Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

Your standard round of Eschaton moves at about the pace of chess between adepts. For these devotees become, on court, almost parodically adult—staid, sober, humane, and judicious twelve-year-old world leaders, trying their best not to let the awesome weight of their responsibilities—responsibilities to nation, globe, rationality, ideology, conscience and history, to both the living and the unborn—not to let the terrible agony they feel at the arrival of this day—this dark day the leaders’ve prayed would never come and have taken every conceivable measure rationally consistent with national strategic interest to avoid, to prevent—not to let the agonizing weight of responsibility compromise their resolve to do what they must to preserve their people’s way of life. So they play, logically, cautiously, so earnest and deliberate in their calculations they appear thoroughly and queerly adult, almost Talmudic, from a distance.

The Eschaton scene is beloved by many but takes a good long while to get to the point.