mediated by our culture, and not by our genes.
Seeing each other die, and observing the gradual failure of their own bodies,
may have helped convince pre-Ndoli humans of their common humanity; certainly,
there were countless references in their literature to the equalising power of
death. Perhaps concluding that the universe would go on without them produced a
shared sense of hopelessness, or insignificance, which they viewed as their
defining attribute.
Now that it's become an article of faith that, sometime in the next few billion
years, physicists will find a way for us to go on without the universe, rather
than vice versa, that route to spiritual equality has lost whatever dubious
logic it might ever have possessed.
Sian was a communications engineer. I was a holovision news editor. We met
during a live broadcast of the seeding of Venus with terraforming nanomachines -
a matter of great public interest, since most of the planet's
as-yet-uninhabitable surface had already been sold. There were several technical
glitches with the broadcast which might have been disastrous, but together we
managed to work around them, and even to hide the seams. It was nothing special,
we were simply doing our jobs, but afterwards I was elated out of all
proportion. It took me twenty-four hours to realise (or decide) that I'd fallen
in love.
However, when I approached her the next day, she made it clear that she felt
nothing for me; the chemistry I'd imagined "between us" had all been in my head.
I was dismayed, but not surprised. Work didn't bring us together again, but I
called her occasionally, and six weeks later my persistence was rewarded. I took
her to a performance of Waiting for Godot by augmented parrots, and I enjoyed
myself immensely, but I didn't see her again for more than a month.
I'd almost given up hope, when she appeared at my door without warning one
night and dragged me along to a "concert" of interactive computerised
improvisation. The "audience" was assembled in what looked like a mock-up of a
Berlin nightclub of the 2050s. A computer program, originally designed for
creating movie scores, was fed with the image from a hover-camera which wandered
about the set. People danced and sang, screamed and brawled, and engaged in all
kinds of histrionics in the hope of attracting the camera and shaping the music.
At first, I felt cowed and inhibited, but Sian gave me no choice but to join in.
It was chaotic, insane, at times even terrifying. One woman stabbed another to
"death" at the table beside us, which struck me as a sickening (and expensive)
indulgence, but when a riot broke out at the end, and people started smashing
the deliberately flimsy furniture, I followed Sian into the melee, cheering.
The music - the excuse for the whole event - was garbage, but I didn't really
care. When we limped out into the night, bruised and aching and laughing, I knew
that at least we'd shared something that had made us feel closer. She took me
home and we went to bed together, too sore and tired to do more than sleep, but
when we made love in the morning I already felt so at ease with her that I could
hardly believe it was our first time.
Soon we were inseparable. My tastes in entertainment were very different from
hers, but I survived most of her favourite "artforms", more or less intact. She
moved into my apartment, at my suggestion, and casually destroyed the orderly
rhythms of my carefully arranged domestic life.
I had to piece together details of her past from throwaway lines; she found it
