Thresholder, Perry Talks to His Sister

Alright, some explanation of what this is:

I'm doing some of the developmental editing work on Thresholer: vol 1 right now, and some of that includes writing new scenes that help flesh out who Perry is. I've written a few now, and this is one that is probably NOT going to be in the rewrite of the first volume, mostly because it's too long and is kind of not ... what Thresholder is about. Plus I don't think it hits the right beats for Perry.

However, with that said, I wrote it, and it makes more sense to have people read it than to throw it in the trash or sit on a hard drive. It's just Perry talking with one of his sisters, it's not huge or important, and I'm not sure that it's even good. I didn't do much editing, because I realized when I was about two thirds through that it wasn't fulfilling the function that I wanted it to, but it's a complete scene, even if it's on the short side for a chapter.

There's a good chance that the proper chapter will come tomorrow instead of today, but I have a good chunk of time left in the day, so maybe. This isn't being posted in lieu of anything, it's just a little bonus.

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Perry had two older sisters, both of them professional cellists like their mother. Carly was in Chicago, but Rachel played with the Seattle Symphony, and was relatively close by. She made it a point of setting up a monthly meeting with him, which had once taken the form of a meal with her and her husband, but after their baby had been born, had transitioned to some time away from the house for her. Sometimes that meant dinner together, but more often it was a coffee while she was in Tacoma for other errands.

She was five minutes late, and Perry had already gotten a mocha and a chocolate croissant. He waited impatiently, thumbing through the different apps on his phone, checking how many upvotes his latest comment on reddit had gotten him and whether anyone had replied. He was keenly aware that this was animalistic dopamine-seeking behavior, no better than a rat pressing levers in a laboratory, but it had become part of his default habits. He didn’t think of himself as an addict, but it was sometimes hard to deny it.

When his sister came over with her latte and set her purse on the table, Perry turned his phone face down.

Rachel was slender and severe, thirty years old and usually without a smile. When she did smile, it was a practiced thing, pearly whites that had been carefully straightened with orthodontics and lipstick that was never out of place. The older he got, the more she struck him as an unhappy person, but he didn’t know why she was unhappy. Mostly she seemed to be all business in a way that reminded him of their mother. Her hair was pulled back in a bun that looked so tight it was hard to imagine that it was comfortable, and she wore a black turtleneck that helped emphasize her gold necklace.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said with the practiced smile.

“No problem,” said Perry. “I wasn’t up to much.” He tapped the back of his phone. He felt an urge to tell her about the conversation he’d been having about the archeological cultures of Northern Europe, but squashed it, because he knew she wouldn’t care. He had also become a subject matter expert in the last twenty-four hours, and knew his understanding was incredibly thin — though not so thin that he couldn’t explain things to people who seemed content to do no research whatsoever. “How goes the cello?”

“Good,” she said. “I’m learning a few new pieces at the moment, hoping to put out a CD.”

“Do people buy CDs anymore?” asked Perry.

“You know what I mean,” she replied. “My age is showing, I guess. But yes, an album.”

“New stuff, old stuff?” asked Perry.

“Forty years old, which is new by classical music standards,” she replied. “I suppose the name Sofia Gubaidulina means nothing to you?”

Perry shrugged. “I can name five cellists, and three of them are related to me.”

“You can definitely name more than that,” said Rachel. “I know that you have personally met at least a dozen. But Sofia Gubaidulina is a composer, not a cellist.”

“Well, I’ll give it a listen when it comes out,” said Perry. “I’m always happy to support my family.”

“Even if it’s hard for you to do that?” asked Rachel.

Perry rolled his eyes. “I’m on top of things.”

“Mom said that you had talked about getting a PhD,” said Rachel.

“Ugh,” said Perry. He took a sip from his mocha. “Why am I always outnumbered? And why is getting a PhD spoken of as though I’ve got a heroin habit?”

“You’re going to end up drowning in debt,” said Rachel. “If you had a path to profitability —”

Perry laughed. “I’m in a family of professional musicians!” he said.

“We all make a living,” said Rachel. “I work hard, between the symphony, teaching, lessons, and putting myself out there. Perry, I would respect a doctorate in geography if I thought that was what you actually wanted to do, if it was a passion, or at least something you self-reported as having an aptitude in, but from everything you’ve said, you’re just doing this because it’s something to do. You shouldn’t go for a PhD because you enjoy college.”

Perry rolled his eyes again. She had a way of making him feel like a teenager, and he’d increasingly found these monthly get-togethers to be trying his patience.

