So Far Gone

by Jess Walter

Rhys Kinnick nearly doubled over with a previously undiagnosed condition: regret. And this single, overwhelming thought: What have I done?

Right, he thought. We live only as long as someone remembers us. Only as long as someone cares.

It had taken him years to believe that the world was not a series of rooms like this, crowded with people and their cultural noise, their agendas and desires. To remember that the world was the world, and we merely passed through it: twenty-some thousand sunrises, each one with the power to renew us.

All cruelty springs from weakness. Seneca said that, along with: Ignorance is the cause of fear.