The boy detective is 38 now, and he's tired. He moved on from solving cases sometime in his late teens, after his intuition abandoned him. He lost his knack for mysteries, so he went to college with the plan of studying law or forensics or criminal justice. But he found himself drawn instead to philosophy and comparative religious studies. After graduation, he worked temp jobs for years. Eventually, he found a steady gig with good benefits as an office manager at an insurance company. He stayed there, developed a routine, and wondered what was next in life. Maybe love, or maybe finding purpose through activism or volunteerism or social organizing. But nothing ever managed to coalesce outside of the steady routine of his days.

Occasionally, he passes the time by looking up people from the old days. According to LinkedIn, his old sidekick Hallie O'Malley the Science Gal is now a researcher for a big pharma company. On Instagram, he found the account of his old nemesis Doctor Danger, who now runs a plant nursery and animal rescue near Salinas, California. The boy detective often thinks about his dog Skip, who sniffed out many a clue back in the day, and whose body is now buried in the backyard of the boy detective's childhood home. (Assuming the new owners never decided to dig him up.)

Some days after work, the boy detective goes home and pulls out one of the scrapbooks of newspaper clippings. He reads old headlines—"BOY DETECTIVE SOLVES CRANBERRY CAPER", "BOY DETECTIVE UNCOVERS SMUGGLING OPERATION", "BOY DETECTIVE FINDS MISSING RUBIES"—and tries to feel the warmth of pride rather than the pain of nostalgia. But more often these days, he leaves the scrapbooks in their boxes and looks up news online about current-day genocides, climate disasters, and the erosion of civil rights. He earmarks a certain percentage of his salary every month to donate to good organizations, but he can't help feeling small and hopeless in the face of everything.

He thinks about his aunt who has started to develop dementia. When he goes to visit her in the assisted-care facility, she thinks he's still the boy detective. She asks him what case he is working on now. In the past, when he told her the truth, she became scared and confused, so now he either recounts an old case of his or makes one up. She has forgotten most of her own adult life, but occasionally she recalls anecdotes from her childhood in extensive detail. The time she lost a shoe at a carnival, the time she had a sneezing fit in church, the time she took in a stray dog who happened to belong to the mayor. The boy detective wonders if these memories are true or false, but he doesn't feel motivated enough to investigate them. Besides, if the memories are real to his aunt, then they are as real as anything. One day, she doesn't recognize him at all.

He fears his father will be next. He doesn't know what he will do once his parents are gone. He thinks about death. He thinks about old age. He thinks about loss of memory. He thinks about all the religion and philosophy classes he took in college, the ideas of which now seem to hold little meaning or comfort for him. Some days, when he thinks about the unsolvable mysteries—the meanings and origins of existence—he feels a sharp, involuntary sense of hope. Like a certainty that all of the answers will eventually emerge, many millennia from now. He won't even have to lift a finger for the truth to be revealed.


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