Ladies and Gentlemen: the invention for which you are giving me this award is a fraud. It has an unforgivable bug.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I accept this honor.

Ladies and Gentlemen. This isn’t what I had in mind.

I have been told it is customary to speak about the roots of one’s inspiration. They lie in my horrifying childhood. At first, I assumed that the pain of others resembled my own, that what they felt must be as piercing and scalding—as raw—as what I felt. And so I did what I could, in my small body, and my small heart, to bear up under my pains, emotional and physical. Did I really think that others could smile, hold their temper, maintain a smooth brow, while feeling as I did?  I suppose I must have. And so I trundled along, bearing up.

Gradually, I realized the truth. My pain was worse than the pain of others. That is to say that I felt it more. Feel it more. I, frankly, feel more than you do. Or you, sir. Or you, madam in the back. More of everything, but especially pain. Physical, mental, emotional. I am a tuning fork. Once struck, my whole being is shaken by the sensation and it echoes in a long resonant note of torment. A tuning fork; or perhaps a drumhead?  Something that doesn’t absorb and muffle a blow, but instead cries out from deep inside.

As I grew older, the curse grew worse. I do believe that others perceived my difference before I did, at least subconsciously. And in the perverse way of children, they set out to drive down the child with the heavier load. Girls rejected me, which caused me pain, and the cycle deepened. Other boys refused my games. They were callous, and what a fitting word that is. Where others had only the feelings of a calloused palm, I was a scrubbed and tender fingertip. It was about this time that I began to affect my sartorial signature, the cape. In summer, a capelet. It was a message to my tormentors that they had no sway over me. And a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the technological magicianship that has earned me this award.

IDEA:  Give speech in Swedish. Blow their fjording minds. Can be done. Order language course in modern Swedish ASAP.

Slings and Arrows—Wednesday:

Girl at juice place misspelled name again. “Ben.”  Doesn’t even sound like Paul. Am I not famous? She apologized, but less than was warranted.

Seeing I was being watched, gave spare change to homeless man. He claimed he was no longer homeless, tried to return money. I am insulted to my core.

Simple emoji willfully misunderstood by mother. She knew at once I was hurt, but ignored it.

Damer och herrar, tack så mycket för denna ära. Jag förtjänar det och mycket mer...

My problem was the subjectivity of pain. No one knew what I was feeling. Pain cannot be borrowed or spied upon or tried on like a coat. I mean, it could not at that time. Pain is personal. Pain is important. Pain is a weight that has kept me from soaring as I would have. I have always prided myself on a certain precision of expression. But no words that I could employ truly conveyed the quality of the pains that assailed me. While another man might say “my feelings were hurt,” I’d speak of the bleeding void in my soul, but no one knew, really knew, what that meant. I thought Belinda did, but as it turned out, she misunderstood me most of all. Screw you, Belinda.

And thus, five years ago, I realized what the solution would look like. I set out to invent a device to map the receptors of my discontent and activate the corresponding points in my target. I couldn’t transplant my pain to the mind of another and thereby erase it from my own, but I hoped I could replicate it there.

I called my invention the Pain Gun. Before I had even completed the technology, that was what I saw in my mind’s eye. A gun I could put to someone’s head, pull the trigger and BANG! 

The pain I felt would be theirs and they would curl into a ball and vomit on the floor and then writhe in the vomit and feel sorry. They would marvel at what I have been able to do while feeling so much. They would finally understand. They would. Get. It.

Slings and Arrows—Thursday:

 “Poll.” Closer. But not a name. Juice Girl is trying, and that infuriates me.

My cape drew looks at the drug store. At least there is still that.

Apartment next door. Party. Unsustainably irritating. I grew angry and was instantly met with silence and many expressions of empathy. They robbed me of my righteous anger. This is my own doing.

Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for this honor. I’d love to say that this brings me unadulterated joy, but obviously, you all have the means to know otherwise. Ha ha.

