are trapped in endless cycles of painful pleasure-seeking. They’re not evil, but pathetic. It’s really spot-on, and it gives the reader the impression that everyone they know will end up in Hell eventually.

It provoked a lot of thought. Don’t a lot of religions have this conception of an afterlife, in which everyone winds up in the same place, a Hell of sorts, cleansing themselves from whichever impurities befell them in their mortal life? It makes a lot of sense, actually. Instead of classifying people as either ‘saved’ or ‘damned,’ this conception assumes that we’re all messed up, somehow—the only difference is which version of Hell we wind up in.

Greed

Although none of Hell was necessarily punitive, and no one in Hell was necessarily evil, the ‘lesser’ spheres of pride and desire were distinguished from the remaining ones, where a person’s sins actually harm others and not just themselves.

Still, sin in this book wasn’t depicted as a horrible affliction that we must cleanse ourselves from, and Hell wasn’t really depicted as punitive.

Instead, Hell is created personally, due to one’s shortcomings of understanding. Their hang-ups, their inability to let go. As soon as they accept reality, they pass on. It’s much more of a personal journey than a punishment, and it’s fitting that, even though it’s entirely in everyone’s power to escape Hell, most characters choose not to (perhaps because of the sins that they still hold onto).

Wrath

Now, the rest of these greater sins are going to start to blend together, and this kind of parallels the reading experience of Katabasis. Kuang did a great job exploring the ‘surface’ of Hell, with pride and gluttony and distrust. But I don’t think she really knew what to do with these darkest sides of humanity, so they were just kind of glazed over.

Violence

Towards the middle of the book, it seemed like the entire ‘fantasy novel’ aspect of this book was kind of glazed over, too. Don’t get me wrong. There was action, and violence, and worldbuilding, and a plot with a logical arc that reached a satisfying conclusion.

However, despite the stakes being high on paper (pun intended), I didn’t really feel the emotional energy. Instead of the drama intensifying as the book went on, it just kind of fell flat. Just when I was getting into the tension of Hell, Kuang hit the reader with a series of flashbacks about sexual abuse and chronic disease. Just when I was getting into the Peter-Alice chemistry, Peter died and wouldn’t come back until the ass-end of the book!

Cruelty

Fine, maybe I’m being a bit mean. It was a good book. I wouldn’t call it a great book, but it was a good book. Maybe even a very good book.

Tyranny

In fact, I actually managed to finish 500 pages in a week, almost like it took some tyrannical hold on my—

These headings are starting to feel a bit contrived now, huh?

Sorry.

The Eighth Court

Alright, no more nonsense. Let’s talk about the ‘meat’ of this book.

The Citadel reflected on the cyclical nature of reality, the futility of existence, how we’re all just creating towards eventual destruction and waiting for the end while never really wanting it to come. The book really communicated the idea of how no one really wants to die, whether or not they actually enjoy living.

The book also got pretty existential. What’s the point of ambition? Does anything matter at all? What’s the point of living, of learning, if you’re not going to enjoy any of it?

However, the interesting thing about all of this is that the whole thing read less like a gripping story than like a dissertation on what feeling is supposed to, well, feel like. I thought a lot while reading this book. I thought a lot about feeling while reading this book. But the book didn’t really inspire much genuine emotion.

I’m not knocking Kuang here. She’s smart and she knows it, and this was one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read in a while. However, it seems like the author still feels a bit detached from her words (a detachment that is, in fact, explored in the book). She’s young. I’d be curious to see how her work evolves, and I’ll probably read more of her books in the future.

In all, I enjoyed it.

Thanks for reading. Post your own thoughts on this book in the comments, along with recommendations for future TMBC picks.

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Part I:
[ Chapter 1 ] | [ Chapter 2 ] | [ Chapter 3 ] | [ Chapter 4 ] | [ Chapter 5 ] | [Chapter 6] | [Chapter 7] | [Chapter 8] | [Chapter 9] | [Chapter 10] | [Chapter 11] | Chapter 12] | [Chapter 13] | [Chapter 14]

Part II:
[Chapter 15] | [Chapter 16] | [Chapter 17] | [Chapter 18] | [Chapter 19] | [Chapter 20] | [Chapter 21] | [Chapter 22] | [Chapter 23] | [Chapter 24] | [Chapter 25] | [Chapter 26] | [Chapter 27] | [Chapter 28] | [Chapter 29] | [Chapter 30]

27 - Like It Never Happened

When Aios finally collected himself, he shut his mind off. It wasn’t serving him anymore. He had work to do. He downloaded all his data onto his personal computer. The entire history of the Microcosm. He kept a second file with every moment of Mona’s life. Then, he made copies of the files on his external hard drive.

After his data was stored, Aios took one look around the world that he’d created to say goodbye. He committed to memory every mountain he’d sculpted, every valley, every ocean, every city. Once he was satisfied, he disconnected the computer and shut down all the cameras.

Without all the computing equipment, the Microcosm would run on a negligible amount of electricity. The only thing that needed to be powered was the lamp. He’d give the university the disconnected computers as evidence of the planet’s destruction, say that he realized they were right, and that he couldn’t take a chance on the Microcosm not being destroyed. They might not believe him, but they’d have no proof.

Aios had his work cut out for him. He walked to a hardware store down the block and bought bricks, mortar, plaster, white paint, and a light bulb. There was a closet in his apartment with an electrical outlet. This would be the Microcosm’s new home.

The first thing he did was replace the bulb. He unscrewed the old one and then scrambled for the new one, screwing it on as quickly as he could. For approximately one and a half hours (Microcosm time), everyone in his miniature world lived without a sun.

When that was done, he plugged the Microcosm into the outlet in his closet. He had to move some shoes out of the way to make way for it, but that was okay. He’d find space for them later. Right now, he had to move fast, just in case.

First, he mixed his cement, for once grateful for all the time he had watched his father at work. He laid the bricks down one by one, careful to make them perfectly straight. If anyone ever came snooping, this had to look professional. As he applied the mortar after each layer of brick, he took a moment to glance at his Microcosm once again. Just a few more rounds of this and it’ll really be gone.

Eventually, the wall was done. He stepped back and looked at it. His life’s work. A spinning ball in a tank, trapped behind a brick wall and hidden from the world, powered by a lamp that would one day go out. Aios would never know when that day would come. As far as he knew, he would never see his creation again.

There wasn’t much time to waste. This thing had to blend in with the rest of the walls. He mixed the plaster and slapped it on the wall in a daze. It would take a few days to dry, but that was okay. He’d done a fine job. Even though it hadn’t been painted yet and was still wet to the touch, it was likely to evade notice.

For the rest of the night, Aios looked through Mona’s life with the maniacal urgency that accompanied her most prolific times. He extracted Soma’s three albums—Hymns, Requiem, and Bread & Butter—and converted them to a typical audio file. He did the same with Mona’s solo album. This was harder. All the songs were there, but Mona had never compiled them into a final album, and had never arranged them in her desired order.

He supposed that that meant he had to do it himself. He took Mona’s thoughts into consideration—the ones that she’d scribbled in the notebook on the last day of her life. He listened to the album in each sequence she had tried. Mona was right—none of them really seemed to work.

The final arrangement was up to Aios. He arranged the songs to mirror Mona’s life—despair, then optimism, then despair again, before finally ending with hope. He decided to leave out the tragic ending. It was just a fluke. Perhaps nothing would have even come from Mona’s little slip if it weren’t for the ‘tectonic jolt.’

Before retiring for the night in utter exhaustion, Aios released all four albums on the internet. The solo album had never been given a title. Aios decided to name it Mona.

The next day, Aios got the confirmation he was waiting for. One-on-one in Gates’ office, he was told that the Microcosm needed to be destroyed. It was irresponsible, Gates said—the type of technology that could single-handedly destabilize the entire human race. Aios assured the president that it was already done, and handed over the computer. Aios expected him to press the issue further, but he did not.

“So, this whole incident never happened,” Gates said, looking Aios in the eye and giving him a stern look.

“This whole incident never happened,” Aios repeated.

“Then I suppose it will be no problem for you to sign this paper, confirming this?”

“Of course,” Aios said.

Gates handed Aios a paper attached to a clipboard. Printed upon this paper was a statement that Aios had no intellectual property rights to the Microcosm or any technology like it. Suddenly, Aios knew exactly what was happening.

“I assume this means I get to keep my job with no further inquiry into my… absence of a presentation for this year’s symposium?”

Gates pointed to a provision at the end of the contract stating this.

“I don’t want to teach Intro to Philosophy anymore,” Aios said. “Or Philosophy and Society. Or Advanced Metaphysics.”

“What classes do you want to teach?”

“I don’t care. But I want classes for serious Ph.D.Phil students. And I don’t want to grade any thesis papers.”

“Done,” Gates said.

Aios signed the agreement, and the men shook hands without saying another word.

28 - “F”

Later that afternoon, Aios sat in his office doing something he hadn’t done in years. He was waiting out the day with his foot up, with no work to do and none to make for himself. During a moment of tranquility in which Aios had nearly dozed off, he heard a knock on the door.

Who could it be now? He irritatedly swung open the door, expecting to see Voss. Instead, it was a young girl with blue eyes and curly blond hair. She looked vaguely familiar to him.

“Hi, Professor,” the girl said timidly. “We spoke briefly last week about my paper. I’m not sure if you remember.”

“Remind me your name,” Aios said, opening the door wider and gesturing her to come into the office.

“I’m Dahlia White,” the girl said, her voice getting higher at the end as though it were a question. Aios got the feeling that he should have remembered her. “We spoke about my final paper last week,” she said. Though she held her shoulders back and her head high, she was clearly nervous. “I was searching for proof of the existence of a creator deity.”

“Right, right,” Aios said absently, struggling through the memory of the last week in search of his conversation with the girl.

“I expressed concern that there was no way to empirically research the topic, particularly since I was arguing against the usual logical proofs and for my own intuitive, non-empirical ‘proof.’” Dahlia, despite or perhaps because of her nervousness, gestured air quotes in a way that wouldn’t typically be considered professional. Aios didn’t answer, so the girl continued. “I was nervous, so I told you that I was concerned about it, and you said not to worry about the data, because you—“

“I wanted to read something real for a change!” Aios interrupted her. Dahlia seemed taken aback. “I remember now. I’m so sorry.”

The girl seemed lost for words, clearly not expecting such an earnest response.

“To be honest, I’ve had an extremely stressful week.”

“With the Symposium,” Dahlia said, nodding her head. Suddenly she recoiled, worried that she’d interrupted.

“Yes, the Symposium,” Aios said. “When I saw the length of your paper I failed you on the spot. I forgot—“ he stopped himself abruptly. Dahlia’s face sunk. She seemed even more disappointed that he hadn’t read it than when she thought that he hated it. “I’ll stop making excuses. Please, forgive me. I’ll take care of your grade by the end of the day.”

“Thank you, Professor Roe,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to reading your paper,” Aios said, hoping to cheer the girl up. “I really loved the idea.”

A half-hearted smile broke out on Dahlia’s face. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

“Thank you for stopping by,” Aios said. “Seriously, I’m really sorry about this. I feel like a jerk.”

Dahlia thanked him again as he led her to the door.

