Kay was not a wicked boy. He was a brilliant mathematician whose consciousness was ahead of its time. Gerda was his wife—a simple, "warm," down-to-earth woman for whom happiness was measured by Sunday dinners and ensuring "everything was just like other people have it."
The Snow
Queen in this story is not a woman. She is a metaphor for Absolute Reason. It
is a state of pure logic, devoid of emotional noise.
ACT I.
THE SHARD (EPIPHANY)
That day,
it wasn't a shard of a troll's mirror that hit Kay in the eye. It was a
micro-stroke or a sudden chemical glitch that caused a rare anomaly of
perception—a complete loss of emotional empathy. For Kay, the world instantly
ceased to be colorful and noisy. It became crystal clear.
He looked
at the roses Gerda loved so much, and instead of their beauty, he saw decaying
organics, the process of rot, and a senseless waste of resources on
reproduction.
Kay looked
at Gerda and instead of love, he saw biochemical addiction and the fear of
loneliness.
—
"Your stories are boring," he told her at dinner. — "Your
emotions are primitive." "There is no good or evil in the world, only
structure and entropy."
Gerda
cried. Kay traced the trajectory of a tear with interest but felt nothing. He
was finally free from the dictatorship of feelings. Kay packed his things and
left for the "Ice Palace"—his laboratory, isolated from the outside
world.
ACT II. THE
PALACE (THE SEARCH FOR PERFECTION)
In total
silence and cold (he turned off the heating so his brain would work more
efficiently), Kay worked on the Grand Unified Theory. He was trying to spell
the word "ETERNITY"—to find the formula describing the entire
universe.
Here, in
the cold, his mind worked like a superconductor. No interference, no pity,
fear, or hunger. He was close to a discovery that would change humanity. He
felt like a god. The Snow Queen—his intellect—whispered solutions to him. The
icy facets of formulas arranged themselves into a perfect pattern. He remained
one step away, one symbol away.
ACT III.
GERDA (INVASION OF CHAOS)
Gerda could
not leave him alone. Her love was selfish and suffocating. She bypassed all
security cordons, the logical arguments of colleagues ("Leave him be, he
is working on something great!"), and common sense.
She burst
into the laboratory, red from the frost, loud, smelling of pies and cheap
perfume.
—
"Kay, honey! You're freezing!" she screamed, destroying the sterile
silence.
Kay didn't
even turn around. He held a complex construct in his mind. But Gerda threw
herself at his neck. She was crying hot tears. Hot salty moisture fell onto his
face.
— "Look at me! Remember us!"
It was a thermal shock. A sharp surge of stress hormones and oxytocin. The brain chemistry he had suppressed flooded back, inundating neural connections.
The perfect crystal lattice of the formula
collapsed.
—
"No..." Kay whispered, feeling the great Truth slipping away,
dissolving in the viscous syrup of human feelings.
—
"What have you done... I almost saw it..."
FINALE. RETURN
TO NORMALCY
They sat in
a cozy kitchen. Kay was drinking tea with jam. He had aged and gained weight.
— "Are
you warm, honey?" Gerda asked, stroking his hand.
—
"Yes, warm," Kay smiled.
The smile was sincere, but absolutely empty. In his eyes, there was no longer the icy glint of intellect. The shard had fallen out. Kay saw roses as beautiful again, he loved his wife again. He became normal.
He worked as an accountant in an
office, grilled BBQ on weekends, and was completely happy.
The great
formula of Eternity was forgotten forever. The genius died so the philistine
could survive. The social desirability bias worked. Society won.
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