Shutdown (Glitch)

when he was trying to convince me that people had souls, that we weren’t only base physical parts strung together with electrical impulses.
    “So what’s it about?” I asked.
    He finally met my gaze for more than a passing glance. “It’s about the myth of Sisyphus. Do you know it?”
    I shook my head. I hadn’t read much beyond what the Professor assigned in Humanities. “Tell me about it.” Anything was better than the math theorems he usually liked to study. He’d tried to explain them a couple times during past visits. Not only could I never follow, but he’d become so meticulous and absorbed in the problems on the page, I felt like he barely noticed I was even there.
    He paused, and for a second it seemed like his eyes softened. “It’s the story of this man who’s in the Greek mythological version of hell. You know what hell is?”
    An uneasy shiver went down my spine. I didn’t like where this was going, but I tried to tell myself it was encouraging that he was engaging with me and actually asking questions. “Um, isn’t that the bad place people in the Old World thought people went after … after they died?”
    He nodded. “So this man is in hell, and they were very creative with their punishments there. They knew that it wasn’t just unending pain that could torture a man.”
    “So what did they do to him?” My voice was barely more than a whisper. I’d wanted to get Adrien talking, but now I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear what he had to say.
    “All day long and every night without rest, he had to push a rock up a hill. Then when he got it to the top of the hill, the rock would roll back down, and he’d have to push it up again. Over and over and over again. For all eternity.”
    “You know that’s only a story, right?” I said uneasily. “That never really happened.”
    Adrien lifted his tablet briefly. “Well, I’m reading this philosopher named Camus who says that this is really what all our lives are like. Useless, monotonous. That we’re lying to ourselves if we think anything different.”
    “No,” I said, edging closer to him. My heart hurt in my chest at the things he was saying. “That’s not all there is. There’s love and beauty and courage.”
    He averted his gaze from mine. “Camus says love is a fiction. Make-believe. A story weak men tell themselves so they can believe there is something more to their pointless lives. He says it’s courageous to look at life in the face and call it what it is. All of us uselessly pushing our boulders up the hill.”
    “Adrien,” I said, putting my hand on his forearm, but he pulled away again.
    “Maybe I’m not as broken as you all think. Maybe I’m just one of the few people who can see clearly now.” His voice was calm. It sounded like he thought it was a good thing not to be able to feel anything.
    I didn’t know what to say to that. I wanted to yell at him that he was wrong, to grab his shoulders and shake him until he remembered how to love me. Instead I got up and started walking away, not wanting him to see my tears. Because unlike him, I could still feel emotion, and he was breaking my heart.
    I turned back at the doorway. “Okay, well, I’m going on a mission tomorrow. See you next week, when I get back.”
    He didn’t nod or acknowledge me. He looked absorbed again in what he was reading. It was like that sometimes. He’d seem aware and engaged one moment and then gone the next.
    It wasn’t his fault he was like this.
    Jilia said the neural pathways had to reconfigure themselves, that hopefully his body would teach itself to make those connections again. But it had been six months already with absolutely no change. I tried to stay positive and hopeful, at least in front of him. He had loved me once, but now he looked at me with no more interest than he would a stranger.
    After so long with no evidence of emotion, even Jilia’s assurances carried a tinge of doubt. She tried to hide it, but everyone could tell. No one had ever tried to repair the kind of damage Adrien had. There were no guarantees it would work. He might be like this forever. The Adrien we’d known and loved might be lost to the caged spaces of our memories. Adrien’s mother, Sophia, looked haunted and drawn whenever I saw her, which wasn’t often. She made sure to visit Adrien in the mornings so we never crossed paths.
    So yes. I understood hatred now. I hated the people who had done this to him—I hated the Chancellor, I