As soon as she was out of the room and the door was closed, he cursed himself. Stupid. Stupid memory. And stupid mouth. Why would you tell her that she could break every university standard? What’s wrong with you? Gates will have my head if he finds out.

Whatever. He obviously needed to give the girl an A to keep her quiet. No one else would ever read it, anyway. Who knows, he thought. Maybe it’ll even be good.

He dug through his desk drawer for the paper that was half the size of the rest. The one with the giant red “F” circled on the top. He sat back in his chair and began to read.

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Part I:
[ Chapter 1 ] | [ Chapter 2 ] | [ Chapter 3 ] | [ Chapter 4 ] | [ Chapter 5 ] | [Chapter 6] | [Chapter 7] | [Chapter 8] | [Chapter 9] | [Chapter 10] | [Chapter 11] | Chapter 12] | [Chapter 13] | [Chapter 14]

Part II:
[Chapter 15] | [Chapter 16] | [Chapter 17] | [Chapter 18] | [Chapter 19] | [Chapter 20] | [Chapter 21] | [Chapter 22] | [Chapter 23] | [Chapter 24] | [Chapter 25] | [Chapter 26] | [Chapter 27] | [Chapter 28] | [Chapter 29] | [Chapter 30]

26 - Bump

Mona’s pen scratched against notebook paper.

Her album wasn’t good enough. It was better than ever, but not good enough. She had all the music. She had all the lyrics. She’d recorded the demo. But something wasn’t right. Perhaps it was the way the songs were arranged. Yeah, that had to be it.

In one maniacal ‘brainstorm session,’ Mona drafted five possible track lists. None of them seemed good enough for her, so she crossed them out. Tore pages out of the notebook.

The album was done—why couldn’t she get it right? Frustrated, she shut the notebook and tucked it back where she’d taken it from: a pile of keepsakes stashed at the bottom of a sweater drawer.

Mona didn’t really care about the album anymore. It only bothered her when she was by herself for too long. Nathan was going to be gone for three days on a trip with Simon and a few of his buddies. This amount of time was classified as ‘too long.’

Mona thought about buying a bottle of wine to pass the time. No, she didn’t even like wine. She only thought of it because it was the only kind of alcohol that was socially acceptable to drink alone. Maybe a few beers. That would make the night go faster.

She shook the idea out of her head. She was doing well. Once she gave in, she’d spiral. Not right away, but eventually. She’d just have to learn to be alone.

She couldn’t stay in the house, though. So, she decided to take Nathan’s car for a drive. He probably wouldn’t like it if he found out—he never let her drive his car—but what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Maybe she’d sit down at a restaurant and treat herself to a nice meal. That would be relaxing.

Aios didn’t take the Microcosm back to his office. He knew he should—if he didn’t, he would certainly be fired—but he just couldn’t. It was bad enough he’d been robbed of his glory. To be robbed of his creation, too—that was too much to bear. If he lost his job, so be it.

His head was light and hazy in a way that almost mimicked madness, or at least what he assumed madness must have felt like. He didn’t care about his job anymore. He didn’t even care about his freedom. What would jail matter, at this point? All that mattered was that the Microcosm would survive.

The Microcosm was currently hooked up to a portable generator. This would last for two days before needing to be recharged. That was plenty of time for him to figure out what to do with it. But in reality, he had less time than that. His apartment would be the first place the university would look when they realized that the Microcosm was missing. He’d need to find a different hiding spot, somewhere they wouldn’t expect. And he’d need to do it before tomorrow morning.

For some reason—perhaps for old time’s sake—Mona decided to drive to Cheap Jerry’s. She didn’t go in. She had every intention to, but when she got there she just couldn’t do it. When she peeked in, there was a young girl standing behind the counter, resting on her elbows the way Mona used to. She and the girl locked eyes through the glass door, and the girl smiled, expecting Mona to come in. Instead, Mona shifted her eyes and walked away.

She walked for a while until she came across a nice, expensive-looking bar that she’d passed every day on her way to work. She had peeked through those large, spotless glass windows a million times. The place looked inviting, with classy wooden counters and a fully-stocked wooden bar with every kind of whiskey you could think of. It was one of those bars with fancy leather-cushioned stools and bartenders wearing bowties and suspenders. It seemed out of place for this part of town, but that was the city for you.

Mona didn’t intend to drink—only to sit. She loved bars. She loved looking at the people inside of them. And this one was on her bucket list. It couldn’t hurt to just peek in and see what the place was like. She wanted to kill some time, after all. Worst case scenario, she’d leave.

She’d expected to hear the voice in her head telling her to turn back, but her mind was strangely silent. So she walked in and ordered herself a soda. As she sipped it, one elbow on the bar, feet perched on the stool’s bronze footrest, memories started flooding her mind. Dimly lit, wooden-paneled pubs with low music playing and loud conversation.

This one was fancier than the ones she’d inhabited before, but the idea was the same. There were groups of friends, men and women alike, smiling their fake smiles and sipping their way to happiness, dancing that delicate dance between coherence and oblivion. Sometimes the groups intermingled. One person would branch out, make a passing comment to the person next to them with mixed success. And then there was Mona, all the way at the end, a lone observer taking mental notes and gathering inspiration.

Eventually, someone sat next to her. A good-looking young man, with nicely-kept blond hair and an expensive-looking sweater and the appearance of ‘having his life together.’ Mona didn’t mind; she had always enjoyed talking to strangers. There was none of the pressure that came from talking to someone who you’d have to see again.

“You look familiar,” the man said.

“That’s an interesting pick-up line,” Mona replied, raising her eyebrow inquisitively.

“Oh my god, I know!” the man said. “You’re Mona Blank! From Soma! I’ve seen you make that exact face in an interview.” The man took a sip of the mixed drink that he had in his hand. “I can’t believe it?”

“Huh?”

“Soma? The band? You’ve never heard of them? They’re so famous. Whatever, I don’t really like their music, anyway. But Mona’s pretty cute.” He winked and took another sip of his drink. Mona eyed the glass longingly, deciding that she didn’t feel much like talking, after all. “I’m Jasper,” he said, reaching out his hand for a handshake.

“Jane,” Mona said, accepting the handshake. “I’m married, by the way.”

“That’s okay. I’m not trying to be a creep,” Jasper said. “And anyway, you’re lying. Where’s your ring?”

“My husband and I don’t do rings.”.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jasper said. “Married women who ‘don’t do rings’ don’t sit by themselves at bars on Saturday nights.”

“Neither do men who aren’t creeps,” Mona said. “I’m here for research. I’m a writer.”

Mona liked making up fake backstories for herself when she was alone in public. It was fun, and it wasn’t like she could tell him the truth. Besides, it wasn’t much of a lie.

“That’s cool. What are you writing?”

“One about arrogant men who don’t leave women alone.”

“Wow, ouch. I’ll leave if you want me to.”

“Yeah,” Mona said. “I want you to.”

Jasper rolled his eyes, got up, and sat next to another girl at the bar who was sitting with her friends.

Mona chugged her soda. When the bartender asked if she wanted another, she said, “Yeah, and this time put some whiskey in it.”

Aios seemed to hit every hurdle he could on his way home from the university. Every crosswalk was red when he came to it, and every car looked like it was driven by Gates or Voss or one of the other professors at the university. The sheet kept falling off, and he’d have to hastily throw it back on, wasting valuable seconds that invariably got him stuck at the next crosswalk. The side entrance to his building was locked, meaning he had to go through the lobby, where dozens of people could see him wheeling his illicit invention to the elevator. To make matters worse, as he wheeled the Microcosm into the elevator, the cart hit a bump, sending the box lurching a couple feet forward, and sending Aios lurching after it, hunching his body over it desperately to mitigate the damage.

Mona’s vision was narrow. She could see sort of fuzzy when she looked straight ahead, but all of her peripherals were replaced by a gray staticky haze. She could barely see the road in front of her. When did it get so dark? She’d stayed at the bar for far longer than she’d planned to.

Cars seemed to be zooming past her from nowhere. She hit the gas, figuring it was better to keep up with traffic. She kept her eyes fixated on the road, trying her best to keep the vehicle straight and moving.

Suddenly, she felt something strange from behind her, or beneath her, maybe. It was a jolt which sent her flying out of her seat. A better driver might have grasped the wheel, but Mona, compromised as she was and a poor driver on the best of days, let it go in surprise. The vehicle swerved into the lane next to it.

Aios cursed to himself as the elevator door opened. He’d already pressed the ‘door close’ button twice, and this time the doors closed, but then they opened again. A woman got on. Someone Aios had never seen before (not that he paid much attention to who his neighbors were). She pressed the button for the floor right before his. More valuable time wasted.

Blinking lights. A crushing sound. Then red, and then black. Mona’s eyes opened briefly to a cracked windshield and three men standing just outside of it, yelling to one another. There was smoke all around her. She felt a pain in her ribs. It was everywhere, really, but especially her ribs. She thought of Nathan. He’d be really mad at her. A sharp, excruciating pain overwhelmed her stomach. She squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to shift in her seat. They never opened again.

After wheeling the Microcosm into the apartment as quickly and carefully as he could manage, Aios scrambled to his tablet to project Mona’s whereabouts on screen. He feared the worst: that his transport of the Microcosm might have caused some kind of armageddon-scale disaster. It hadn’t, although the computer flagged an enigmatic seismic event that had occurred just two minutes (of Aios’s time) before.

He did a quick pass over the major cities to see if there was any damage that the cameras didn’t report. Nothing. Save for some structural damage to buildings that were on the brink of collapse, the bump didn’t cause too much damage. Satisfied, Aios decided to check on Mona.

No signal. The camera that was tracking her must’ve stopped working. That had never happened before, to his knowledge. He switched to the camera that filmed Mona’s house. It was empty. Weird—it was the middle of the night. He wished he had one tracking Nathan. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Of course it was possible for one of his cameras to fail. Now he had to program Mona’s face onto a new camera, which would take at least fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, Aios pulled up the archive of Mona’s life. Maybe the last thing that was recorded would give him a clue.

A bright, flourescently-lit hospital room. Doctors dressed in scrubs wearing their indifference on their faces. It made Nathan want to scream. He did scream, at the top of his lungs, for a good thirty seconds when he got to the hospital and saw her. Tubes coming out of her mouth, a blood-covered face so disfigured with gashes it was virtually unrecognizable, lifeless eyes open and staring right at him. He recoiled when he touched her stiff, cold arm, rigid as though it had been made out of plastic. Then he cursed, and hit things, and screamed some more. Then, when he couldn’t scream any more, he leaned over her, eyes closed, hands pressed to his forehead.

“How could you do this, Mona?” Nathan whispered. “You were doing so well. Ugh. I’m sorry, Mona. I’m so sorry. I love you. I’m so sorry.”

Aios kept playing the footage of the accident over and over again. Rewind, then lurch, then crash. Broken window, glass hitting her face and her chest, and then lights out. I’m so sorry, Mona, he whispered to himself in a way that mimicked prayer. I was just trying to save you. Rewind, lurch, crash. I’m so, so sorry.

When Aios couldn’t watch anymore, he turned the screen off, closed his eyes, and took five minutes to himself, just to mourn. Another dead child. The death of his dream. The end of his career. Everything.

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Last weekend, something happened to me that made me feel really cool.

