A true narcissist never contemplates suicide.

When gripped by genuine and implacable desperation, when afflicted by a remorse so exquisite that only oblivion will offer relief, the narcissist does not consider the ending of his own life, but looks instead to the ending of all life, of everything.

My brother is a narcissist, and he is gripped by just such a despair. I know that his suffering is overwhelming, because I was the architect of his misery. Were he any other man, were he any other narcissist, his clamor for the undoing of everything would be limited to fantasy - vivid daydreams of comets smashing into the earth, solar storms powerful enough to cook us all, or perhaps some other image, more eclectic, and more possible. He is a scientist, and he knows of such things.

My brother is not just any scientist; he is one of the greatest who ever lived. Like all the truly great ones, he is a touch mad, but not committable. If he were, perhaps I would have found my revenge in having him institutionalized, and things would not be so very grave. But no. My brother is a genius at science while I possess a poet's wisdom of the heart, and that is what I used against him.

A poet is what I wanted to be -- but that is not entirely true. Anyone can be a poet. I desired to be a great poet, which is a wholly different matter. To achieve this, I felt I needed the liberty of an allowance. My genius brother, being that rarest of inventors, a wealthy one, denied me this allowance. Over this we clashed, as brothers will.

It could have ended easily enough. I could have taken the noble road, starving and suffering for my art. Or, he might have relented in his high-handed demands that I face the world on its own terms. Either compromise would have spared the world.

But it didn't end so easily. We each stuck stubbornly to our guns and, in the end, to repay what I felt to be a crude and miserly insult, I seduced his wife.

There. I have said it. It wasn't easy. Not just the saying, but also the doing. Both were exceedingly difficult. She was loyal and good. She deserved better. But although I lack my brother's genius, I share with him the drive that allowed him to see so many of his inspirations through. That my own strength of will was turned to base and wicked purpose did nothing to diminish its power: I put the time in, I saw the thing through. Then, in best tradition, I revealed the deed to him.

I am determined, and admittedly vile, but I'm no fool. I did this over the phone, thousands of miles from him, and whatever raygun or lasersword he may have at hand in his laboratory. After all, a wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.

After the telephone call was disconnected, I sat and reflected. The satisfaction was not what it might have been Ah, the terrible irony of success; I had slaved and suffered for this moment and all if afforded me was a colossal case of buyer's remorse.

Depression is something my brother and I also share. I reminisced on how far his mood would fall when he discovered a miraculous something that had no practical use. One instance came to me, and it is probable that even in my melancholy, some aspect of my imagination understood to what depths I had driven my brother, and therefore summoned this particular example as a foreshadowing of what was to come.

After years of work, my brother discovered a fission process that ran on water. I don't pretend to understand it, but what happened was that the hydrogen and oxygen bonds were loosed, and the hydrogen burned with the oxygen, producing energy in the form of heat - more than was used to break the bond in the first place. This, then, was the great impossibility realized: perpetual energy, all the world's problems solved. My brother could instantly take up residence in a castle that orbited the earth, or any other equally unlikely habitation he chose, because the inventor of unlimited free energy could have anything he asked for, anything he could imagine.

Now I ask you: if your brother invented such a ludicrous thing, and it was just one of many such inventions, wouldn't you begin to feel an inkling of resentment towards him?

No matter. His elation was short lived, as there was a flaw. Not really a flaw, but more an impracticability. The process worked, but once begun, it consumed all water molecules that were in contact with one another. In the laboratory, he could control this, but should such a reaction be set up outside of such a strictly controlled environment... disaster doesn't say it. Cataclysm is nearer, but there is no single word, for what would happen. The seas would become as the surface of the sun. No creature on earth would be clever enough to escape such a thing.

Once discovered, the process was locked away, until a positive control could be developed. I've read that Oppenheimer feared that the first nuclear test might ignite the atmosphere, but he tested it anyway. My brother was less mad than him, even.

Was.

I am sitting on a hotel terrace in Los Angeles, watching the sky to the west light up. It is as if the sun were rising, but of course, that isn't the case.

There is panic all around me, and that is an appropriate response. If I knew less, and could feel more, I might panic as well. But I know that all that is happening is that I have failed to punish with impunity.

That being the case, I will do what all men condemned by their actions are expected to do:

I will sit.
I will wait for the end.
And I will think about what I have done.