one death: tragedy / a million a statistic / incommensurate

[roc_on]

Beila gives Dao space. He is extremely right that she's not the best person to be sad about his dead serial killer friend with and that seems to be his principal occupation, so - space.

Comments

[thinklikethis]

Vaguely awkward silence. Weird fruit smoothie.

[roc_on]

"I haven't gotten the impression that you've given much thought to the victims," she says softly.

[thinklikethis]

"...I'm not sure what to say to that?"

[roc_on]

"It's just... very different from how I think so I'm not sure what to make of it."

[thinklikethis]

"Well... I think maybe you haven't gotten a good impression of what I've been thinking about for the last couple of weeks, because I've been avoiding you the whole time?"

[roc_on]

"That could be it, yeah."

[thinklikethis]

"Yeah."

[roc_on]

"Do you want to tell me what you've been thinking?"

[thinklikethis]

"...I'm not sure? Like... I don't not want to, exactly, maybe, but I don't... know what you want to hear?"

[roc_on]

"I didn't ask for, like... recreational purposes."

[thinklikethis]

"I, uh, what?"

[roc_on]

"It's not about what I want to hear, I mean."

[thinklikethis]

"Yeah, I didn't say that right. I mean like..."

He pauses. He looks contemplatively into his weird fruit smoothie.

"Okay, if we're going to get into this can we go somewhere that is not your kitchen? Like your room, or the roof, or something."

[roc_on]

"Sure."

Roof it is.

[thinklikethis]

Dao sits on the roof.

"So. What do you want to know? And why do you want to know it?"

[roc_on]

"...I haven't come up with a less hopelessly incomprehensible way to say the thing that's been bothering me than 'I understand your perspective but I don't understand your perspective'. Um, with the part I understand being - I get what factors and ingredients and experiences would cause the parts of your feelings on the whole subject that I can see, but I don't have a good understanding of their ratio. And I usually find other people's feelings-ratios bizarre but this feels more fundamental."

[thinklikethis]

"Okay... uh, well, I don't really know what to say, still, because... do you just want me to say I'm sad that those people got killed? Like, I am."

[roc_on]

"That's... not what I mean, although it's in the neighborhood..."

[thinklikethis]

"Then I kinda don't know what you're asking me for."

[roc_on]

"Maybe I should just explain the thing I do instead of trying to guess at the thing you're doing. Like... imagine everybody in the world all formed a line. On some surface long enough to hold a line of everybody in the world. And absolutely everybody in that line it is my very own personal job to make sure they have a happy fulfilling life. But I'm not omnipotent and even if I were that would be really hard to do for everybody all at once. So I have to put the line in an order. Does that make sense?"

[thinklikethis]

"Iiiii think so? Although if I tried it I would go crazy, because wow?"

[roc_on]

"Well, I mean, this is not a literal line, I can't account for everybody in the world. But I can make a good guess about who's on the ends of the lines when they rise to my attention. Everybody anywhere on the line still matters. If I could help, like, the bottom half of the line or the top quarter of the line, and those things would take the same amount of time and cost the same in - resources-in-general, with the well being of other people on the line being one of those resources - then it would be better to help the bottom half than the top quarter. But that's usually not the case because the easiest way to be at the top part of the line is to be helping, is to be looking after some of the other people on the line somewhere and making it so I don't have to worry about them directly."

[thinklikethis]

"Okay..."

[roc_on]

"And the easiest way to drop to the bottom of the line is to start killing people and I feel like you resent me for making that tradeoff, maybe because it involved uncertainties and I wasn't positive he was going to kill anybody else?"

[thinklikethis]

"I... don't, or I don't think I do," he says. "Or. No. I don't resent you. I don't, I just, I..."

He trails off.

"I wanted him to be okay."