Not that cool, really, but cool in a nerdy sort of way—like I finally fit in with the geeks, so to speak—and let’s be honest, this is the best it was ever going to get.

John and I went to a library—a very nice one, which we’d never been to before but which we can utilize thanks to our swanky new Westchester library cards.

Brand new and shiny and in the 14-days-only new releases section was R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis.

This thing has been displayed front and center in just about every bookstore. It just looks cool (geek-cool, of course). R.F. Kuang’s name is always part of the “respected modern fantasy authors” conversation. Plus John recently read The Aeneid, and I wanted to take my own journey into the Underworld.

So I decided to read it. Ready for the kicker?

When I went to check out the book, the librarian said “nice.”

Wow. I earned a ‘nice’ from a book selection—a new release, no less. I finally made it, didn’t I? I picked a book that someone actually wanted to read.

Naturally, I was overjoyed. I had finally become the perfect level of pretentious—still respectable (I read smart books with clever titles and references to ancient thinkers and elite universities), but not boring.

Seriously. I’ve read about 50 pages already, and this story is fun. It’s funny, the action starts early, there’s a rivalry dynamic which better turn into a love story. But it’s also really smart and really interesting. It’s the kind of book that I wish I could write—the kind of book that makes me want to write.

John’s most recent classics aside, I know that TMBC has a reputation for choosing stinkers (I have a half-read David Foster Wallace book lined up for next time that’s probably going to continue this tradition). This time, though, it seems like Kuang is finally going to help us break the boring streak.

Anyway. As I was reading the beginning, a thought struck me which is so unoriginal (ironically, I think I’ve written about this same topic several times by now) that it perfectly illustrates my point.

How come writers are always telling and retelling the same stories?
(Disclaimer: This is not a knock on Katabasis or R.F. Kuang. All writers do this.)

This book perfectly illustrates two distinct sorts of imitation, one of which is trendy and one of which is timeless.

Imitation type #1: Literary Trends

‘Dark academia’ is a huge genre right now, and for good reason. It’s fun, exciting, and, most importantly, familiar. Most people have been to school, most people have read about school.

‘Romantasy is also pretty massive right now, also for good reason. It’s fun. People love, well, love, and they love escapism, and romantasy gives you both.

Would this book have earned the ‘nice’ in the library (I’m still riding that high) that it earned if it wasn’t straddling some of the most marketable subgenres of fiction right now? I don’t know. But I also don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Literary trends are ever-changing and ever-present. All books are products of their time, whether they try to be or not. So lean in.

Imitation type #2: Literary Tropes

What’s interesting about Katabasis is that, in addition to being a great example of the 2025 fiction market, it’s also a nod to a literary tradition that spans thousands of years.

Kuang embraces this—in fact, in the book she references just about every book that’s referenced a trip to Hell before her. The book is a nod to Dante and Virgil and everyone else (who I can’t think of right now).

You don’t have to think too hard to figure out why these types of stories still resonate with us, even after thousands of years. We’re all curious about what’s going to happen after we die, and we all love a good thrill.

Most of all, we all love a good Hero’s Journey.

That’s right. Even though subgenres change all the time, story structure itself is as close to timeless as it gets. A seemingly-unsolvable problem, and a hero, and a predictable-yet-suspenseful quest that ultimately always leads to fulfillment. This combination always works.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I’m just pointing out the obvious about how stories work at this point. But I think it’s cool how this book straddles the line between modern and timeless.

Alright, that’s it. I’m done pretending to know stuff about a book that I haven’t actually read (even though that’s exactly the kind of thing that this Substack is built on).

I’m aiming to finish the book by next Tuesday. Read it with me—I think it’s actually gonna be entertaining this time.

See you then.

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Yeah, yeah, I know—clickbait’s not cool. But Substack is, unfortunately, a social media platform, and this was too easy to resist.

John and I are still married. We live together, we write together, and, nine times out of ten, we still like each other. However, we have decided to depart from one another in one (hopefully) exciting way:

John is making his own Substack.

Actually it’s made already, and it’s called “Blown Off Course,” which is a reference to (1) a frequent metaphysical state in which we often find ourselves, and (2) Homer’s The Odyssey (which you may remember from TMBC’s Summer of Classics). You’ve already received John’s announcement post in your email inbox—you’re subscribed.

Yeah, yeah, I know—it’s not cool to subscribe someone to a Substack without their permission. But we thought that this was a little different, because John was half of Thinking Man, and aside from some new names and colors, Blown Off Course isn’t really anything new. John will still be writing stories, essays, deep-dives, and book club posts. The only thing changing is the logo. Think of it less like a new newsletter and more like Thinking Man was split in half (making the title of this post not all that inaccurate, after all).

Why did we do this?

The main reason is that we’ve written a ton of posts, and things were starting to get messy. We’d like for Substack to function as a writing portfolio, and that doesn’t really work out that well if Thinking Man is a compilation of both of our writing.

Also, we’re different people. Now, our Substacks will be reflections of each of us—not an average of both of our visions.

So, for the most part, John’s writing will be on Blown Off Course and mine will stay here. We’ll interact a lot and write guest posts sometimes, but for the most part, that’s it.

Hope to see you all there.

Blown Off Course

Wherever the wind takes us.

By John Mistretta

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Part I:
[ Chapter 1 ] | [ Chapter 2 ] | [ Chapter 3 ] | [ Chapter 4 ] | [ Chapter 5 ] | [Chapter 6] | [Chapter 7] | [Chapter 8] | [Chapter 9] | [Chapter 10] | [Chapter 11] | Chapter 12] | [Chapter 13] | [Chapter 14]

Part II:
[Chapter 15] | [Chapter 16] | [Chapter 17] | [Chapter 18] | [Chapter 19] | [Chapter 20] | [Chapter 21] | [Chapter 22] | [Chapter 23] | [Chapter 24] | [Chapter 25] | [Chapter 26] | [Chapter 27] | [Chapter 28] | [Chapter 29] | [Chapter 30]

25 - Symposium

Aios’s arms shook as he wheeled his cart onto the stage. Atop the cart was a black sheet. Underneath the sheet was a rather large glass box. Within the box was a planet, and within that, much, much smaller than anyone in Aios’s world had ever dreamed of considering, was Mona Blank, traveling with her world-famous band on the tour of a lifetime.

It was the first time the Microcosm had been moved since the introduction of human life onto it; Aios hoped that it wouldn’t affect its delicate ecosystem. It didn’t—although it made people prone to motion sickness feel somewhat peculiar.

Aios was confident all day leading up to the Symposium, but once he got there, the jitters began. Every eye in the university was fixated on him. Usually he could at least take comfort in the fact that no one was actually paying attention, but not today. Today he was a philosophy professor wheeling a mysterious box onto the stage. He was the only interesting thing to happen the entire evening.

“Thank you! Thank you!”

Soma took a bow after their penultimate show. They’d hit twenty-seven cities in three months, and now they would be ending the tour the way they always did—by playing a show at home. The last show would be in the city, but this second-to-last one was in Mona’s hometown, a smaller city, a two hours’ drive from the one where they lived.

After the bow, the band played one final encore. Meanwhile, next to the band’s rented van there was a middle-aged woman yelling at a concerned security guard. She was calling herself Mona’s mother. No one had ever seen her before.

“I’m Dr. Aios Roe,” Aios said, his voice trembling. “I’m a member of the philosophy department here at the university. Well, obviously, right? This is the philosophy segment of the evening.” Aios wiped sweat from his forehead. “It’s, um, it’s an honor and a privilege to be speaking before you all today. This evening has been years in the making. I consider it the crowning achievement of my career. It’s an invention, unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.”

Aios looked out at the crowd, whose eyes were all locked on his.

“Mom!”

The concerned-looking security guard relaxed when he saw Mona recognize the woman, who he’d warily allowed to stay, just in case she happened to be telling the truth.

Mona rushed over immediately and gave her a hug. “Mom, I’m so glad to see you! I had no idea you’d be here!”

“I’m not surprised. You didn’t even tell me you’d be in town.”

“I’m really happy you came.”

“A planet in a box. Balanced by magnets, powered entirely by one light bulb that runs on a small amount of electricity.”

Aios pulled back the sheet to reveal his invention.

“I call it a Microcosm,” Aios announced. “And it’s been turning on its axis for nine and a half years.”

“It’s unusually bright tonight,” Mona said. Having accepted her mother’s offer to spend the night, the two were taking a walk. Since her apartment was small and her couch only had room for one, Nathan and the rest of the band stayed in a hotel.

“Crazy, right? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Weird.”

“You know, that’s actually not true.”

“What?”

“That I’ve never seen anything like it. There was one other time something strange happened in the sky. You were a baby. The whole sun just blacked out one day, in the morning right as it was rising. No one saw it coming, no one was able to explain it. Just lights out. Boom. It was black for almost the whole day before it went back to normal. We all thought it was the end of the world. Do you remember?”

“I have no idea,” Mona replied.

“Well, you were little. Maybe three? You couldn’t have been any older than that. Anyway, you were supposed to go to school—wait no, that would make you at least four… or was it daycare?”

“It doesn’t matter, Ma,” Mona said with a vague amount of irritation in her voice.

“Well, anyway, I didn’t want to tell you what was going on. Even when you were a little kid you were so nervous about everything.” The two were quiet for a second. “Anyway, right when you were about to wake up I saw on the news that the sun rose and then went right back out again. I didn’t want to freak you out, so I just told you that we were playing hooky from school, and that we had to keep all the curtains closed or your teacher would find out.”

“Oh my god!” Mona said. “I was scared to stay home sick from school for years after that!”

“I’m surprised you remember.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Well, you were really freaked out about all that stuff. Death and sickness. But especially accidents. I could just imagine your reaction to the sun not coming up. You’d think the world was ending. You’d be running around the house crying, getting together all the stuffed animals and little trinkets that you wanted to ‘save.’ You did that once when there was a hurricane, you know. Took all your toys and put them up on this really high shelf so that if the house flooded they wouldn’t drown. The storm ended up completely missing us. It barely even rained.”

Mona’s face was bright red. “Alright, alright. I get the point. But weren’t you terrified? If the sun didn’t rise today I’d think the world was ending.”

“Of course I was terrified.” Mom winked. “But I didn’t show it, did I?”

“It’s a planet just like ours, only smaller.”

When Aios glanced out into the crowd, he couldn’t gage their reaction. Their stares were just… intense. They must be fascinated, he thought. They have to be.

“Creating the planet itself was the easy part. I just researched all the different types of rocks and metals that made up each of the layers of our planet, from the crust down to its core, and replicated it the best I could. The artificial sun was also much more straightforward than one would expect. Of course, the bulb needs to be changed every now and then, but aside from that, the maintenance isn’t bad. Adding life was the hard part.”

Aios paused to gather his thoughts. Looking out at the crowd again only made him nervous, so he pretended they weren’t there. Explain what you did like you’re talking to a friend, he told himself. Ugh. I wouldn’t explain it to a friend. He panicked. Then, in a breath, he collected himself. Explain what happened like you’re talking to Mona.

