Another week, another school shooting. Let me see, let me see. Man, I need to organize my digital files better. Got it. “School Shooting Template.”

Is it 8 dead? 10? 20? Did the shooter die or is he in custody? What weapons did he use? Are there tragic stories of those cut down in the flower of youth? Where is the video of shocked and weeping teenaged girls? Did someone–a teacher or coach or student–act heroically? Which politician took to social media first? Were they pro-2nd Amendment or Anti? What did the N.R.A. say? Shooter’s name? What was his grievance?

Check. Check. Check. File. Post. Tweet. Done. Swallow. I wonder where the next one will be? Hold on a minute. I just got a notification.

***

One of my favorite science fiction programs is Battlestar Galactica–the reboot that ended almost a decade ago. The show revolves around a colony of humans traveling across space, fleeing a race of robots they created. The Cylons, in this iteration, have evolved. They no longer look like the chrome toasters from the 1970s version of the show, though some of them still do. They look human. They feel human. The Cylons have a religion and code of ethics. But in spite of their own perceived “humanity” of a kind, the Cylons are just different. They view life callously and as expendable, even their own. They are capable of shocking amounts of violence (after all, they have annihilated humanity except for the ones who managed to survive in this rag-tag fleet they are chasing) so long as it is in pursuit of their preferred end.

At one point in the race across space, the Cylons seem to have drawn a bead on their human targets. The human fleet jumps in hyperspace to a destination, but precisely 33 minutes later, the Cylons appear, ready to wreak havoc on the vulnerable remnants of humanity. This becomes a cycle. 33 minutes. Every 33 minutes. It isn’t like clockwork, it is clockwork. It is a mechanical precision befitting the machines the Cylons actually are.

Hyperspace was a sort of safe haven for the humans. If all else failed, they could jump through space to a location selected as a rallying point for the motley fleet and regroup. The Cylons have not been able to track jumps through hyperspace–until now. In terms of traditional battle, there is no bunker, base, or bastion beyond the reach of the Cylons. No place to conserve resources, reconsider battle plans, or ponder the possibility of a new assault. The humans have been deprived of both space and time, at least beyond 33 minutes.

The Battlestar Galactica, the flagship and only mode of defense for the human fleet, sets a countdown clock immediately after every jump. The ship’s crew waits with dread for the clock to elapse. This goes on for about a week. There is no real rest even within the half hour because during the interim ships need to be fueled, patrols launched, destinations plotted, and meetings had.

The Galactica, which is a rough combination of space-based battleship and aircraft carrier, suffers from a psychic splintering as the many clocks wind toward yet another inevitable encounter with a relentless enemy. There are jangled nerves primed for the next battle, which is an elaborate exercise to give the fleet just enough time to jump to hyperspace again. The crew are fully aware of the hopes that heavily rest on their shoulders. The pilots are the last line of defense against extinction. But as the clock ticks, and the encounters unspool, what was once a knife’s edge of discipline dulls into a numbed fatigue.

33 minutes. Start the clock. Maybe, somehow, this will be the time the Cylons don’t make the jump. Maybe they have finally shaken their foe. Maybe this hideous battle of cat and mouse will end and they can at least revert to something resembling a war instead of this chase that leaves no space for rest.

Eventually, the humans grow painfully aware of their own role in the process. What have they done that allows the Cylons to track them? What mistake have they made? Who is to blame? What can be tightened, limited, or shifted to make this stop? There is a ruthless self-examination and a search for traitors. In their own way, the humans are equally relentless in pursuit of a solution, but their own frailty, as humans, puts a physical, mental, and spiritual cap on their quest for truth.

When that ceiling is reached, there is only a void that remains. A void of despair, exhaustion, and apathy. No matter how noble the quest, the void always beckons, for even sometimes it feels safer to just. give. up. There is an ineluctable allure to the abyss even if at the bottom of it you find nothingness.

***

I cannot speak for others. I won’t even try. I can only say that each school shooting numbs me a bit more. Like the addict in search of the next high, who must now turn to a harder drug to feel at least something, the school shootings no longer affect me in and of themselves. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not reveling in my numbness, but I am despairing of its existence. I have reached my cap, and I am most afraid I am not alone. I can understand and wrap my arms around a world where only I am insufferably numb, but I have a harder time confronting one where I am joined by legions of others.

