The Fifth Science

by Exurb1a

Winston Earnest had not been a man of love. Berkhamsted had. I felt it in him once, so clearly and so intense that there was no division between the two of us. It had been a morning, one of those Saturdays with nothing ahead. The sun was just up and Berkhamsted had woken for no good reason. He watched Penny sleeping a long time. It was not happiness, nor was it contentment that filled him and I up. It was something else, the finger of some distant deity reaching out for one’s own, the entirety of the world manifested for just a moment with a face. It was a certain knowledge that whatever was beyond that bed, beyond that room, was far inferior to just watching this woman sleep. What is it that sets the coin rolling? Berkhamsted had been with other women. (Men also on occasion.) It was never more than an amicable arrangement. There was always some degree of attraction present, and sometimes, on their side, there was clearly love. He responded with kindness, always, and assumed that what he felt must be love also; this was the sensation the poems pointed to. But on that morning in bed with Penny he was made frightfully aware that the former sensations had been cheap imitations. Less. This was something else: a purpose and a shrine to worship at. It was evidential proof that the human brain was capable of constructing an internal paradise.