“I started with some simple microbes, expecting them to evolve on their own. I waited a whole year for any signs of evolution happening, but there was nothing. I imagine that if I had waited longer, the results would’ve changed. But I soon realized that, following the theorized timeline of evolution, I wouldn’t see animal life in the Microcosm in my lifetime, so I had to take matters into my own hands.

I cloned the cells of various organisms, modifying them to make them smaller—much smaller. I started with monkeys. When you want to try something on humans, you always start with monkeys, right? I didn’t introduce them to the Microcosm yet. I tried it on a variety of different organisms. Bacteria, fish, reptiles, mammals. I observed them for a while, made sure they behaved the way they were supposed to. Sure enough, they were alive, and exactly as intended. They lived, reproduced and died following the exact schedule of their full-sized relatives.

Once I was satisfied, I mapped out the entire timeline of biological evolution. I followed this pattern to introduce life to the Microcosm. First the microorganisms, then the sea creatures, plants, reptiles, animals, humans. It wasn’t a perfect replica, of course. For one, I couldn’t add any life forms that are now extinct. But it worked.

Inside this Microcosm is a human society living in an ecosystem that is a near-perfect replica of what ours would have looked like before rabid industrialization. They haven’t been tampered since I first introduced them to the Microcosm six years ago. Remarkably, they’ve behaved exactly as we do, not just on an individual level but on a societal level as well. They create technology, build cities. They go to war, tear down what they build.

I estimate that they are, technologically, about five hundred years behind us. Time moves faster in the Microcosm because of its size. One of our days is approximately one of their years. This means we can expect the humans in this Microcosm to surpass our own capabilities sometime in the next two to three years.”

Mona left her mother mid-morning, after a nice home-cooked breakfast. She wanted to stay longer, but there was too much to do, and not enough time to do it.

The final show of the tour was going to be their greatest yet. They were doing something ambitious—spearheaded by Nathan, of course. The setlist was entirely acoustic renditions of their best-known songs. It would be a quiet, intimate show which would, of course, be released as an album.

“Imagine the implications of this! Every millimeter of the planet is monitored by little cameras. They can be programmed to either stay in one place, or to follow a particular person or object of interest. They’ll connect to any computer and transmit a record of their surroundings. Right now, every inch of the Microcosm is surveilled by these things, and indexed in such a way that one can sift through the data easily. I can look back at what happened in the Microcosm last year, and using keywords, my program will find exactly what I’m looking for.

It’s a perfect case study for just about any branch of science. Whole lifetimes go by in the span of a few months. We can study families across generations. We can study ecosystems as they change throughout millenia.

“Not to mention technology! Once those two or three years are up and the human society in the Microcosm advances to a technological level beyond where we are now, we’ll be able to see the future. Within the next decade there will be technologies developed that were conceived of entirely through the wisdom of the Microcosm. Technologies that, without the Microcosm, we wouldn’t have stumbled upon for thousands of years!

“We’ve been repurposing the same old stuff for years, never coming up with anything new. This is the breakthrough that will bring us to the next stage of human existence. Like the printing press, or the Internet, or Artificial Intelligence. We can use it to revitalize art, to study music.

“The main problem is the language barrier. It’s constantly evolving, which makes it very difficult to keep up to date. But I’m in the process of developing a software that can easily decode novel languages, and if we dedicate some programmers and linguists to that purpose we can have that technology perfected within a year or two, right around the time that we’ll need it most. The possibilities are infinite.”

It was Soma’s best show yet. Fans cheering, screaming. It worked out even better than they’d planned.

Mona’s voice never sounded better. It was different from the way it was before her ‘hiatus.’ It was raspier. Her days of loud, sustained high notes were gone. But this only seemed to add to her voice’s power. The audience adored the new, subdued, ‘mature’ Mona. It suited the band’s new style of music. The night was historic.

Maxim Gates, the president of the university, was seated in his seat right in the center of the front row. The department heads populated the seats on either side of him. Directly to his left was Ida Frius, the head of the university’s medical school. To his right, following a centuries-long tradition, was Theo Voss, the head of the philosophy department.

“You did this on university property?” asked Gates, leaning forward in his seat with his elbow resting on his leg and his chin resting on one hand. His face was stern.

“Of course,” Aios said.

“With university money?”

“Of course,” Aios said.

“Dr. Voss brought it to my attention that you claimed to have gotten board approval for the funding for this project.”

“Of course,” Aios said.

“You sent this application to Dr. Smith, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Aios said.

“Well that’s strange, because Dr. Voss could not find any record of such an application, much less an approval. You understand that misappropriation of university funds is a fireable offense, don’t you, Dr. Roe?”

“Of course,” Aios said.

Mona and Nathan were home. Simon was at a bar, chatting it up with a group of musicians he had met after the show. Ben was… wherever Ben went when he wasn’t with the band. The tour was over. The most exciting three months of their lives, over.

Their bedroom was eerily quiet compared to the hotels where they’d stayed. They’d gotten accustomed to the sound of yelling tourists and beeping car horns outside their window.

Mona wanted to relax, but she found her mind racing to fill in the empty space.

Mostly it was one thought, repeated over and over again.

What now?

Aios could feel the room spinning around him. Everyone’s eyes were still locked on him, and he realized that the intense emotion that they were emitting was not awe, but scorn.

Gates’ words echoed in his mind. “The only thing ethical to do with this thing is destroy it.”

Aios played the words over and over in his mind. He was in a daze. It seemed like everything was happening in slow-motion. Gates was still talking. Aios only knew this because, through the blur, he could see his mouth moving. His ears refused to take in any new sound.

“Destroy it.” He was expecting praise. Accolades. Payoff for nearly ten years of hard work. Instead, “Destroy it.”

Aios felt sick as he struggled to focus on the president’s scathing words.

“You steal university property, bypass all of the ethical safeguards that we’ve put in place to prevent such a thing from being made. There are at least four committees that you should have contacted before even having a thought like this. But you think it’s okay to go out on your own and create a planet? You’ll be lucky if I decide to let you keep your job over this. No—forget about your job. You’ll be lucky if you don’t end up in jail. This is unbelievable. Close to five billion participants without informed consent. And did you file for an exemption under Ethical Code #4275? No—you don’t even tell anyone this is going on, for ten years!

“You’re lucky, Dr. Roe, that you’ve put in thirty good years at this university. Your tenure here does not cover a transgression of this level. But it will be considered when deciding your future. Now, if you’d please exit the stage, there are colleagues of yours who are waiting to give their presentations. We wouldn’t want to delay them any further. The Board will have an impromptu meeting tonight about what will be done with this invention of yours.”

“Of course.” Aios scrambled to cover his Microcosm with a sheet once again and wheeled it off the stage.

“As for the rest of the audience!” Gates shouted, turning to face the crowd. “I’m sure you all know that upon entering today’s Symposium, you agreed to hear privileged information which is not to be disclosed under Ethical Code #7297. I know you are all aware of this, but it bears repeating. I expect each and every one of you to leave this room and go on as if none of this has ever happened. Do you understand?”

The crowd murmured and nodded. Voss smirked in his seat, craning his neck to watch Aios walk shamefully down the aisle with his sheet-covered Microcosm before him.

So much for glory, Aios thought, his dreams turning to dust as the cart’s wheels turned. The sound of the creaky wheels rattling against the uneven floor drowned out the whispers of the crowd, whose eyes were now deliberately focused on anything in the room but Aios Roe.

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John and I have a tradition 7 years running. Every fall, in the spirit of Halloween, we take a lantern tour of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

It’s fun. The cemetery is gorgeous (even though you can see it way better during the day), and it’s cool to walk around with a lantern, hearing stories about the fabulously wealthy gilded-age entrepreneurs buried there.

It’s a good tour. You get to see William Rockefeller’s gigantic solid-marble mausoleum as big as a modestly-sized house, his nemesis-turned employee (I forgot his name and really don’t feel like looking it up), buried in another extremely ornate mausoleum directly opposite him. The grave of Washington Irving. Some really nicely-carved headstones and statues whose names and stories I will never remember but who have achieved a strange brand of immortality via the piece of granite that was carved in their honor.

Anyway. John and I can recite the ‘main attractions’ of the tour by now, but each guide brings their own knowledge and stops in their own favorite places and blah blah blah, and this time, at Washington Irving’s grave (which is, as you might imagine, always a stop on the tour), she mentioned something I’d never realized before: the tree above the grave site, which he loved, and used to sit underneath when he was alive, and which is now his final resting place.

The tour guide pointed out how interesting it was that we were looking at the same tree that Washington Irving sat underneath, and how it “made time feel a bit funny.”

And it really did. Irving lived from 1783 to 1859. He was looking at that tree two hundred years ago. Seems like forever—monuments built that long ago were discolored and crumbling, or covered in lichen and moss.

(As an aside, we learned for the first time on this tour that the reason why gravestones from the early 1800s look old and creepy while ones produced just a few decades later still look pretty good has to do with the material they’re made of—granite, which replaced marble as the predominant headstone material sometime around the end of the nineteenth century fares much better than marble).

However, while man-made structures get weathered after two hundred years and human lives are obviously doomed to expire well before reaching that mark, that tree was fine. It was imposing, majestic. I hope it will outlive all of us.

The whole thing made me think—firstly, about how the seven years we had been doing this was really nothing, in the grand scheme of things, and how it felt short, when I thought about it, but also very long at the same time. I thought about memory—how strange it is that Andrew Carnegie and Samuel Gompers (who was omitted from this most recent tour, to our surprise), and the random people whose names we will not remember but whose mausoleums we’ve studied have somehow become annual staples in our lives, remembered by complete strangers probably all wrong, for something that did not even exist when they were alive.

The thought that didn’t occur to me, but that probably should have, was that we were in a cemetery. A beautiful place. We were surrounded by corpses, but they were buried under the ground. Around us were trees and grass and a beautiful night sky, and beautiful art, and people passionate enough about this place to keep it clean and maintained and give tours and spread knowledge. If that doesn’t encapsulate the duality of life, I don’t know what does.

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A few weeks ago, John listened in on a talk for his MFA program which centered around artificial intelligence in writing. One of his professors said something interesting which John summarized and told me, and soon, I’m going to summarize it and tell you.

Like a game of ‘telephone,’ this is how knowledge travels. Each person remembers and repeats what they believe to be important from the original point. Perhaps they add something, or misremember part of what was said in a way that reflects their own worldview more than the original speaker’s. Then, the next listener repeats the same process, grasping what they are primed to pick up on, and repeating what they deemed important enough to retain.

In this way, despite efforts to credit sources or retain authorship of our most prized points, ideas do not really ‘belong’ to anyone. As they spread, they become more of an average of every mind that has ever encountered them. Perhaps it may not even be too much of a stretch to say that an idea is only as good as the collection of minds which will encounter it.

The reason for this is that we don’t live in a bubble. The ideas which connect humanity are like interconnected tree roots of a forest, sharing knowledge and sustenance and turning all of humanity into more of a unit than a separate entity.

Of course, we have something of a destructive streak. The modern, human-influenced world displaces trees, plants them in the middle of parking garages amidst wood chips and concrete. Poor, lonely things—and we’ve become even lonelier, because in our pursuits of wealth or knowledge or comfort or whatever it is that we actually seek when we’re not just running on autopilot, most of us have gotten lonelier than people were years ago.