Headlines that I have caused:

Peace Treaty Signed. Both Parties Issue Formal Apologies for Past Actions

Divorce Rate Plummets; Suicide Rate Races it to New Lows

Improved Disease Diagnosis Leads to Markedly Better Outcomes

Ladies and Gentlemen, Belinda stole the prototype. She is, frankly, a terrible person and I should never have given her a key. People say that without her I would not have the fortune, fame, recognition—even this Nobel Peace Prize. But I didn’t effing want those things, Belinda. I wanted people to feel my pain. Not each other’s. People say that without her there would still be war, conflict, unanswered want and unheard souls in pain. Again, this was not my concern. Frankly, lots of them probably deserved that pain. And yet, thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, Damer och herrar, tack you very much. I’ll wear this medal around my neck and it won’t weigh on me at all (right). Honestly, I’d trade it all for what I really wanted.

The Pain Gun was supposed to be an offensive weapon and an intensely personal one. It was my intention that I would only make one and that I would be the only one ever to use it. Just one was all that was needed for selected others to feel as I do. Period, end of autobiography.

I just wanted to shoot my pain into other people, but even this simple wish was denied me.

Despite what you may have heard, from supporters of Belinda, it wasn’t a negative enterprise. It was about justice and beauty. Those who had not yet caused me pain would be aware of my burden and appreciate my strength. And those who had caused me pain would get to feel what they had done. They’d weep at first from the pain, and then again at the realization that they had failed to see the beautiful soul of a martyr in their midst. It was only a weapon in that it was to be used in anger; it was not intended to kill, only to cause beauty. The beauty of a perfect symmetry of pain. The beauty of knowledge: you will know how strong I am. Perfect. An unveiling of my soul for sympathy, regret and admiration. This is why I’m not declining this award. This is why I deserve it, no matter how it came out. My intent was good. Better than the result.

Headlines that I caused:

Nations Compete to House Refugees Fleeing Natural Disasters

Minimum Income Standards Set—and Met

Foundation Created as Former Racists Pledge Support to Those They’d Harmed

Belinda worked at the library. She noticed how much time I spent there. She asked about the cape. I am big enough to acknowledge that she was intelligent in her own way. She understood the general shape of the work I had done and pointed me toward the correct sources to carry it forward. She dug into the project, but she didn’t understand my goal. She kept talking about the “greater potential.”  That should have tipped me off.

I gave her the key to my place on our third date. She tried to return it on our fourth date, which, of course, caused me terrible pain. I would not take it back. Oh, that I could have known where that would lead. She broke up with me, or as she put it, “We were never really together.”  God, I wanted to shoot pain into her so much and I told her so. Honestly, I think that inspired the final thrust of my work that resulted in the prototype. Thank you, Belinda, rot in hell.

The bitch broke into my place, using the key I gave her, and stole the almost-fully-operational prototype gun. No. If I am honest, it was fully-operational. The work she did subsequently was only fat-fingered monkeying to get it to work, just the last few steps, mopping up, and I am certain I was on the verge of making that last inferential leap. It took her a week to do what I am certain I would have done in a day. Or an hour. The work of moments, and it took you a week, Belinda.

I suspected the deep state had taken it until I found the note Belinda had left, full of self-serving justifications that served only to set me ironically awash in the singular flavor of my own pain. The next thing I knew, Belinda had taken up with a doctor. How else could she get my invention into use so quickly at the hospital downtown?  The patients’ pains could be felt, not merely described, and therefore better treated. Relatives of people in comas could verify that their loved ones were pain-free, and rest easy. Unconscious victims of trauma could be quickly evaluated. Oh, everyone loved the pain gun over at the ol’ ICU. Everyone’s pain was getting a good ol’ feel-up except my own.

Slings and Arrows—Friday:

Juice place. “Paul.” I mockingly congratulated Juice Girl. An idiot, she mistook it for real praise and smiled. Thus enticed, I asked her out and she refused. I am fuming.

Mother tried to call. Congratulations on the Nobel, I’m sure. I will not take the call until she makes some Grand Gesture to apologize for my childhood.