“I had only mentioned it,” said Perry. “No concrete plans. I haven’t looked at the numbers.”

“You need a goal,” said Rachel.

Perry closed his eyes and sighed. “It’s all so … pointless.”

“What?” asked Rachel.

“Everything,” said Perry. “The times we live in. My life is fundamentally pointless, your life is fundamentally pointless, these are fundamentally pointless times. We’re a bunch of ants without the queen giving us directions, and yes, I know that’s not actually how ants work, so — a ship without a captain. I’m going to land on my feet somewhere, I’ll be a GIS analyst or something, but for the time being, I like college, I like bettering myself and learning about things and having conversations with people about whatever it is that interests me. I’ll land on my feet. I’ll end up doing something that produces value for some shareholder somewhere. It’s not what people were meant to be doing, but I will do it, and I’ll pay off the debt, but … come on, it is pointless.”

Rachel pursed her lips, then let her face go flat. She was good at that, just like their mother was.

“I used to think that I would get some kind of a lucky break,” said Rachel. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“What kind of a lucky break?” asked Perry, frowning at her. “You work for the symphony, don’t you?”

“Professional music for someone like me is a grind,” she replied. “The pay is decent, but if you want to make it work, especially with children, you need as many income streams as you can get. I have stress in my life, and I deal with it, but when I was your age, when I was on this path, I kept thinking that I would be special somehow. I had juvenile fantasies about — I don’t know, it’ll feel terrible to say it, but I want you to understand — there was one where Taylor Swift noticed one of my Youtube videos and sent me a message asking me whether I wanted to collaborate. Or another where I was plucked from obscurity and put into a movie for a cello solo, and I would lead a revival of interest in the instrument. I would have a role on Glee. Fame and fortune.”

“Ah,” he said. “Yeah, I can see that. Delusions of … not grandeur, but the idea that grandeur is just around the corner, that you can get there without working for it.”

“I was working for it,” said Rachel. “I knew that people didn’t just get lucky like that, and so I was sending out emails, building a brand, trying to get my name out there. I put blood, sweat, and capital into it. And it bore fruit, but it wasn’t what I had wished for, and eventually I had to face the fact that this,” she gestured at herself, “was what success would look like for me. It wasn’t going to be guest spots on top 40 hits. I wasn’t going to change the world, or even really get my fifteen minutes. I would have twenty thousand followers on Instagram and five thousand on Twitter, and that’s with work put into social media, a persona.”

“And you’re not happy,” said Perry. Usually their talks didn’t go like this. She talked about her children, or they dipped their toes in politics, which they were thankfully mostly aligned on, or she asked for details about his love life. A few people had glanced over at them, because her voice had risen in intensity. She was a professional cellist, but she had a nice voice too, and could get very loud if she wanted to.

“I’m happy,” she said, leaning back slightly and blinking at him. “I built a life. It wasn’t the maximally best life that I could have had, if outrageous luck had swung in my direction, if the universe had started tripping over itself to give me everything I wanted. But Perry, the universe doesn’t do that.”

“You’re saying that we need to content ourselves with a dull life,” said Perry. “No offense.”

“You’re going to have a life that doesn’t live up to what you dream it could be,” said Rachel. “You need to wake up to that. You need to stop putting off tomorrow because you know that it’s going to mean being a cog in a machine somewhere.”

“I’m going to be the cog, so either I can be a cog with a PhD and a lot of debt, or a cog that’s got a graduate degree and a slightly smaller mountain of debt?” asked Perry.

“I don’t know,” she said, looking away. She had composed herself, and the passion she apparently held for her slightly-better-than-mediocre life was hidden again. “Find something,” she said when she turned back. “Shoot for the moon and land among the stars.”

“The stars, in this case, being an analyst position,” said Perry.

“Something,” said Rachel. She sipped her latte. “And if you really want the PhD, of course we’ll support you.”

Perry laughed. “Oh, right, that was definitely the impression I got.”

She gave him a wry grin. There was a big age gap between the two of them, but sometimes she did still feel like his sister.

“How’d we get to be like this?” asked Perry. “I blame mom,” he said, answering his own question.

“First off, don’t blame mom,” said Rachel. “Second, you’re completely right.”

“She would always give the ‘greatness’ speech,” said Perry. “Way more for me than you.”

“Are you kidding?” asked Rachel. “I’m convinced that she was workshopping the greatness speech from the time I was four years old.”

“And how are you doing?” asked Perry.

She rolled her eyes. “Great.”

“‘Talent means nothing’,” said Perry. “‘Dedication, commitment, obsessively honing your craft’.”

