07-06-2022, 07:37 PM
Near does Jude a disservice: Jude is not four years old. Jude bears a stronger resemblance to those self-styled titans of industry: Steve Jobs if Jude is to be trusted, Elon Musk if he's a pure asshole, Elizabeth Holmes if he's nothing more than a grifter. Jude is not concerned merely with himself, but with ideas so much bigger than a single person. This kind of big-picture thinking easily subsumes the suffering and inconvenience of any single individual. It is the inverse of the individual-tragedy-million-statistic quote: an individual is an anomaly; significance begins at a million.
Though it might interest Near to know that Jude never was a toddler. He and his sister 'hatched' at approximately age ten, with fine motor skills intact and very rapid information absorption. Depriving Jude of those stages of life has created some wrinkles that still need ironing out.
"She was nice to talk to," Jude concedes. "Charming, really, when she wants to be." He doesn't imagine that Near caught Juliet in a charming mood. Being apart from her has invoked a constant state of low-grade physical distress in Jude: a faint headache that never totally clears, a sense of taste that just isn't what it used to be. What is she doing now? Brushing her hair, talking to the Family, taking a shower. He thinks of her often. He aches.
But once more, individual suffering is dismissed.
"If they had found me, we wouldn't be talking." He pronounces the words slowly, as if Near will need more time to think the implications through. "I wouldn't get a second chance." By now the Family has worked out a precise plan on how they would ensure Jude's compliance -- several plans, more like it, contingencies upon contingencies. They should have known, really, they should have guessed. But only when the impossible occurs does it break the shell of blindness, dissolving the boundaries between what cannot be, and what can.
Though it might interest Near to know that Jude never was a toddler. He and his sister 'hatched' at approximately age ten, with fine motor skills intact and very rapid information absorption. Depriving Jude of those stages of life has created some wrinkles that still need ironing out.
"She was nice to talk to," Jude concedes. "Charming, really, when she wants to be." He doesn't imagine that Near caught Juliet in a charming mood. Being apart from her has invoked a constant state of low-grade physical distress in Jude: a faint headache that never totally clears, a sense of taste that just isn't what it used to be. What is she doing now? Brushing her hair, talking to the Family, taking a shower. He thinks of her often. He aches.
But once more, individual suffering is dismissed.
"If they had found me, we wouldn't be talking." He pronounces the words slowly, as if Near will need more time to think the implications through. "I wouldn't get a second chance." By now the Family has worked out a precise plan on how they would ensure Jude's compliance -- several plans, more like it, contingencies upon contingencies. They should have known, really, they should have guessed. But only when the impossible occurs does it break the shell of blindness, dissolving the boundaries between what cannot be, and what can.