Disclaimer: I do not own A Series of Unfortunate Events, its characters, settings, or events; all rights belong to their respective creators.
Vector is a word which here means to extrapolate a direction.
Vector from Determination
It's not the first time that changes your world.
The first time an adult, however well-meaning, cannot be trusted, proves themselves blind and ignorant and unheeding; the first time an evil man strikes you; the first time he follows you, promises he will always be there, swears that he will get what he wants as if you've already lost; the first time you see a murder.
No, the first time is not what changes your world.
The first time cracks your world, like spider-web fractures in glass, makes you aware how fragile your life, your safety, every moment is. You are protected—held together—you suddenly realize, by a sphere of glass thin enough to be damaged by human hands and a momentary loss of control.
The first time sends your world reeling, that great glass ball rolling dangerously close to a cliff you hadn't known was right there, makes you aware how unsteady your footing is. You are on an uneven surface and highly mobile and people exist who can and will futz with that on a whim.
The first time sends a clarion warning resounding through your sheltered existence, sending you scrambling for safety. You are in a bad situation and must fight and run until you are not.
The first time is a frightening, horrible awakening—knowledge that had been academic, clinical, distant is now real and alive in ways you don't quite have the words to describe—but dismissed easily enough. It is an aberration, an anomaly, a mistake; it alters your world, but does not change it entirely. It probably won't happen again.
The second time—
The second time changes your world forever.
The second time shatters the glass-bubble illusion of protection and safety that once surrounded you, sending tinkling shards down in a sharp, cutting shower. You can and will be damaged by human hands and tongues and minds.
The second time tips you over the edge, down into a dark, secret pit so full of oozing, tarry slime that you can't stand for more than one gasping, desperate moment at a time. And you will be pushed down every time.
The second time sends a klaxon pounding, resonating through your very being. Your life, your world is bad and there is no safety for you to run to.
The second time is a frightening, horrible awakening—understanding that settles deep in your bones and the crevices of your conscious and subconscious minds and prickles over your skin and defies definition—it cannot and will not be dismissed. It is the norm, a constant, an expectation; it is how your world is now. It will happen again.
Klaus Baudelaire is an intelligent and well-read boy; he knows that in mathematical graphing two points determine a line and that academic axioms are applicable in any number of seemingly unrelated contexts. Two points—and the commonality between them—demonstrate direction, establish pattern. Further points only verify what he already knew—from day two in Count Olaf's house, from the second time no one listened, from the second adult to see the marks on his face and brush over them, from Count Olaf's second appearance, from the second time an adult failed to see through the villain's disguise, from the second time a guardian was murdered. Klaus can trace the line they form as clearly in his mind's eye as a mathematics problem: Count Olaf plus the Baudelaire fortune equals misfortune.
Klaus also knows that lines on a graph extend infinitely, that they will continue in the same direction unless stopped. They do not alter direction, take a turn for the better; they do not stop on their own, even if one stops plotting points along them. If this were mathematics, stopping the line from progressing would be simple enough, but this is not mathematics, even if some of the principles apply—this is human beings, acting and reacting and moving in their own way and Count Olaf keeps introducing variables that Klaus can't predict, let alone bound, and removing the options Klaus originally had.
Klaus can see the pattern easily enough; altering it is much harder.
Comments, critiques, and constructive criticism are more than welcome as I am always looking to improve.
Have a fortunate day!
With all due respect,
M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng