What a skill it is to craft a character so comforting and easy to care about as Furlong within the span of such a short novella! Though I wish this was longer, I can appreciate how, ultimately, what matters most is not whatever came next, but simply the fact Furlong allowed his humanity to supersede the socially-conditioned part of him that would've rathered he kept his head down and fulfilled his duties as a complacent cog of an especially barbaric machine. To be human is to go against the selective pressures which attempt to mold this world into a 'survival of the fittest' model and instead chase a form of self-evolution wherein helping others reach the finish-line alongside yourself takes precedence over getting there the fastest.