Novella Chapter 1B1. Curiousity

Chapter 1B1. Curiousity

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J read like others breathed.

It wasn’t a hobby. It wasn’t even a habit. It was a hunger.

Every surface in his room bore some trace of a book—history, neuroscience, theology, strange out-of-print monographs with brittle pages and forgotten titles. When he was younger, he didn’t understand why others weren’t doing the same: reading to understand why anything existed at all.

He devoured entire encyclopedias not for school, but for joy. When the internet arrived, it was like a dam had burst. For hours he would tunnel down obscure rabbit holes—how the Mayans measured time, the philosophical roots of probability, the difference between serotonin and dopamine. He read articles, footnotes, arguments, rebuttals to rebuttals. It wasn’t always organized. Often it wasn't even practical. But it gave him a strange, secret kind of safety.

Curiosity had never felt like a gift. It felt more like thirst: chronic and unquenchable.

Other people relaxed by gathering, laughing, going to the beach. J went too, sometimes, but the whole thing felt like performance art. While others lay back and listened to waves, he’d bring a book, something on metaphysics or cognition. Or a war memoir. Or a theory of consciousness. When asked why, he didn’t know what to say. Isn’t this what brains are for?

He watched films compulsively, too—not for entertainment, but as if they held clues. Sometimes he would rewind a scene ten times to understand a line of dialogue, or a flicker in a character’s eyes. He’d read film scripts, then rewatch the movie to compare. The emotional lives of others were a riddle he couldn’t stop trying to solve.

People said he was curious. Yes, curious.

But it wasn’t only curiosity. It was fear.

Fear that he’d miss something. That there was a secret to living, and he just hadn't learned it yet.