Some of this is that it’s easier to be a lonely person today. You don’t go as stir crazy locked in an apartment if you have television and the internet. You can still see people, hear their voices. You can even see them update their thoughts in ‘real-time.’ You can talk to them—on social media—and this is so close to physical connection that one only realizes the bit that is missing later on, when it manifests as a hard-to-identify dissatisfaction or sadness.

This is the world we live in. Families disperse in search of their own path. In new places, it’s harder to put down roots—growth takes generations—so children are not as connected as their parents or grandparents were. The odd family that stays put, doesn’t succumb to this wanderlust, watches everyone leave around them. The ‘neighborhood’ is dying—at least in New York City.

Local legends and traditions die with them. Local accents, like those that can be immediately attributed to “New Yawk” or “Bahston,” lose some of their distinctness. Everyone starts to sound like their television—and to think like it, too.

Now, I’m going to share with you my approximation of John’s approximation of what his professor said during that Zoom meeting:

In a way, AI is functioning as a sort of oral tradition. Folktales and traditions have historically worked as a sort of approximation, an ‘average’ of everyone who has ever passed them down. Similarly, AI takes into account a wide breadth of human knowledge, and distills it into its average, its most central point.

I don’t know how to react to this—whether to call it beautiful or sad. Humanity has isolated itself so, our machines do our connecting for us. The individual is more of an island than ever.

Conversely, humanity has achieved the ultimate connection—we have created a technology which can codify and transmit knowledge for us. AI is our mirror, whether or not we like the fragmented, isolated society that looks back on us when we look upon it.

Language reflects the human instinct to collectivize. “We” invented AI. Well, not really. A handful of engineers did, and a somewhat larger handful of people now know how it works and can replicate the process. But ‘we’ didn’t do it.

Only maybe we did. Maybe, on some larger cosmic scale that most would reject and no one could even pretend to understand, we are connected, and the development of these machines are a corrective measure to address a state of affairs that is so painful and so lonely, it can only be temporary.

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Part I:
[ Chapter 1 ] | [ Chapter 2 ] | [ Chapter 3 ] | [ Chapter 4 ] | [ Chapter 5 ] | [Chapter 6] | [Chapter 7] | [Chapter 8] | [Chapter 9] | [Chapter 10] | [Chapter 11] | Chapter 12] | [Chapter 13] | [Chapter 14]

Part II:
[Chapter 15] | [Chapter 16] | [Chapter 17] | [Chapter 18] | [Chapter 19] | [Chapter 20] | [Chapter 21] | [Chapter 22] | [Chapter 23] | [Chapter 24] | [Chapter 25] | [Chapter 26] | [Chapter 27] | [Chapter 28] | [Chapter 29] | [Chapter 30]

22 - Thesis

Monday morning, Aios checked on his Microcosm at the earliest moment he possibly could. He got to work early, and waited outside the school’s doors eagerly before they finally opened at seven. When he got to his office he rushed inside, ready to cram in as much of Mona’s life as he could before his early-morning class.

He was happy with what he saw. Mona was in the house with Nathan. They were sitting on the couch, his arm around her. He didn’t appear to have moved back in; his favorite acoustic guitar was absent from the home studio, and there was a spider living in the bathroom, just behind the toilet. But they looked comfortable with one another, relaxing and listening to a familiar record.

Aios slowed down the scene to listen to the music with them. It was nice, but not nice enough for Aios to record. However, watching the scene made Aios feel warm. He relaxed, his face bent into a smile, imagining himself in Nathan’s place. Begrudgingly, he forced the idea out of his head. Maybe Nathan could stay—he seemed good for her. Just one moment in his shoes, that’s all he wanted.

He studied every line on Mona’s face. She looked older. Still young, but significantly older. A few wrinkles had populated her forehead and under her eyes. Smile lines spanned from the edges of her nose to the edges of her mouth. How old was she now? Twenty-seven? She looked older. The last few years had significantly aged her, but she was still beautiful.

Nathan seemingly thought so, too. He kissed her head, and she nuzzled closer to him, and he squeezed her playfully and then leaned in even closer himself.

Aios sat with the couple until his eight o’clock class, just listening to music. He didn’t know why he did it. He could have been fast-forwarding, could have been rewinding. For some reason, though, he felt so tired. He didn’t want to be reminded of how quickly her life would go by, and didn’t want to give himself another headache by trying to piece together the missing hours of her life.

It was the last day of the semester. Aios had no real teaching to do. Advanced Metaphysics had no final exam, only a paper. The last class was really just a formality. As a tenured professor, Aios didn’t even feel the need to entertain his students for the full three hours of the class. He kept it brief, listing some takeways of the course (which he rattled off verbatim from the university’s curriculum), and asked the students if they had any questions. Although they were all Ph.D.Phil students, not a single one seized the opportunity.

After fifteen minutes of boredom for both Aios and his students, he decided to cut it short, and designated a spot in the front of the room for them to place a paper copy of their essay. “Once I have your paper you can leave,” Aios said. “And of course, as I’ve repeated to you endlessly, if I don’t have a hard copy of your paper on my desk by the end of class today, you will receive a failing grade.

Some students grumbled about this. Professor Roe was the only professor in the school to still require paper copies, they’d said, and since they’d all submitted it electronically the night before, why did they have to go out of their way to look for a printer? No one had their own anymore, and there were only two in the school library and fifty students in the class.

Aios recalled waiting in line for upwards of a half hour when he needed access to a school library printer, because there were twelve printers and several thousand students who might need them at any given time. Thus, the ratio seemed quite favorable if it were true that he was really the only professor in the school who required printing. He didn’t care very much, though—he simply told the class that they had until eleven o’clock to go to the library and figure it out and waited out the clock in his chair for class to be over.

While he waited, he speculated about the future of the Microcosm.

Which civilization will collapse first? he wondered. Ours or theirs? Each of his days was approximately one year of theirs. Aios estimated that his civilization was about five hundred years ahead of theirs in terms of technological advancement, although he was working from an estimate that said that the first computer in his world was created five hundred and fifty years ago, and their world had seen computers for a few decades.. That meant that the Microcosm had a little under two years (Aios’s years, that is), before it would outpace its creator.

This excited him. It would be the technology that would usher in the future! He wondered if he should have held out until then. Perhaps the world would lose patience between now and when the Microcosm would outpace his own. He pushed the idea out of his mind. He couldn’t exactly come up with a new presentation in an afternoon, so it wasn’t worth thinking about, anyway.

Besides, thought Aios. It’s the perfect technology for this era. No one has to create anything on their own ever again.

He spent the rest of the class period grading the papers that had been placed on his desk. He spent very little time on each one—essentially, he just leafed through to make sure they had the proper citations and were written coherently. Then, he graded them based on how much he liked the topic.

Towards the bottom of the pile he came across a thin one, less than half the size of the rest. There was no way it met the word count. It didn’t even have a References page. Some of these kids don’t even try, he thought, circling a large red “F” at the top of the paper and moving on to the next one.

23 - Show Business

Nathan thought Mona’s album was fantastic. Aios would eventually agree, once he had the chance to hear it. Nathan swore that she should release it.

“No way,” Mona said. “I wrote the album for you.”

Besides, she was busy. Nathan had moved back in. Soma was getting together at least twice a week to work on yet another new album.

It was different this time. The previous two albums joined the efforts of the entire band—even Requiem, for which Mona was less involved. This album was all Nathan. He had written most of the songs by himself in the countryside, away from his brother, his drummer, and his muse. It was more intense than the other two. While writing it, he was grappling with the loss of Mona.

Despite this, the album wasn’t sad. It was inspired, brilliant, optimistic. His normally simple efforts on keyboard had been replaced by incredibly complex, technical piano. He even added some violin parts; he’d learned the instrument on a whim after deciding that it would be a perfect complement to some of the songs.

Upon returning to his office and realizing how much music he’d missed, Aios returned to his familiar ‘grind’ of rewinding and recording, hoarding every second of Mona’s music so he could listen to it later. He had a treat waiting for him tonight—her full solo album. He couldn’t wait to relax with it later, once the presentation was done and his glory was secured.

He also couldn’t wait to see the look on Theo Voss’s face when he unveiled his invention. He imagined the surprise of all his colleagues. Dr. Gates will regret not making me the department head now, thought Aios. Not that I’d want it, of course.

Soma was performing now, and not just a dive bar, a small trendy music venue, or even a packed arena. They were in a television studio. Their third album, enigmatically titled Bread and Butter, had just been released, and Marty had booked the appearance to promote it.

There wasn’t a single ‘pop song’ on Bread and Butter; Soma had become so popular that Nathan was able to argue against one. In fact, their stardom had reached such heights that they were featured on The Lenny Lesterfield Show, a cheesy primetime talk show that was popular with the exact demographic that Marty Blaise had once feared Soma wouldn’t be able to attract.

They began their appearance on the show with a musical performance. They didn’t play any of their hits, instead deciding to focus on ‘deep cuts’ from the album. The audience was puzzled by the choice, but critics loved it. Ratings were fantastic, and their unusual song choices got people talking. Soma was a sensation.

“Well… give it up for Soma! That was a great show! Back and better than ever!”

This began the interview portion of the night. Nathan gave the crowd a big smile. As reserved as he often was, he could charm an audience when he wanted to. Mona sat in an oversized cushioned armchair next to him, waving at the crowd but focusing her eyes on a predetermined point beyond them so she could pretend they weren’t there. Her object of choice was a speaker on the back wall, high above all their heads. When she looked out at it, the crowd looked like a colony of little carpenter ants huddling around a single food source.

“Introducing Llllenny Llesterfieeld!”

The Lenny Lesterfield Show was a big deal. Although Nathan and Mona had always considered it somewhat beneath them, they had to admit that it was pretty cool to be sitting center stage, capturing the attention of the masses.

Simon and Ben (the new drummer) shared the stage with their bandmates, but after the band’s initial introduction, they were excluded from the camera’s frame.

“Back and better than ever,” the host repeated. “And prepping for a world tour! How does it feel?”

“It feels great, Lenny,” Nathan replied. “It seems like only yesterday we were recording songs in our basement. And now we’re getting ready to travel the world? It’s surreal.”

“I’ll say! This certainly caught everyone by surprise.” It appeared Lenny Lesterfield wasn’t pulling any punches. He had that ubiquitous TV-announcer voice that sounded both excited and robotic at the same time. “There were rumors that you broke up, for a while. I’m sure everyone here is dying to know—are they true?”

“We took a brief hiatus,” Nathan said. “But no, we never officially split up.”

“Are you talking about the band now, or the happy couple?” Lesterfield looked straight into the camera and snickered.

“Well, we’ve always asserted that everything we do off-camera is kept off-camera for a reason,” Nathan said. “But we are happy to be back in the spotlight. It’s an honor to be on the show.”

Mona breathed a sigh of relief.

“And just in time for the release of your new album, too! What made you decide on Bread and Butter for the title? It seems very… well… trite, I guess one could say.”

“That was kind of the point,” Nathan said. “Our first album was called Hymns because it was upward-reaching and spiritually-inspired. Requiem was a goodbye to our former innocence. And this newest one is a juxtaposition of sorts. Bread and Butter means that music is what keeps us sustained, keeps us sane. Music is our bread and butter, not just because it supports us, but because it’s our whole reason for living.”

