James turned on the kitchen light to compensate for the setting sun then returned to the sink for the few remaining dishes. Martha put away a dried glass into its cupboard. The party was over, but a handful of guests remained – all helping with the mess. James' mother was not among them. Martha hadn't seen her since she left to do the dishes. James handed Martha the last plate and she dried it.

Out on the front yard, James said his final thank yous and goodbyes to his clean up crew and then it was just the two of them. The sky was a deep blue. Bugs swarmed the nearest street lamp and James and Martha headed back inside.

"So," he said. "What do you think of my house?"

"It's nice," she said, though 'blank' was the word that came to mind.

"Would you like to see my room?"

Martha felt the blush and acted fast to diffuse it. "Mr Quinn, you're trying to seduce me, aren't you?" she said with her best Dustin Hoffman.

"Hilarious," he said as he closed the front door behind them.

"No, you're supposed to say 'Would you like me to seduce you?'"

"Why would I say that?" he asked with a quizzical face.

"Because that's the next line."

"No, that line's in a separate scene." They took a right down the hallway.

"'That line's in a separate scene,'" she whined mockingly. "My name is James and I've seen 'The Graduate' fifty times, so I know-" They turned into his room.

It was moderately sized and rectangular. As with the rest of the house, the walls were white and the carpet silver. On the far wall was a black draped window overlooking the front yard. Underneath the window was his bed, made with a white comforter and pillows. Next to the bed was a white desk with a black computer and two phones. The room was truly achromatic but for the canvas of brilliant color hanging on the wall directly in front of them.

Martha approached the painting. It was a portrait of a man. It had a Pop Art color scheme of yellow, orange, pink, and red intermingled as if Impressionist. She leaned forward to study the brush strokes rising and falling like waves in a tempest. It was unsigned, but there was no need to ask. She stepped back and relaxed her focus. "Is that... David Byrne?"

"That was the idea."

"That's... random. Don't get me wrong. It's amazing, but... like, you're that much of a Talking Heads fan?"

"He's a friend. Sometimes. Probably not this time. I'll paint a pony next round, okay?"

"Har, har," she said and turned away from the painting to face him. "Holy... what is that?!"

She hadn't noticed the wall adjacent the door upon entering the room. There, James had forgone the canvas and painted a dizzying maze of black and gray directly onto the wall. Martha moved close to see stairs and paths and rails and streams twisting through and around each other and themselves. Closer, she could see each course in black had, not quite shadows, but rather offset, faint echoes in gray. It was Escher multiplied by Escher and Martha had to close her eyes for the sake of her equilibrium.

"I've had some time on my hands," he said.

"I gathered," she said and reopened her eyes. James took her hand and led her to sit on the edge of his bed. She let out a breath slowly.

"Painting it helps me relax," he said. "Gives me a sense of control."

"That gives you a sense of control?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Of a sort."

Martha did her best to take in the wall as a whole. The tangle began at the door and spread like a vine to its left, coming to a frayed end about three quarters of the length of the wall. Beyond it, in the corner of the room stood a drafting table raised four feet off the ground.

"Are you going to finish it?" she asked.

"I don't know. Maybe." He stared at the wall with unfocused eyes. "I'll probably paint it over before the end of the summer."

"No. Seriously?" She felt a sudden panic rise at the thought. "How could you? It's... Look, I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner, but this is beautiful and... terrifying and... You can't..."

"It all disappears, Martha." He turned to her and smiled sadly. "Anyway, she'll want to move and you can't sell a house with a wall like that."

"I guess not." Though her nerves had settled, the panic remained in her stomach. There was a clock behind her she hadn't noticed with an audible tick, marking the silence. She squinted to track a set of rails that fell and rose then looped into alliance with a set of stairs that zigged and zagged impossibly. She wondered at the precision and the detail and the density and the... the pain? It was all too much to just rub out.

"Sorry, by the way," he said. "If she came off as rude."

"Who?"

"My mom."

"What? No. No, it's okay. Is that... how she is, usually?"

"The party exacerbated it a little, but yeah, basically."

Her eyes continued to travel through the painting as they talked. "Did she leave?"

"No, she's in her room – door locked, shades drawn, done for the day. It's the routine when we have company."

Martha became aware of how badly her hands were sweating. As usual, James was unaffected by them. "Can I ask," she said. "And it's okay if you don't want to talk about it, but... What was she like? I mean, in your first life."

James smiled faintly. "Funny. Really funny – and crude when we weren't in public. She and my dad would fight about that. He thought it was a bad example to set." His eyes stayed on the wall but Martha noticed something in them change. "They fought about a lot of things and I used to hate it. I still remember the raised voices muffled through my bedroom walls – these walls. But now, the memories are fond because my mom and dad were... themselves."

"That's... really sad," Martha said. "I'm sorry." She turned back to the wall and found another path to follow. "It's weird though. Why do you think it's so, uh... damaging to them?"

"Hard to say. You know, there's a fringe theory on a non-genetic cause of schizophrenia making the rounds of the clinical psychology community. It suggests that parents – mothers more often than fathers, unfortunately – who are verbally affectionate, but physically detached with their child can create a harmful dissonance within the child's mind. It's a subtle incongruity, but if done repeatedly and throughout crucial periods of development, the confusion can induce the disease – or so the theory would suggest."

"Really?" Martha said. "Just because you don't hug your kid?"

"Spoiler alert – the theory does not stick," he said. "But a fair number of intelligent and accomplished professionals bought the premise enough to study it, so it's not without theoretical merit."