Invited to party in the next apartment. A scheme to stem my complaints. I will attend, and rot the party from the inside.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you may know the next part. I pressed my case in the courts. In the end, I was awarded handsomely for the theft of my technology and I was able to quit my job at Safeway, but once the Pain Gun had started causing so much “societal benefit,” no one was interested in actually stopping the spread of its use. This is how empires fall, Belinda. Can you imagine, if I hadn’t won the case? Can you imagine her on this dais in my place right now, wearing a flower-print dress and cheapening everything? Travesty.

Idea: Buy oranges. Make better juice. Force Juice Girl to drink it.

You’ve all heard the story about the nurse who responded to a pain-spike on their ERT (the Pain Gun having become the Empathy Resonance Tech), only to find a patient with no new physical problem, but instead crying over a “Dear John” letter. How did they not know until then that emotional pain was part of the deal?  Because they were idiots. It was the only part that really mattered and they missed it for months. Suddenly, therapists were able to “get inside” the pain of their patients and provide, for the first time, quantifiable results. They began to report the previously-ignored pains of the homeless, the elderly, the children, drug abusers... Specialists with ERT licenses walked the streets, pulling abused children to safety. The line between being a police officer and a social worker began to blur. The boundary between the “deserving poor” and “undeserving needy” disappeared when the identical quality of their pain was tasted.

An early right-wing attempt to label the ERT a tool of socialism died, once they felt the pain they were causing. And once the FDA ruled it benign, even beneficial, everyone had one. Like a smart phone, only the smart part was me. Lawyers, judges, diplomats, negotiators. Teachers, children, zookeepers. Librarians. Parents felt the pains of their newborns. Husbands felt the pain their affairs caused their wives. Teenagers felt the pain their recklessness caused their parents. Everyone felt the pain of the caged animal and the pains of the earth itself, filtered through the hungry polar bear, the choked sea turtle. Everyone felt the goddamn pain of everyone else.

Except… and hang on, damer och herrar, for the grand irony that makes the whole story work… the bug in the ERT. It does not detect my pain. Oh, if I stub a toe or detect a slight, it records pain and transfers it obligingly to the operator. But it cannot tell that my pain is far worse than anyone else’s. Everyone says my pain is strong, growing from a “hair-trigger anger,” but that it has no special quality, no extra force. My own invention fails in the one thing it was meant to do. I would blame Belinda for engineering this flaw into the invention, except I’m certain that such a subtle manipulation would be beyond her skills. You are a librarian, Belinda.

Headlines that I caused:

Assisted Suicide Made Legal as Demand Drops

Polls of Personal Happiness Reach Global Highs

ERT Akin to Evolutionary Leap, Experts Say

Today, the world, we are told, is on its way to being a paradise. The globe is healing. Humanity is working through its differences. Those without voices are being heard. Belinda has married a masseur, and has flooded the internet with photos of their teacup Pomeranians and, recently, a baby. I am wealthy now, though I prefer my old ways, my old studio apartment. I have failed, so far, to get sympathy for my pain, and so I refuse to inspire envy for my comfort.

I have found other people, a few special men, who suffer as I do, in deep ways that the Pain Gun cannot detect. Some of them are, or have been until very recently, powerful. There are, among us, politicians, CEOs, a few mass killers, but understandably so, given the pain. I had hopes we might form a seething core of revolutionary fervor to take down the ERT with legal claims and legislative action, but by happenstance this group is, to a man, very hard to work with. The resistance to the ERT remains a dream. But there may be another path forward.

Without Safeway making demands on me, I have the luxury of time, and money to purchase materials. I am back at work. My pain is still untasted except by me, and I think my error was in trying to pipette it into your mouths one by one, baby-bird-style. What I need is more like a broadcast. I have made progress in this direction and some of the seething CEOs may yet prove useful. If the resistance is weak, at least the new offense is promising.

So, thank you very much, all you pasty empathetic Swedes, but I will not accept this honor. I will take the money—but not the honor. For to accept that the ERT deserves an award would be to accept the ruling of that diabolic judge of my own creation, and say my pain is ordinary, small and pale. I will not. Congratulations on your utopia and all. Thanks, Earth. Thanks, Sweden. Thanks, Belinda. But my pain made me special. I will not give it up. And I will not give up the chance to share it with you. Not even for paradise.