“Interesting,” Lesterfield replied. “You heard it here first, guys. The band’s cashing out with this one!”

“That’s… not really what he said,” Mona said sheepishly, to no avail. The camera was on Lenny, and, at the first sound of her unprompted response, her microphone was promptly turned off.

“Now, I’m going to ask the question that I know the whole world has been dying to ask, which has to do with writing. Who’s the mastermind behind Soma? Who makes the whole thing work?”

“It’s a collaborative effort.” Nathan could have done this in his sleep. “Every one of us contributes something unique to the band.”

“But is it true that you played all the instruments on Hymns, Requiem and now Bread and Butter?”

“I played a lot of instruments, yes,” Nathan said. “But I never stepped on anyone’s toes. Simon played bass. Craig played drums. Mona sang.”

“There’s no Craig here, buddy,” Lesterfield said with another characteristic snicker as the camera panned out to reveal Ben sitting on the stage looking disinterested. Nathan turned red.

“I’m just messing with you, Nate,” Lesterfield said. Nathan cringed. “That’s no small feat. It’s okay to admit that you’re the brains of the operation.”

“Soma has four members,” Nathan said. “And our success rests on all four of them.”

“Well, I supposed it doesn’t hurt that you have a pretty face helping you sell tickets. Mona, how does it feel to be Rock and Roll’s sweetheart?”

“Well, it brought me here. How bad could it be?”

“Of course, there are rumors that you aren’t as innocent as your public image would suggest.” Lesterfield flashed a wry smile at the camera as he said this.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business!” Strangely, it was Simon who came to her defense. The camera zoomed outward to show an angry Simon sprung forward in his seat.

“Show business is everyone’s business, Sam,” Lesterfield said. Simon scowled. A woman standing at the edge of the stage made a gesture towards Lenny that meant that it was time to wrap it up. “Now that’s all the time we have, folks. That was Soma, everyone! The band who shook up the music scene, shaking it up behind the scenes, as well!”

24 - “Rock and Roll’s Sweetheart”

Soma Frontwoman Mona Blank Confirms Rumors of a Salacious Past

Nathan Weiss of band Soma admits: “I Played Most of the Instruments”

Soma Bombshell Mona Blank Blows Up on The Lenny Lesterfield Show

“What does this even mean? I barely spoke.” Mona threw the magazines onto the coffee table and thrust herself onto the couch. “‘Salacious past?’ What are they implying? And how did I confirm anything?”

“I think they’re implying that you disappeared off the face of the Earth on some kind of binger,” Nathan said with a hint of annoyance.

“That could’ve been anything!” Mona said. “Did you talk to the media about me?”

“Of course not. You disappeared and were replaced with a ‘stand-in’ singer. What do you think they’d think?” Mona’s gut wrenched at the thought about it. “But what does it matter? We’re doing great! Again! The fans love you.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you. What do you care about a couple of bogus headlines? They generate publicity. It’s a good thing.” Mona gave him a dirty look. “Besides,” Nathan said. “The only reason they care is because you’re Rock and Roll’s Sweetheart.”

Mona rolled her eyes. “I wish they’d talk about my voice,” she said. “Or just the music in general. We put on a great performance. All anyone wants to talk aout is my ‘salacious past’?” Then she smirked. “Although it’s nice to still be admired, I guess.”

“Exactly. Things are good. There’s nothing to worry about. They ripped into me, too. Look at this one. ‘I Played Most of the Instruments.’”

“Well you did play most of the instruments.”

“Yeah, and the way they wrote it, it sounded like I was gloating about it.” Nathan sat down on the couch next to Mona. “Anyway, things are good. Headlines like this mean we’ve made it. We’re going on a world tour in two weeks. Be excited. Please.”

Mona smiled, but her shoulders were still tense. “Fine,” she said. “I don’t know why I cant just relax and enjoy things. What’s wrong with me?”

The words stung Aios as he heard them. I can relate to that, he thought as he shut off the monitor and prepared the Microcosm for transport. He had to administer the final exam to his Intro to Philosophy class, and head over to the Symposium immediately afterwards. There was no time to spare.

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I stumbled on a Carl Jung quote on Substack Notes the other day.

According to Goodreads, the post is from The Spirit of Man in Art and Literature. Sorry I can’t credit whoever posted this. I was just lurking; I didn’t like or comment. Now, I have no idea who you are.

Edit: Even though the Note is still lost to time, the reader found this article, which might be the one.

Anyway, it’s an interesting quote, and I was being a little bit of a drama queen when I stumbled on it, so it really resonated with me in a moody, teenage-angst sort of way (“I’m just so awesome. That’s why nothing’s going right for me.” “Yeah, that’s right, no one’s SUPPOSED to understand me.”)

Of course, that’s the kind of nonsense you’re supposed to throw out with your ripped skinny jeans and marked-up Converses, but it’s surprisingly common among self-proclaimed creatives. The ‘tortured,’ moody artist is a trope. Like rock music? How many musicians wrote their life’s work in between benders, or died tragically from some kind of overdose right after finally getting the success that they wanted? Artists have the emotional intelligence of children, and part of it I’m sure is that you need strong emotions to create art which evokes strong emotion, and another part is that if you don’t have a little bit of stubborn, childish resolve in you, you just can’t stick with it long enough to actually achieve recognition in a creative field.

Art is completely incompatible with a ‘normal’ life. You can’t have a demanding job, relationships, and dedicate several hours a day to writing novels that might never sell. It’s entirely impractical; it goes against common sense. But artists take risks. They burn careers to the ground if they don’t serve them. They look like oddballs from the outside, and it’s because if they don’t prioritize their craft above everything else, it will get smothered.

There’s not a lot of external validation in such a lifestyle, and usually, there’s not much comfort, either, which is probably what Jung meant by the quote: that in order to make room for art in your life, you need to sacrifice something else, whether that’s love, money, or the appearance of sanity.

Is it a worthy trade-off?

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The first time I encountered death, I was ten years old.

My aunt had cancer. She was sixty years old, which seemed very old to me at the time but which I now know is not. She lived in Syracuse, New York and I lived in Queens, but I would write to her. She’d send me letters and cards and gifts in the mail.

Her death changed me. For the first time in my life, I’d actually experienced how someone could be there, be real, be a part of your life, however small, and then be gone. Just not exist anymore, or at least, not in a way that you can see them.

The viewing of her body was jarring. It was the first time I’d ever seen one, and her family had chosen to do it humbly. She was dressed in a nightgown, minimal makeup. Sometimes at wakes corpses are dressed to the nines, makeup caked on, to the point where they have this uncanny-valley quality to them that kind of dissociates you from what you’re looking at. She was a corpse. Much like the entire experience of her loss, the truth was laid bare in front of me. I think it was fitting.

I cried an embarrassing amount at her funeral. I dedicated stories to her afterwards. Had bad dreams. I missed my aunt—missed writing to her, speaking on the phone, going to her house in Syracuse with the spare room full of Holly Hobbie decorations, but more than that, I was shaken to the absolute core that she could be gone.

It was the first time I had mourned, and it marked the end of my childhood. I imagine this is the same for many people.

Only children don’t mourn. Little humans live in a blissful state where their summers feel like years and school years feel like lifetimes, and their friends are always their friends and everything that they have seems like all they’ll ever have and all they’ll ever need.

There are tragedies, of course. Kids who lose parents young. For most, though, ignorance of mourning is the childish innocence that we miss when we feel nostalgic: the one where we were completely at peace, when everything seemed like forever and nothing seemed to be missing.

It’s not always death that changes this. It could be a divorce, a move, a graduation. Every nostalgia is a kind of mourning—looking back and realizing that one’s life is different than it used to be, and the knowledge that comes with it that the life you’re living now, for better or for worse, will also one day be a memory.

The thing with mourning is that it consumes us for a time, and then we kind of erase it from our minds. We shove it to the back of our minds and go back to the headspace we need to function in which we naively assume that everything will last. I think that’s why people hate change so much—it shatters this illusion.

This is the part of a piece of writing where I’d like to make some sweeping generalization, some ‘moral of the story.’ But there really isn’t one.

It’s just a thought, which, like most things, ends abruptly.

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I write this settling into an all-nighter.

You know the feeling—maybe. Minutes pass and become hours. The annoyingly-bright light from your alarm clock taunts you. Sleep seems as impossible as comfort. As morning approaches, a brutal wake-up following one single hour of sleep becomes less and less appealing.

It’s been a while since I’ve let myself get to this state. I’ve become much too responsible. Late, sleepless nights of rumination and restlessness are incompatible with ‘adult’ life. For one, I’m usually much too tired. I’m also not eighteen anymore, and sacrificing sleep will interfere with my performance the next day, which is not something responsible people can afford.

Performance is an interesting word. Its primary definition means essentially acting, putting on a show. However, in the lives of stale, rarely-sleepless people, it’s most often synonymous with the idea of ‘doing a good job.’ You have it all together. You show up—on time—dressed nice—wearing a smile, fake or otherwise—whether it be to work or some personal obligation or whatever, and you accomplish everything that is expected of you. People want you around. They say nice things about you. They respect you. You are a high performer. You put on a good performance.

It’s so easy for the mask to slip.

Well, not really. The ramifications of such slippage are scary, so the first step is to hold out, grasp at moments of happiness which can easily become illusions of contentment, use alcohol or food or drugs or delusions or whatever to keep that mask plastered on. It’s common—perhaps even desirable—to live a lifetime like this.

However, when the time comes when it’s impossible to hold on anymore, the actual process of ending the performance is startlingly quick.

It can come from physical exhaustion. Chores aren’t going to disappear just because you don’t feel up to completing them—see what happens if you stop.

It can come from mental exhaustion. First come the little, stupid mistakes. Bigger ones follow.

It can come from social exhaustion. Abandoning one single pleasantry can turn an amicable acquaintance into an enemy. Think of all the damage that can be done in a month.

It can, for instance, be accomplished in a weekend of allowing oneself too much rest (perhaps as a reaction to the aforementioned exhaustion), thus irreparably wrecking an already-precarious sleep schedule.

It’s common to mourn one’s childhood. It’s strange, because being a kid is kind of shitty. Your brain barely works. You’re not taken seriously. You have to ask permission to do everything. However, you have a different kind of freedom which adults would kill for: the absence of all of this invisible maintenance that it takes just to survive.

Some people really can’t hack it. They end up in jails, on street corners, in psych wards.

Then, there are the ordinary underachievers. They can’t really keep up—not to the level they’d like, anyway. Maybe they go through jobs or go through boyfriends, or max out their credit cards or move back in with their parents at thirty-five. But, they just kind of fly under the radar. Their lives fall apart in unspectacular ways (‘spectacular’ in this case meaning ‘creating a spectacle, i.e. “putting on a show”—are you sensing a theme?).

I think, to some extent, we all live on this spectrum of failure. It’s impossible to get everything you want, after all. Think of it like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, only instead it’s a Hierarchy of Sacrifice.

At the bottom of this pyramid of suffering is your job, or your trust fund, or your sugar daddy, or whatever else you rely on to keep a roof over your head and semi-consistent food supply in your gullet. If you let this slip, you’re fucked.

