Unique in All the World

Charlie, marvel of marvels, couldn’t read people. The halo of the mind clearly visible around the brains and ganglia of every feeling thing, whether gold or red or dripping with spectral tears, was invisible to him from birth. Such is his plight, he wanders through life asking,

“Are you okay?”

and

“How are you?”

and

“What do you think of so-and-so?”

For Charlie, the minds of others aren’t tapestries or symphonies, they’re mysteries, every single one of them. Every time he meets someone new he only finds another ocean. ‘Getting to know people’ is a phrase he throws around.

He tried to chase his way into the mind with a PhD in behavioral psychology, but that didn’t do the trick. He went on to study neuropsychology, neuropathology, and even neuropsychopathology, none of which made the people in his life predictable.

What he wouldn’t give for a glimpse of whether his family and friends are sincere in their affections, whether his rivals respect or pity him. His whole life he’s wondered who his mother loves more: his brother or his sister. It’s dreadful. Can you imagine a more horrible fate?