JADEZONE

“And you’re okay? With living like this?” Her eyes flit over every single item of concern she has seen so far. They flit for a while. “…all this?” she concludes, a note of pleading in her voice.

“Oh fuck no!” comes the immediate response. “It’s just that this-” he waves where once flit eyes, “- all of this is so infinitely preferable to where I was before. I know, I know this is a lot, and it can go so wrong so very easily, but… but this is it for me. This is where I fit in anymore. I have meaning here, when before I was, well, dead. This is where I belong. How I belong. It just feels… right.”

“So… you just believe, and that’s good enough? This is, what, an expression of your faith in whatever this is?”

“Well now you’re making it sound like a religious thing…”

“I don’t think choice enters into it, not anymore.”

How do you mean?

“Well, free will is a luxury; you only get it if you can afford to make mistakes. You see anybody around here with pockets that deep? There’s too much on the line anymore, there isn’t anything left to fall back on. This is it.”

So you feel like you have no room for error?

“It’s like dialysis but for the brain, see? Filters out what there’s too much of, tops up whatever neurotransmitters you’re running low on, generally gets things back in balance.”

So like taking your car in for a tuneup?

“I don’t own a car so I wouldn’t know. Does it involve having needles jammed in your skull while you have to sit still in one spot for a while?”

Spiritually, yes.

“Then sure, it’s like that thing you said.”

Needles jammed in your skull?

“He said it almost absentmindedly, that we’d hit the point of diminishing returns. How deeply that hurt, bland statement of fact that further effort would yield less than desired. That I would be less than desired. That the monumental effort I was putting in to be desired was not profitable enough, in his eyes. That I was not enough.