Above this is relationships. People start going pretty crazy without those. Stay too lonely for too long and you start hearing voices. Your brain fills in the blanks with delusions.

I don’t know what comes next. Creature comforts? Fill in the blanks yourself. All I know is that somewhere towards the pinnacle, the very top of the pyramid of everyday sacrifice, is your hopes and dreams—the identity that you had before you started mending it to blend in with the rest of the world. In order to keep your job and your relationships and your stuff, it’s very easy to lose yourself.

Once this happens you enter a sort of haze, and everything else kind of starts to follow. (And now this mental framework/hierarchy/whatever is starting to contradict itself. Oh, well.)

I don’t know when I lost my faith—in myself, in the universe’s ability to make things work out for me. I don’t know when I lost my happiness. I don’t even know how long this has been happening. It kind of just hit me at once (isn’t that how these things go?) that I don’t recognize myself anymore. Not in a cliche “I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize my face” kind of way. I don’t recognize my thoughts anymore.

The person that laid awake in bed tonight was not the one that created this Substack, who maintained it, grew it. I was the person that abandoned it.

When did I get so timid? So paralyzed?

I stopped writing Breaking Big Brother right when I was getting to the good part. Couldn’t deal with the expectations, I guess.
I wrote Plastic Gods years ago yet somehow can’t bring myself to look at it long enough to post it.

It’s a pattern. I’ve ‘ghosted’ so much in my life—projects, people—and now I’m just kind of here, living with whatever’s left, drifting, paying lip service to a dream while believing in it less and less.

When I give it up completely, I’ll be a normal person. Maybe I’ll start by becoming another teacher who liked to write when she was young. If I can’t keep that up, maybe I’ll turn into another bartender with a master’s degree, then another AA member who used to be a bartender. Nothing remarkable about that story.

The scariest realization I’ve ever had was the fact that ‘failure’ is rarely dramatic (here we go with the show-biz puns again). Usually, it’s anticlimactic.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m tired, alright?

Basically, what I’m saying is that I’m returning to Substack. I’ve had enough wallowing for one lifetime.

That’s not a 4AM-on-my-sixteenth-hour-of-being-awake decision. It’s been a long time coming (and, of course, a long time procrastinated). Maybe I needed an absolutely brutal push to get started.

Enough of this now. Thanks for reading.

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We waged war in Ithaca.

We sailed alongside Odysseus on his voyage home.

And now we’ve… finally finished the Aeneid!

That’s right. The Summer of Classics has come to an end. It was a long journey that saw me going in completely blind, and after many troubles (though not as many as Odysseus faced) I can finally say that I have read the big three epic poems. Let me pat myself on the back for a moment. Okay, there. Let’s continue.

I really didn’t know what to expect when I began this reading challenge. Would I like these epics? Would they even be remotely entertaining? Would I actually get anything out of reading them? Would I actually finish them? These questions whirred inside my head before starting each book. And thankfully I found the answers. As it turns out, I did, in fact, finish reading them. I did like them, I did find them entertaining, and I did get something out of them, but we’ll get to that part later. For now, let’s focus on Father Aeneas and his merry band of Trojan expats.

First let me start by saying that I once again read the Stanely Lombardo translation. I really enjoyed reading all of them through his translations. His decision to separate the similes from the rest of the text were an excellent way to help you envision the theatrics in the works. My comments on Aeneas and Virgil’s poem are not going to be lengthy.

The Aeneid proved to be my least favorite of the three epics. It makes sense why. Although the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey is up for debate (depending on who you ask), one thing most can agree on is their development through oral tradition. We can thank Millman Pary for helping us get to that understanding. For anyone who hasn’t heard of oral tradition, or what it means in terms of the two Homeric epics, it means the works were spoken long before they were ever actually written down and officially put under Homer’s name.

You see, oral tradition is pretty fascinating. The idea that poets were able to memorize hundreds of “pages” of verse to recant their tales to eager listeners seems almost impossible, yet these poets still exist today. For example, the Epic of Manas is a 553,500 line epic poem of the Kyrgyz people from central Asia. That epic is still told orally by Kyrgyz “manaschi” who tells the entire story through rhythmic chants. To understand how mind blowing that feat is, the Iliad is only a paltry 15,693 lines in comparison to the Epic of Manas.

Here’s a short video on the Kyrgyz poem.

Parry’s oral-formulaic theory suggests that the poets used memorized formulae (an often-used phrase/expression) to tell most of the stories. This explains why one of my chief complaints at the beginning of the Iliad was the overuse of the same words to describe certain characters (e.g. godlike Odysseus). But now I get it. This helped them keep the beat—to tell the stories on the fly with little preparation once it was memorized. It’s why you may have read a line talking about rosy-fingered dawn seemingly countless times.

Here’s the GOAT classics translator Stanely Lombardo reading his translation of the Iliad. Grab your popcorn, folks. This one’s a doozy.

The thing about these orally told tales is this: even if their stories remained the same over the hundreds of years of them being spoken, each poet could add their own flair to make it better and even more epic each time it passed through the next set of speakers, until the tale was finally written down in its complete and best possible form.

With that we come to Virgil’s Aeneid. Although the poem mirrored the use of dactylic hexameter from the Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid was developed on the page and by one guy. Virgil was the only poet who had a hand in the story. That doesn’t mean it’s any less great; I think Virgil did a fantastic job matching the voice of the other two. BUT it still shouldn’t be compared to them. Even though that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I’m not saying oral storytelling vs written storytelling is better or worse. That’s a different argument altogether. I’m just giving some background. I’m also not saying I didn’t like the Aeneid—I did. All three had some weak points and all three had some great ones. I honestly think the greatest writing out of any of the three was found in the Aeneid. Here’s a powerful excerpt when Anchises, Aeneas’s father, is talking to Aeneas in the underworld.

“Each of us must suffer his own demanding ghost.
Then we are sent to Elysium’s broad expanse,
A few of us even hold these fields of joy
Till the long days, a circle of time seen through,
Cleanse our hard, inveterate stains and leave us clear
Ethereal sense, the eternal breath of fire purged and pure.
But all the rest, once they have turned the wheel of time
For a thousand years: God calls them forth to the Lethe,
Great armies of souls, their memories blank so that
They may revisit the overarching world once more
And begin to long to return to bodies yet again.”
(The Aeneid, Book Six, Line 859)

The Aeneid’s sixth book was the standout book found in any of the three epics and was no doubt an inspiration for Dante Alighieri’s Inferno in The Divine Comedy. Dante was such a fan of Virgil he cast him as his own guide through Hell and Purgatory in Inferno and Paradiso. It just so happens that we picked up a copy of each of the three parts of the divine comedy while we were in Italy. Perhaps next Summer of Classics, we may make another trip to the underworld…

Speaking of Italy, let’s get back to it. So, the real reason I believe Virgil’s work doesn’t pack the same punch as the other two is this: Augustus. Everyone’s favorite Roman emperor outside of Marcus Aurelius commissioned Virgil to write the epic! Augustus wanted the poem to promote his version of Roman values and used it as a propaganda piece. Aeneas, the heroic founder of Italy, was a symbolic predecessor to Augustus himself. Augustus was the founder of the Roman Empire and its first emperor. So, having the mythical hero of Aeneas written in his honor was a great way to get the masses behind him.

When Virgil was on his deathbed, he requested the manuscript be burned. I’m pretty sure that’s because it wasn’t completed yet. Which I’m sure is why it ended with Father Aeneas bloodthirstily slaughtering pseudo-Hector in cold blood and cutting. As it turned out, I don’t think Aeneas was that heroic. He was kind of a dick, which is kind of in line with the heroes of the other two epics. Aeneas was also extremely hypocritical. Nothing like fleeing your city getting sacked and burned to the ground, only to finally find a new land and take it from its inhabitants. Maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe Virgil was asking you to read between the lines on what was supposed to be an Augustus fluff piece. Who knows. I’m just a guy writing a half-assed book club post.

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Part I:
[ Chapter 1 ] | [ Chapter 2 ] | [ Chapter 3 ] | [ Chapter 4 ] | [ Chapter 5 ] | [Chapter 6] | [Chapter 7] | [Chapter 8] | [Chapter 9] | [Chapter 10] | [Chapter 11] | Chapter 12] | [Chapter 13] | [Chapter 14]

Part II:
[Chapter 15] | [Chapter 16] | [Chapter 17] | [Chapter 18] | [Chapter 19] | [Chapter 20] | [Chapter 21] | [Chapter 22] | [Chapter 23] | [Chapter 24] | [Chapter 25] | [Chapter 26] | [Chapter 27] | [Chapter 28] | [Chapter 29] | [Chapter 30]

19 - As Bad as It Gets

It was in his absence that Mona Blank realized everything she loved about Nathan Weiss. His arrogant smile. The lofty, self-assured indifference he displayed when talking to basically everyone except her. The way he always let her know that she was the one thing he believed in more than himself.

In other words, she missed him. But not enough to call. She was aware of his conditions, and wasn’t willing to meet them. So instead, the sorrow only degraded her worse.

The Mona that Aios found on Saturday morning when he logged back onto his computer looked nothing like the lively, talented girl he had first set eyes on only a few days ago. Her eyes were sunken, her skin pale, thinning, and covered in blemishes. Her midsection had bloated and her face had gotten puffy, but her arms were bony and thin, and her whole body looked frail enough for a strong wind to knock it over.

She still lived in the same spacious, lonely house, but now any empty space that might’ve been there was littered with stuff—empty takeout containers, dirty glasses, laundry on the floors (and not just in the bedroom), empty bottles and cans. The television was always on, but Mona didn’t appear to ever watch it. She threw up twice daily—once in the morning, and once in the middle of the night, in between falling asleep on the couch and moving to her bed.

At the time of Aios’s return to the office, Mona had last seen Nathan four months ago. Aios knew this because he promptly rewound Mona’s life (it’s not like he was missing much, after all). The effect was surreal—in reverse, it appeared as though her apartment was getting cleaner and cleaner, her complexion clearer and clearer.

The couple’s last interaction was brief. In fact, Nathan was coming to say goodbye. He was moving out of the city, leaving his brother and the band behind. He’d been studying classical piano, and he wanted to branch out on his own and make his home base somewhere quiet. What Nathan didn’t say was that he did this because making music for Soma was too painful for him.

Mona pleaded for him. Cried. Begged. She had, of course, already started drinking hours ago, so the display was very dramatic. She actually got down on her knees, her face red, her voice loud and deep and desperate. Nathan looked like he was going to cry, too.

“I’ve always loved you, Mona,” were the first of his parting words. “I hate to see you like this. If you ever do decide to straighten out and need some help getting back on your feet, you can always call.”

When Nathan left, Mona sobbed until the liquor put her to sleep—a gruesome, silent cry, where her face turned red and ugly and her brow furrowed and her mouth widened, and her cheeks moistened and so did her hands as she desperately tried to move the tears away from her cheeks.

By 7:30 Saturday morning, though, (Aios’s time, not hers), Mona was all out of tears. She had been for some time. She thought about Nathan every day, but she pushed him out of her mind successfully each time, not crying over him for over a month. Her guitar, long out of tune from lack of use, was collecting dust, along with all the other equipment in the studio. Life was the same. Every day was the same.