"Okay, but what does that have to do with your parents?"

"Right. Well, it's... insanity by a thousand paper cuts."

"Huh?"

"So in the same way that these tiny little moments – the mom flinching from her child – repeated over and over, thousands of times over the child's development can add up to schizophrenia, so too my behavior adds up to my parents' neuroses. Because from a time before I'm even supposed to be out of diapers, I'm their intellectual and emotional superior.

"Can you imagine that? In some capacity, you've anticipated parenthood your whole life. You finally fall in love, finally get married, get pregnant, give birth, make it through the sleep deprivation, the nursing, the teething, and then... it's all wrong. You're not sure why, but there is something wrong with your child and there is something wrong with you. And the child can't tell you that he knows when you're lying or when you're being petty or hypocritical or selfish, that he can win any argument with you on logical merit, that he knows your darkest secrets, that he doesn't need your approval, that he doesn't need you..." He stopped and took a deep breath.

Martha thought back to her encounter with his mother. James had treated her like an insecure child – offering her patience and praise. She imagined her own father suffering the same fate – tormented and lost and no longer himself. Without thinking, she turned to hug James. She laid her head on his shoulder and squeezed his torso. His arms rested around her shoulders and on her back gently and without commitment. But Martha waited and, gradually, his arms constricted until it was clear he knew. Perhaps she could never fully empathize with him, but this was a step toward it, a piece of the puzzle, a sample of his pain she now shared and understood.

She released him. They sat and stared at the wall for a few moments, then he said, "Actually, there is a way to counteract it. I've done it a couple of times, but it's... exhausting."

"How do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, if I dedicate myself – and I mean every interaction with my parents or friends or teachers or counselors... If I can muster and sustain Daniel Day-Lewis level commitment to every micro-stage of my childhood... the tantrums, the confusion, the dependence, the disobedience..."

"Then they turn out normal?"

"Relatively."

"But it's exhausting?"

"Thoroughly. I can't ever break character. I have to abandon any hope of living with curiosity or creativity or intellect... And then, after the struggle and dedication, do you know what happens when it's all finished?"

"It's painted over."

He nodded and looked toward the floor. "I didn't ask for this, Martha."

"I know. I'm sorry. I wish there was something I could do-"

"You do plenty," he said to her and smiled. "But thanks."

Martha stood from the bed and walked to the drafting table beyond James' twisted mural. Its legs were black and its top was white and angled downward slightly. On the front edge was a black lip holding a pencil, a pen, and a closed spiral notebook. Martha pointed at the notebook and said, "You mind?"

James shook his head and Martha flipped open the cover. It was a graph paper notebook and the first page was filled with equations she wasn't ashamed to admit were beyond her comprehension. But then... there was an odd familiarity with parts of them as if by deja vu. She flipped passed an additional few pages of the same before coming to some kind of illustration. From a starting place on the left side of the page, midway down, traveled a series of arrows – or... vectors, I think? – ending at a point on the opposite side. Some moved straight across while others curved up or down, leveling at various crests before curving back to reach the common endpoint. Taken as a whole, the upper and lower humps resembled a pair of cartoon lips.

"What is all of this?" Martha asked.

"Something I've been working on," James said.

"With all of the time on your hands?"

"Yes, but when I say 'I've been working on it,' I mean over the course of my last six lives. And I don't have to paint that over." Martha flipped through a few more pages of confounding equations. James continued, "There's a professor of quantum physics at Berkeley I've partnered with. Of course, he doesn't know we're partners yet. He thinks I'm just a gifted and enthusiastic protégé."

"Quantum – that's Hawking not Einstein, right?"

"Right. He's preeminent and he only freaks out a little when I tell him."

"Tell him what? Wait." She turned away from the notebook. "You tell him? Like... about 'the gout?'"

"Mm-hmm. Jealous?"

"What? No. Why?"

"Because, as of now, you're the only person in the world who knows who I am."

She had to admit, there was a flash of disappointment upon hearing the news. "No, it's fine. Of course it's fine," she lied. "What made you decide to tell him?"

"It allows me to act on the whole of my knowledge and experience. It's difficult to overstate how far science and technology progress over the next fifty years. I've witnessed it all – had a hand in creating some of it. It's a strange proposition for him because he has to keep it a secret and the breakthroughs have to trickle out piece by piece, but what scientist would pass up the opportunity to play with tomorrow today?"

Martha nodded. "Makes sense." She warmed up to the idea, in fact, as the secret was a burden to hold alone. She went back to the notebook and turned the page to a drawing of what appeared to be the human brain. She would have thought it too precise to be free hand, but after the wall, she assumed it was his. Notes scribbled on the sides pointed to various lobes and sub-sections. "So... what's the point of it?" she asked. "I mean, what is it that you're trying to achieve?"

James stood, walked to the table, put his arm around her and said matter of factly, "I'm trying to figure out a way to end it... To die and stay dead."

Author's note:

Shout-out to the 2020's grads.  God, this sucks.  I have nothing to compare it to.  I guess it's better than being sent off to war, but I can only imagine how unfair this must feel.  I already had faith your generation was going to turn this mess around.  Something about this BS makes me think it will make you even bigger badasses than you were already set to be.  Either way, congratulations and good luck!

Like, totally 90's detail:  I missed it before, but "James' case of the gout" is in reference to Adam Sandler's "Lunch Lady Land."  Unlike her, James does not wear orthopedic shoes.  His 'gout' is existential in nature.