Short Fiction · Chapter
Pythias explained
The narrator, a Senate guard named Dick, recounts his friendship with Laurence Connaught and the events leading to Connaught's murder.
What happens
The narrator, a Senate guard named Dick, recounts his friendship with Laurence Connaught and the events leading to Connaught's murder. After Connaught saves his life by seemingly miraculously neutralizing a grenade, Dick deduces that Connaught possesses a secret technique that allows him to manipulate physical forces with his mind. Confronting him, Connaught demonstrates his powers and reveals the existence of a formula—twenty-three words—that grants such abilities. Fearing the corrupting influence of absolute power, Dick knocks Connaught unconscious, steals his notes, and then shoots him dead, confessing the murder to the police.
Themes in this chapter
Power and Corruption
The central dilemma: the secret formula grants absolute power, which the narrator believes inevitably corrupts, justifying murder to prevent its misuse.
Crime and Punishment
The narrator confesses to premeditated murder and expects execution, framing the story as a confession of a crime with moral justifications.
Alienation and Identity
The narrator's isolation as the sole keeper of a dangerous secret, and his fractured identity as both a friend and murderer.
Characters to notice
- Laurence Connaught
The victim; a close friend of the narrator who discovered a secret technique for psychokinetic powers, which he demonstrates before being killed.
- Dick
The narrator and Senate guard; he murders Connaught to prevent the secret formula from falling into the wrong hands.
Key passages
“They say power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The narrator reflects on the idea that unlimited power inevitably leads to corruption.
Key thematic statement justifying the murder.
“I killed him in cold blood, knowing what I did, because he could not be trusted with the secret that could make him king of the world.”
The narrator admits to deliberately murdering his friend to prevent him from wielding absolute power.
Climactic confession revealing the narrator's motive.