Chapter Text
“Without tenderness, without poetry, one cannot understand man or his creations.”
—Sir J.G. Frazer
Almost from the time he can comprehend speech, he will hear a particular word, always applied to him. Later he will come to loathe it, to discern its trap, the lie that its potential conceals.
He does nothing to invite this assessment, except speak his thoughts with a youngster’s foolish forthrightness. But his words demonstrate unusual suppleness and speed of thought, a strong and exacting recollection. Unable to understand him, others press upon him a name, and from that time on he is no longer a child; he may be only that.
He is walled into a tower of books and given spectacles to dim the world beyond. Great things, he is told, are expected of him. He has admirers, but no friends, and thus the boy grows, always alone.
He becomes a slender youth with haunted eyes, acquires knowledge both encyclopedic and seldom challenged. He learns boredom and reluctance, although still greater things are expected from him. His luminous intellect shines despite himself, fuelling the hope of his family while kindling awe and hatred in everyone else.
It is science that saves him from straying, chemistry and anatomy that explain away his childish impulses. With pride and no small relief, he resolves to overcome the chemical aberrations that threaten his brilliance. He devotes himself to more diligent study, until equations of photosynthesis replace the green of grass and leaf, until the processes of cellular respiration and regeneration suffice for physical exertion.
As he ages he comes to know of friction and entropy and heat death. Deflection and decay. The inevitable degeneration of mental and physical forms. He delves deeper into the sciences, reaching even to the stars (finding at the end of all textbooks a dread he buries quickly — terminal existence, ending in nothing; he cannot, will not fail!).
Neither wonder nor imagination interferes with his development, for it betrays scientific fact to indulge in dreams, and literary pursuits, deemed insufficiently lucrative, are denied him. He recalls only a few tales once told, when he was still considered a child and not an intellectual condition. He never forgets that a clever hero can outwit monsters and free damsels, that a prince is ennobled by the suffering that leads to his princess. Surely he needs only time and opportunity to grow into his greatness — for the extraordinary to manifest like a gift from the heavens, whose every constellation he can name.
But the days pass dully away, unhindered by human aspirations; time passes, and he keeps his control in spite of fear (nothing more than nerve impulses, chemical compounds – remember, think). Only among the young does the youngest in achievement have significance, for no-one has “expectations” of adults; children alone hold infinite potential energy. He is a vessel of dreams that await manifestation, but beyond the inevitable graduation with highest marks, he has no notion of how to fulfil the “promise” made by his gifts. What others termed brilliance came forth from him without effort. But this effortlessness must lead somehow to a true breakthrough, something more than the stacks of certificates gathering dust amidst his books. He is nearly eighteen, and nearly finished.
His final year’s research uses the butterfly's chrysalis, which he manipulates through light and warmth to slow the transformation at work within. Having created an alteration of perception in that small vessel, he then postulates that the retardation of progress within an enclosed space might hold the key to slowing, or even stopping, time.
His research is bold, his extrapolation revolutionary, but in the end the paper proves nothing except the impossibility of being judged by his intellectual inferiors. His work is deemed interesting but inapplicable – which is to say, effectively useless – and the thesis is passed and published by an indifferent committee who, he suspects, don't comprehend a word of it. He is praised and sent on his way, with another paper to add to the pile; the prodigy is thus prodigiously recognised – and judiciously dismissed.
But he finds something surreptitiously bundled with his diploma, a heavy card adorned with a rose-embossed rondel, and curiosity thrills his fingertips as he traces the blood-red seal. The letter startles him with the deep satisfaction it holds, for its writer has both read and understood the infamous thesis, and invites him to coordinate a research project whose aims are “aligned with mutual interests.” A suspicion – that he has never before heard of this “prestigious institution” – surfaces and is quickly shelved, especially when he reaches the letter’s concluding offer: a salary far higher than any failed phenom should merit.
If those who nurtured him find disappointment in his appointment, they hide it well as he bids them farewell. As an adult he has the right to choose, and though he believes in no providence but his own efforts, it seems that this path has been perfectly prepared for him. Within a few hours of his arrival, he sits at a desk filled with papers and books, and assumes in this unfamiliar place his old, familiar role: a slight young man buried in research notes, disturbed by nothing and no-one. And he works with his usual diligence, looking for something more in time than the ability to fill his hours with actions, measuring and meting out moments with perfect efficiency.
He has neither admirers nor friends, and overhears without interest or offense whenever colleagues imprudently discuss the “living computer” near his door. He accepts their input with indifference, listening listlessly to these same-minded youths, who are young in a way he has never been. He neither demands respect nor cultivates closeness.
He bars one word only from his office and from their mutual labours, that word whose opposite he knows too intimately as failure. And if the syllables are uttered in his presence, he rebukes them quickly, shaming the error in a voice no warmer than his feelings:
I'm not a genius.