The Glitch
When the question for which he had no answer was finally posed, Jones failed to even entertain the possibility that there had been an honest mistake. He was certain he had been intentionally sabotaged. It didn’t even matter that he had handled it deftly and everyone had jumped to explain it away. What world-class researcher isn’t exhausted? Shouldn’t we be glad he directs his efforts, his attention to detail, his time, toward the production of elite work, rather than fine-tuning public appearances? I could see people finding his misstep charming, humanizing. But he didn’t care about that.
It was like tapping a keg: Suddenly Maxon was all he could talk about. Those long-suppressed resentments, sweeping or petty, came pouring out, no longer disguised as professional commentary or critique.
People loved his capricious nature, his temperamental aversion to planning, they found it enchanting and aspirational. By the end of that summer I felt nothing but contempt for him. For me he was set up against, not the prison of institutions, the threat of caged intellect, but my mother, a whole life absorbed in patching and pacifying. Not followers and free-thinkers but stewards and libertines. Those to whom life allots a margin of whimsy and those it does not.
I tried not to show my hand by glaring at Jones outright, but I only got myself more worked up realizing he wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He was still ranting: “And by the way, his name isn’t Maxon. It’s Mark. Where the hell did he get Maxon from?”