#they're the reasons for his current character arc and the base for his neon future character development

[esteemed-excellency]

btw it's true that Hiram only ever seems to pay attention to information and not to people's lives, but that doesn't mean he's not interested in knowing how they're doing.

Pre-abstraction Hiram was a caring person forced by the circumstances to be distant and cold to survive the horrors (the general fl eldritchness and victorian society at the same time), the abstraction just sped up the process.

Post-abstraction Hiram is a cold and distant person who had to relearn how to care about others. He still has a long way to go but he's doing fairly well, even if he's also constantly playing his usual metaphorical 5d chess game with everything and everyone. This of course makes it difficult for people to tell if he's being nice or if he has a hidden agenda.