The shootings have a disturbing sameness to them, but instead of spurring us closer to understanding them better, their sameness has blurred them into one, prolonged event where only the minor differences are noteworthy. The sameness, naturally, extends beyond the shootings themselves. The outrage. The pain. The advocacy. The search for the cause and motive. The interviews with relatives and friends.

We have written a well-worn script for these shootings, and while we stick to our script, our numbness grows. We are in danger of moving away from tragedies and toward statistics, and I am a culprit in that transition.

Maybe, just maybe, the shooting in Santa Fe will be the last one, at least for a while. Perhaps our children will no longer live in a world where mass murder, delivered in hallways like the ones they walk down every day, is the norm.

Is my kid a killer? What about his friends? Does it matter? What can I do? Move off the grid? Take away their phones? Love them more? Buy a gun? Teach them how to fight and kill? Would any of that make a difference?

Sometimes it is easier to keep moving forward and hoping for the best. It seems defensible. Right?

***

Some non-negotiables might be a place to begin:

1. Of the 27 most deadly school shootings in American history, 26 of the perpetrators were raised by someone other than their biological fathers.
2. There is no political path forward for broad gun bans, a repeal of the Second Amendment, or a confiscation of weapons. Regardless of what any of us think ought to be done, the political dynamics suggest these are all off the table. In Santa Fe, the shooter used a shotgun and a revolver. Almost no one wants to target these weapons through regulation or confiscation.
3. Politics complicates everything in this discussion because our parties have lined up on opposite policy sides of this debate. Some brave public servants may have to eschew their partisan attachments to address this as a policy problem. Idealistic? Probably, but don’t expect this debate to move forward without this component.
4. These young men have holes in their souls. What else can explain a morality so debased that mass murder seems appealing? Any solution must also touch the soul.
5. These young men are disaffected, marginalized, and suffering. This is, for nearly all of us, the teenaged condition. Show me a young, confident, together teenager, and I’ll show you a vulnerable young person just a few comments, moments, or events away from deflation.
6. Social media magnifies marginalization in a way we have not seen historically. If you were bullied at school, there was always the evening and the weekend to recover and reconnect to those who care about you. There is no safe haven in a world of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or whatever else will replace them. These platforms, cruelly, provide the marginalized a chance to connect to others, which they so desire, while also creating an avenue for their perpetual torment. Bullies may chase young people wherever they go. Once the Cylons were able to track them across hyperspace, it no longer afforded the scattered humans the oasis they craved. For our teenagers, cyberspace, a magical way to connect, mutates seamlessly into yet another front in an ongoing war.
7. Traditional and Social Media also magnify the chance for the marginalized to feel like they matter. Emily Deruy points out that a school shooter, in an instant, will be the talk of all platforms in a way  the varsity quarterback and prom queen could never dream. And Jim Geraghty, at National Review Online, notes that school shooting coverage provides a twisted incentive for shooters. But can we imagine a world where the media doesn’t cover these events? Stemming either social media reach or traditional media coverage seems a fool’s errand.
8. Violence, in general, has been in steep decline in America for a couple of decades, so the traditional, sociological explanations for violence do not help much in relation to school shootings, which are an anomaly. However, the public perception of violence is that it is growing worse.
9. There is an obvious mental illness component to many of these shootings, but there is no obvious path forward for what should be done next to combat it.

***

There is little question that school murderers are among us. They are, like the Cylons, seemingly indistinguishable from us. They are human, but they are broken beings, shattered in a way that makes this insidious deed appear as a natural next step. The best solution, it seems, is to find them where they are and pull them off the road, into the clearing, and lead them toward a different way. That leaves the burden where it should be. On us.

But the abyss beckons us away from direct action. It pulls at us individually and whispers. What makes it dangerous is not the gaping maw of nothingness that resides in it–after all, most of us know enough to flee a monster when we see it. Its cunning disguise suggests it is something else entirely. The abyss appears as our world, but just a bit worse. It is a pale, slightly disfigured mimeograph with the heading of “just the way things are.”

After all, what can you do? Just you? Not enough to matter. Bury your head in your phone, find the next binge-worthy show, and hope for the best.

Unless we individually turn away from the void, we will never find each other. We will never see those fragmented souls just shunted off to the side where no one can recognize them. At least until they find a gun, buy a trench coat, and reset the clock.

33 minutes.