[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 15

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He cut in to point out that I shouldn’t assume that, as it left no room for success. “I know. But would you invest your savings into some business venture with the same odds of success as the average romance? Of course you wouldn’t. Why should I take such a foolish risk with my heart?”

He stroked his beard, looking contemplative. “The other thing is”, I added, “I just don’t want it that badly. I don’t understand people who do. Yeah, it’s pleasurable and fulfilling while it lasts. So is meth, for fuck’s sake. The fallout from both is comparably devastating. It’s like if every cake had a fifty percent chance of containing live scorpions. I like cake, but not that much, you know?”

He rolled his eyes but didn’t interrupt. “Do you remember a few years ago when that infamous nutjob shot all those blonde leggy sorority girls? When they found his manifesto it was just page after page of angsty, entitled, insecure rambling about what a perfect handsome gentleman he is, what bitches women are for not flocking to him and so on?”

He remarked that in fact he did remember. “Yeah, see? Perfect example. The strange thing to me isn’t how desperate and neurotic he was. I see plenty of that every day. Instead what boggled my mind is why he desired women so intensely that his failures with them drove him insane.”

He pointed out that in all likelihood the fellow in question was never mentally healthy. “Alright, sure. But I haven’t interacted with women any more than my career requires in the past decade. I don’t feel on the verge of losing it. I don’t feel anything. Except relief I guess. It’s a huge potential source of anxiety that I’ve cut out of my life completely.”

He looked dissatisfied and shifted around in his seat before responding. “If I didn’t know you better I’d think you were a woman hater.” I laughed.

“If so, only because they are human. Men have their own set of qualities I find insufferable. That’s why so much rage focused exclusively on women is bizarre to me.”

He asked if I’ve ever felt tempted to act out in a similarly violent way. “Sure, but you know better than most how common that is. There was a brief period during which I took it seriously enough to investigate historical mass shootings in schools and the workplace. Do you know what I found?”

He shook his head. “I found it isn’t actually the quiet ones who snap. Seems like that’s how it would work, right? That some poor schlub is bullied past his breaking point, then takes his bloody revenge on the world. It was a very satisfying, tempting narrative for someone in my state of mind. But it’s bullshit.”

He looked incredulous to my surprise. I expected him to leap in and finish the rest for me, but by all appearances what I was saying came as news to him.

“It’s true. Look at the Columbine shooters for instance. They weren’t shy, bullied nerds. They were quite popular and well regarded by their peers, just secretly psychopaths as well.

I badly wanted to believe otherwise. Everybody did. You can still find archived websites from back in the day, made by troubled teenage boys worshiping their mistaken conception of those two shooters and their cause.”

I sent him some examples from my phone to peruse as I continued. “So much of what is commonly assumed about bullying is wishful thinking. Whatever gratifies us, whatever helps us heal. For a long time I thought bullies were people who suffered bullying themselves, simply acting out due to inner wounds.”

He looked up long enough to nod knowingly, this time already clued into what I was about to explain. “Yup. Total nonsense I’m afraid. Bullies actually tend to be high testosterone, type A personalities looking for outlets. Rather than going on to be losers later in life, getting what they deserve, it instead turns out that they are disproportionately successful.”

He made some cute throwaway quip about a widely despised presidential candidate from a few years back who fit that description. “That wouldn’t be so bad if their victims became stronger for it. That’s also a load of shit. All that inspirational, life affirming pablum about how it takes heat and pressure to turn coal into a diamond, or that we couldn’t climb a mountain if it weren’t first placed in our way.”

He nodded somberly. “Oh, I know. It doesn’t make them stronger. Most of my clients are living proof. It just inflicts scars that stay with them for life. It makes them permanently weaker if anything. Not terribly encouraging to hear, I’m sure, but that’s the fact of the matter.”

He doesn’t lie to me. I appreciate that about him. Lies are such an accepted part of human discourse now, a sort of social lubricant generously applied even when there’s no reason to.

It’s done in the assumption that you’ll throw a fit if your medicine isn’t delivered with a spoonful of sugar. I have no need of it and find it obnoxious to be infantilized in that way.

“What a kick in the shins, right?” I said. “The bullies go on to succeed in life, and the poor kids whose emotional development they irreversibly damaged never stand up for themselves.

They never get revenge, or justice, depending who you ask. The ones who actually go on shooting sprees are just the bullies who couldn’t wait until they reached Wall Street or Washington to start destroying lives.“

We shared a sober glance. “So much for the narrative”, he muttered. “No kidding. Even I couldn’t break that mold. Like anybody else who got fucked up that badly, I didn’t have enough guts left after they were all stomped out of me to pick up a gun and get some payback.

At the time I told myself I would regret it if I did. That if I didn’t blow my brains out after I was done, decades later I’d be rotting in prison regretting my decision.”

He asked if I still felt that way. The mask mercifully prevented him from spotting the beginnings of tears in my eyes as I answered.

“No. I actually regret that I didn’t do it. I hate that I feel that way. I know what it says about me, but it’s true. I have no idea where any of my bullies live now. No idea what they went on to do with their lives. They’re out of reach.

The brief window of opportunity for revenge was back when we attended the same schools. When I could be relatively sure they’d all be in the same place on a given day.

I always told myself I’d be morally better than other shooters. That at least I wouldn’t kill indiscriminately, I’d only target the ones who deserved it.

It’s a moot point now that they’re scattered to the winds. It would take years just to track down one of ’em. Killing them all is an impossibility. Killing just one wouldn’t accomplish what I wanted to. No point anymore.

It corroded my insides, knowing they got away with it. How could I go on with my life knowing they did all those things to me without any repercussions? That there will never be justice. It made me ugly inside. For a while I fought it, with encouraging success even.

There was this perfect moment when I broke out of all that. When I threw off those shackles, forgot my festering hatred and glimpsed a new future of infinite, beautiful possibilities. The more I try to return to that mindset, the more it eludes me. Like a half remembered dream.

Of course it couldn’t last. Something…happened.” Through my thin button down shirt, I absentmindedly fiddled with the little plastic barrette dangling from my neck.

“That was it. The rickety bridge I was building to a happier future collapsed under me and I fell back into my old dreary, brutal, petty view of things.”

He chose this point to chime in. “Monster world?” I nodded. “That’s what I called it anyway. There was just me, the only real human and...everybody else. A teeming mob of vicious, incomprehensible ogres with whom any sort of meaningful connection was impossible.

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