Flowers

     I recently watched the made-for-TV movie version of Flowers for Algernon. It does not deserve to be spoken about. Instead, I will discuss the inspiration it gave me for a sort of spin-off.

     In this alternative scenario, instead of getting intelligent, leveling off, and becoming less intelligent again, the protagonist's intelligence never stops increasing. Past genius, past humanity, into a seeming insanity. At first he becomes disillusioned with society, much like in Flowers for Algernon, as people become predictable, like thin paper dolls. He stops bothering to interact with them because he knows what they'll do and say well ahead of time. His intelligence becomes a prescience that extends further and further into the future, and he understands causality in a way that is beyond us. He begins to take actions with no discernible significance to us to alter the course of the future. Eventually he begins to consider philosophical issues, goes through an existential crisis, and then either commits suicide or attains some sort of nirvana which leads him, hopefully in a fashion not too contrived, to revert to his previous personality as a mentally handicapped person.

     Apologies to Dave, with whom I have discussed this concept and who helped to develop it.