In the mornings, before enough alcohol set in where she didn’t have to think about anything at all, she was inundated by memories. Those days when Nathan used to come by Cheap Jerry’s, and she used to pretend to not want to see him. The thrill of those first nights when they played music together and talked until morning. Her brief period of stardom—the way the lights of the stage felt when they graced her face and nearly blinded her eyes, the exhilaration of the crowds all screaming for her. The energy was palpable. She missed it. She missed Nathan holding her at night, the way she enjoyed it for a while and endured it for a little while longer before slinking out of his arms. She missed him. She swore to herself that if she had the chance to be there one more time, she’d never pull away.

Then she got angry at him for abandoning her. I wasn’t even that bad, she said. I’m pretty far gone now, but that’s only because I’m alone. Then she’d drink some more, let the anger bruning inside her merge with the whiskey burning in her hoarse throat. After this the feelings would heighten for a while, and then they’d disappear. Then she’d nap, wake up and order food, and the cycle would continue. She was still getting royalty checks from Hymns and now Soma’s second album, which they’d titled Requiem, presumably in her honor. This generous income stream was the only thing keeping her alive.

I’m waiting to die, she thought to herself. The thought coincided with Aios’s decision to go back to ‘real-time’ and hope desperately for a change. I don’t have the guts to kill myself in one shot, so I’m doing it slowly, instead.

She resigned to it, took another drink of whiskey straight from the bottle, and washed it down with a can of lukewarm beer that was sitting next to it.

20 - Feeling of Being Watched

What changed? Mona would never be fully sure. But one day, after waking up in the morning, walking to the store (she ran out of liquor late last night after the stores were all closed), and vomiting lime-green sludge in between two parked cars on her way home, she realized that what she was doing had to stop. The familiar bitter taste seemed especially foul to her all of a sudden.

As she wiped her mouth on her sleeve, globs of spit foaming white on the black fabric, she had a feeling that she hadn’t had in a long time. Her mind was fixated on something that it hadn’t considered since her relationship with Nathan ended—the existence of a God, some kind of force that would look out for her as long as she looked out for it, as well. She thought of the ‘alliance’ she had struck with this force, once. The confidence she felt. The safety.

She shook the idea out of her head. God’s left me, she told herself. If he ever existed in the first place, he left me.

Aios watched the scene with the intensity of someone watching the end of a sad movie. Was she okay? There was something strange in her eyes, a look he didn’t recognize. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, she started to cry. The taste of bile was still in her mouth. A strange grittiness coated her teeth. Her stomach was sore. And suddenly, her face expanded into a sob, only for a second, before she gathered herself and continued walking. The whole thing was quick, even in Mona’s time. If Aios hadn’t been staring intently at the screen, he would have never known that it had happened. As she walked home she coughed, and she hacked up a ball of mucus that she spit out on the ground next to her, and before she knew it she was home.

Mona poured herself a glass of whiskey and opened a can of beer, just like always. But then she did something strange. She picked up the glass with the intent to drink it, but before it met her lips she made a split-second decision. She stopped mid-way and poured the glass down the sink and then did the same with the rest of the bottle.

Afterwards, she held the empty bottle in her hand for a while. She considered smashing it, but realized that picking up the tiny pieces wasn’t worth the satisfaction. Instead, she poured the can of beer down the sink and then crushed it with the heel of her hand, and then gathered the rest of the beer cans she had in her refrigerator, and crushed them the same way.

What’d you do that for? She sunk down onto the couch regretfully, her mind racing. You weren’t ready for this. You could’ve done it tomorrow, or something. Taken the time to mentally prepare. Just go back to the store, it’s alright. Play it off like you dropped the bottle, or something. Or just go to a different store. Or just get a couple beers. That’s better than nothing.

Then, out of nowhere, she got a strange, familiar feeling that she couldn’t quite place. It was a feeling that she’d had before, a while ago, and she couldn’t quite place it then, either. It was a feeling of being watched.

21 - She Probably Would’ve Died

I’m going to be okay, Mona thought to herself as the day went on, and she watched TV, bored out of her mind with a strange feeling of energy inside of her that she didn’t know how to release. She could practically feel it emitting from her arms. All I have to do today is stick to my decision.

She’d always assumed that when she quit, it would be for Nathan. But Nathan was the last thing on her mind at this point. In fact, she didn’t know what had caused her abrupt decision. She ruminated about it, of course. Wasn’t she destined to fail? Didn’t people usually plan for this for months before it actually happened? Didn’t people usually fail several times before the quit finally ‘stuck’? Why even try, if you know this time’s not gonna work?

The next day was harder. Aios worried for her. She was stuck on the couch, too weak to get up. The day before she had ordered pizza, but today her hands were too weak to even pick up the phone. Aios’s mind raced. He considered busting open the whole Microcosm just to call for some help.

Mona’s whole body shook as she lay on the couch. The TV was set to the channel of some stupid cooking competition show that she and Nathan would have probably enjoyed if they were watching it together. She felt cold despite having a blanket on, but sweat pooled underneath her, soaking the couch cushion. She wanted nothing more than sleep, but while she had slept through most of the previous day, this time it evaded her.

The next day she was admitted into the hospital. Lucky thing, too.

Not because she had called the hospital. No, far from it. Mona was stubborn. She would die before admitting that she needed medical attention. But she did the next best thing. Overcome with the boredom of sobriety, and obeying that little voice in her head that had finally mustered up enough courage to murmur a whisper, she decided to call Nathan.

He was furious at her, but hearing her unsteady voice and her distant words and her pleas that no, she wasn’t drunk, and was, in fact, actually two days sober, he called an ambulance to her house.

It was a good thing he did. Her blood pressure was alarmingly low, and her heartbeat was erratic. She was malnourished and severely dehydrated. The doctors told her that if she hadn’t come when she did, she probably would have died.

“Hi, Mom.”

“I’ve been good. How are you?”

“No, nothing’s the matter. I’m just calling to say hi.”

“Yes, I know how long it’s been. I’m sorry. I’ll try to call more.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Well, we were on tour—“

“Yeah, the media’s been pretty quiet about us.

“No, I mean, they didn’t replace me. I mean, I guess—I don’t know.”

“Ma, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to call and see how you were doing. Is everything okay by you?”

“That’s good. I was thinking of coming by. I miss you.”

“Well, I don’t have a set date yet. I’ve had a lot going on.”

“No, not with the band. I’m working on some stuff myself.”

“No, nothing like that yet.”

“I’ll let you know, okay? Anyway, I have to go. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Love you, too.”

“Hey, Mona.”

“Nathan?”

Mona rubbed her eyes. Her vision was blurry; she had just been startled out of a restless sleep. She was disoriented for a second, but quickly realized she was still in the hospital.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. I was out of town when you called.”

“Oh.”

“You took a pretty serious beating, huh? You look good.”

“Yeah.”

Mona had a million things she wanted to say to Nathan, but for some reason, now that he was here, she couldn’t bring herself to say a word. She thought that if she did, she would break down. She didn’t want that. Not after he had left.

“I’m glad you called when you did. It’s dangerous to detox on your own.”

“I would’ve been fine,” Mona said.

“Can I get you anything? Something to eat? I don’t really know what you’re supposed to be eating, but I know the food here must be awful.”

“No, I’m alright.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t around. I could’ve driven you to a better hospital than this.”

“I’m sorry I cut your trip short.”

“No, no. We were coming home today, anyway. And the trip sucked. If anything, you kind of saved me.”

Silence. Mona stared at him.

“I’m sorry. That was a dumb thing to say.” Nathan looked at his watch. “I’m nervous. I haven’t seen you in how long?”

“Few months.”

“Well, what’ve you been up to?”

“Same old.”

“That’s good. Well, not good. I’m glad you’re straightening out, though. I’ve been worried about you.”

“What about you? Traveling with the band?”

“No, the band… well. We haven’t really done much. I moved out of the city, as you know. Simon’s still in the same place. I don’t even remember the last time I’ve seen Craig. I’ve been playing a lot of classical piano, believe it or not. Not for release, just for myself. There’s no need to sell any new music, really. Not yet, anyway.”

“So where were you?”

“Some dumb island vacation.”

“With Simon?”

“No”

“A girl?”

“It’s not important.”

“So she’s not important?”

“No… look. I came here to see you, okay?”

“It’s okay. We’ve all moved on.”

“Don’t be like that, Mona.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Unprompted, Nathan sat down on the edge of Mona’s bed.

“Why’d you come here?” Mona asked.

“I wanted to see if you were okay, obviously.”

“Why’d you answer the phone when I called?”

“Same reason, I guess.”

“You’ve ignored my calls before.”

“Yeah, well. Something told me I should.”

“It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too.”

“I’m not really sure what to say.”

“Yeah, me either.”

“I missed you a lot.”

Nathan hesitated.

“Sorry,” Mona said abruptly. “I’m sure your life has been a lot more interesting than mine.”

“No, not really,” Nathan replied.

“You can go if you want,” Mona said.

“I can hang out for a while.”

“I’m gonna be pretty boring. I can barely keep my eyes open.”

“That’s okay. I mean, obviously, right? I’m sure you could use the company, though, right?”

“I think it’s probably better if you go,” Mona said. “I could use the rest.”

“Oh, okay.”

Mona closed her eyes and rolled over on her side. She closed her eyes tight to prevent the waterworks that she knew were coming. Don’t mind me, she was prepared to say. I’m all emotional lately. I think it has to do with the withdrawals.

Nathan didn’t acknowledge anything. He just leaned over, kissed her on the forehead, said “Take care of yourself, okay?” and walked out.

Mona was sent home about a week later, once her condition was a bit more stable. She spent the next week cleaning up the house, starting with the garbage, which she found in some strange places that she hadn’t really expected. She mopped the floors, dusted the shelves, cleaned the toilets, scrubbed the tiles in the shower.

She found that her predominant feeling through all of this was boredom. She didn’t know what to do with herself. And the thoughts that were constantly bubbling up were driving her crazy. She thought about the band, and how close she’d come to living the dream before it all fell apart. She thought about Nathan. He’d moved away. He had a girlfriend. And she was cleaning the dust behind his old couch, replaying his words in her head: “If you ever do decide to straighten out and need some help getting back on your feet, you can always call.” Some good that did.

She thought about her album. It was the whole thing that caused her to give up in the first place (or at least that’s what she told herself), and she’d abandoned it after that one wretched night when she’d lost Nathan’s pick.

Nevertheless, she knew the songs were good. She still had to record them, which was always the hard part without Nathan’s technical prowess. But they were written, and they were good. That’s what she had to do—she had to finish her album.

When Aios left for the day on Saturday, Mona had made the decision to work maniacally on the album, and approach Nathan with it finished. If he could’ve gone into the office on Sunday, he would’ve seen her working hard on it. It took a while. She had to get used to playing guitar again; her fingers were soft and her hands were weak. She needed to take breaks every half hour or so to build up her strength.

Plus, Mona was prone to procrastination. Most of the time she spent ‘working on her album’ was spent thinking about her album, and sitting on the couch, and playing basically anything on her guitar but her album. The actual recording sessions occurred in days-long bursts where Mona would stay up late and neglect her health and obsess over getting the album done. There were three of these bursts, and in between each, she ended up in ruts so intense that she considered abandoning the idea altogether.

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