“And you think that’s not true?” asked Rachel. “I’m willing to give her grief, but I also think she was right.”

“You know what I think about a lot?” asked Perry.

“People being wrong on the internet?” asked Rachel.

“Nah,” said Perry. “I mean, that too, but … there are eight billion people on the planet, and it’s just so incredibly easy to get completely stomped out unless you aim for a very small pool of competition. And even then, someone can come in and crush you. I was watching this SummoningSalt video about —”

“I don’t know who that is,” said Rachel.

“He’s a guy who makes documentaries about videogame speedruns,” said Perry. “He’s really good, you should check him out.”

“I will absolutely not be doing that,” said Rachel.

“And I was thinking to myself, ‘how small must that pool be?’” Perry shook his head. “You get the title of being the fastest guy to beat Mario, and … you know, that’s an accomplishment, it seems like it takes a lot of work, a lot of training, probably some sacrifice, but how many people are even trying? Like a hundred? Two hundred? It’s like, you have to have this specific hobby, and this niche within the hobby, and the equipment, and the will, and then it’s always specific games too, and I think ‘damn, if the whole of humanity got together to compete at this, most of these guys would be absolutely smoked’.”

Rachel tapped her fingers on her cup as she looked at him. “You lost me.”

“It’s like that everywhere, I think,” said Perry. “Eight billion people, and there’s no way you’re going to be the greatest that ever lived. The most you can do is strive and land among the stars, which means getting in the top tenth of a leaderboard somewhere. At the Olympics, I always think about the guys who trained their whole lives and then lost in the first heat. And they’re good.”

“Is this depression?” asked Rachel. “Is that what it is?”

“It’s insignificance,” said Perry. “That maw of pointlessness. Even if the world weren’t on the downswing, how do you find any meaning in it when you’re so small and insignificant? You just find some piece of it to chip away at?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” said Rachel. “Find someone you actually care about instead of alternating between engineers who are too good for you and bimbos you don’t respect, find a career, build a life.”

“It would still be meaningless,” said Perry. He sighed. She wasn’t getting it. He couldn’t tell whether that was just him explaining himself poorly or her not having the same mindset he did. Maybe she had come to grips with never achieving greatness, even if she had ‘made it’ in terms of being able to do music as a full time stable job. “I think I would have been happy on the savannah.”

“Return to monke?” asked Rachel.

“You know return to monke?” asked Perry. “Yeah, that. Except I’m kind of serious about it.”

“You’re going to go live in the woods?” asked Rachel. “Because if it’s that or shooting for a PhD, I think we would all rather you do the PhD.”

“There’s less debt in the woods,” said Perry. “But no, I think knowing how large the world is, and how little I mean in the context of it, isn’t something that going into the world would fix.”

“Is this geography?” asked Rachel. “You studied too greedily and too deep?”

“Nerd,” said Perry. Rachel was a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings, and her first Youtube videos had been cello covers of music from the movies with lyrics she’d written and sung in Elven. “But no. Or … maybe. You look at history, at the world, at how people flow and move and get informed by their surroundings, at maps, and I guess you start thinking about the bigger picture. Maybe more than most people. Or maybe I was attracted to geography as a means of making sense of it all. But it could have been anything, history or English or sociology.”

“You see, ‘it could have been anything’ does not inspire confidence in your pursuit of a PhD,” said Rachel.

“It was just an offhand mention,” said Perry. “Tell mom that I don’t need to be talked down. I’ll do research before I commit to anything, I’ll get the dollars and cents to add up.”

“Good,” said Rachel. She gulped down the last of her latte, which had gotten lukewarm. “I need to run errands while I’m in this neck of the woods, it was good catching up with you, as always. Sorry if I’m pestering, but that’s what older sisters are for.”

“Carly doesn’t pester,” said Perry. “But I will take the pestering to be an expression of love.”

The goodbyes lasted a while longer, but Perry had checked out. His whole family were terrible about saying goodbye, always with one more thing to add before they left. He had always hated it, especially when they went to one of his mother’s concerts and had to wait awkwardly while she said her farewell to what seemed like the entire audience after the concert was over.

The conversation had felt productive, but he wasn’t sure that it was. She had convinced him that getting a PhD wouldn’t solve anything for him, but she hadn’t convinced him not to get a PhD. He liked his life as a student, or at least the feeling that he was building to something. Eventually he’d be in his thirties and have to accept that whatever his life was, that was all it would ever be. Rachel had found happiness, or her own version of it, settling into a life where she’d never have everything she wanted, but did have most things she needed.

He wasn’t sure that was for him.