Jill gave an appreciative hmmm. It wasn’t all that far from Darwin’s theory, actually. Species did, overall, improve, but things rarely ever stabilized. There were always new challenges to be overcome, new ways for the species to try to adapt.
“Even so,” Nate continued, “nothing comes without a cost. Is life really that much better in the twentieth century than it was in the fourteenth? Yeah, we have modern technology. But with it came the bomb, car and plane crashes, computer hackers, global warming, and TV zombification. What are we missing emotionally now that we no longer live close to the land, raise our own food, or live in extended communities? Modern society may be superior in some ways, but it’s highly isolating and remote, from other people, even from our own planet. Nothing comes without a price. That’s fifty-fifty.”
Despite herself, Jill had to smile at his cojones. “Give me a break! You’re as much of a TV zombie as anyone, and you wouldn’t know how to raise a potato to save your life.”
Nate spread out his hand. “Naturally. I’m a product of my culture. So give me another example.”
“What about modern medicine?”
Nate didn’t even have to think about it. “Uh-huh. Modern medicine is cool, ‘specially if you’re the one having the heart attack. But overuse of antibiotics has led to immune microbes, blood transfusions give AIDS, our health care system is in crisis, we have a zillion old people hanging on now, like, forever, eating up their kids’ resource and the government’s, and medical technology has allowed us to engineer nifty new plagues like anthrax… I mean, don’t you find it incredibly elegant? No matter what we do, no matter what we invent to make life easier, there’s bound to be a catch in there somewhere. That is so incredibly cool. Scary as hell, but cool.”
Jill was taking it as a personal challenge now. She wracked her brain. “Mother Teresa? Gandhi?”
“For every one of them there’s a Ted Bundy?” He shook his head, eyes narrowing. “No. Check that. I have a better answer. I was raised Greek Orthodox, right? So look at Jesus Christ. During his lifetime he taught pacifism, equality, charity… Yet the religion created in his name caused some of the bloodiest, most ignorant centuries ever. And even Gandhi—a lot of the Pakistani–Indian hostility came out of that whole period.”
“Hmmm.”
Nate spun to walk backward, facing her. He had the energetic bounce of a twelve-year-old, even in this heat. “Anything else? Come on. You’ve got more.”
Jill threw up her hands. “Nope. You’re too smart for me, Socrates.”
“Come on!”
“Huh-uh. I’m done.”
“Please? Please, please, please?” he wheedled, making a pout face designed to bug the crap out of her.
It was good to see him come back to life again, even if there was a tinge of mania about it. She sighed. “Oh, all right. What about being a big celebrity? You’re telling me that life as Nate Andros, physics student, is just as fifty-fifty as, say, being Keanu Reeves?”
Nate made a psah gesture. “Keanu Reeves? Are you kidding? Oh, sure, there’s the money and the glamour and the chicks, but on the downside you can’t go out in public without being mobbed, critics lambaste you, you have to keep in incredible shape and compete with about a thousand up-and-comers who are even more gorgeous than you are, you struggle with egomania, question your own identity, are terrified of growing old, and are pretty much stuck with dating actresses who are even vainer and more screwed up than you are! Jeez, that wasn’t even hard.”
Jill laughed. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a pessimist?”
“Nah, I’m not a pessimist. I still hold out hope for you and me, don’t I?”
He abruptly stopped walking backward and looked away after he’d said it, for which Jill was grateful. They walked in silence for a while. It was Jill who broke it, in a very neutral voice.
“It’s a clever theory. But I’m not sure how you’d quantify it. And if you can’t quantify it, it’s not—”
“I know. It’s not science. So shoot me.” Nate bounced the metal capsules in his hand. “What I don’t get is this place, though. At seventy percent good, why is this civilization dying? Shouldn’t this be Paradise? It’s not consistent.”
Jill felt a spark of excitement. “It is, though. Remember the mice, what happened when we pushed the one pulse too far? How lethargic they got? It may take certain levels of… of challenge and stress to make life vital and interesting.”
“Well, I’m dying of boredom, and I’ve only been here a few days.” Nate yawned hugely and juggled the metal capsules in the air like fruit.
“Quit that!” Jill grabbed one of them and looked at it. It was shaped like an aspirin except it was more slender, and tiny holes perforated the metal in a grid design. “For all you know it’s a bomb.”
“I think it’s something you swallow,” Nate said, bringing it up to his face.
“Don’t you dare!”
But Nate only sniffed it. “Doesn’t smell like anything.”
“Those holes remind me of a telephone mouthpiece or a speaker.” Jill turned it over in her fingers.
“Really?” Nate held it up to his ears to listen. Then he began to scream.
“Nate, what is it? Nate!”
He was screaming and jerking around, bent over at the waist, head tilted to one side, fingers scrabbling at his ear.
“Oh my god, I knew those things were dangerous! Nate, talk to me!”
“It flew in my fucking ear,” he screamed.
“Let me see!”
“No!”
He was trying to push a finger into his ear canal, as if he could dig it out.
“Nate, let me see!”
He finally stopped his panicked dance, but he remained bent over at the waist, his wounded ear tilted down, panting hard.
Jill put her hand on his arm. “Let me look.”
“I don’t want to move my head,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Does it hurt?”
He was reluctant to say. “No.”
“No? What’s it feel like?”
He shook his head, gingerly at first, then harder. He remained bent over. “I can’t feel it now, but I felt it go in.”
“Well, let me see!”
“If I move my head it will just go in more!”
Jill rolled her eyes. “So you’re going to hold your head like that for the rest of your life?”
With great reluctance Nate straightened up, an inch at a time, pausing to wait for sensation. When he was almost upright, Jill moved in, placing one hand on his jaw and the other on his hair near his ear.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Um, that’s because it’s in my ear.” He put his fingers at the base of his ear, pressing carefully. “I can’t feel it. But, Jill, it’s in my head. That can’t be a good thing.”
She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t say “we’ll get it out” because she had no idea how and there wasn’t exactly an emergency room down the street. In fact, she was as alarmed as Nate.
“Let’s get back to the main artery and we can find an apartment with power and rest. Okay? Can you make it?” She put her hand on his arm for support.
He didn’t answer, but he started walking, cautiously, like an old man. He kept moving his jaw, trying to feel the capsule.
“You’re only working it in deeper,” she commented.
He stopped doing it.
Nate’s arm was over Jill’s shoulder and hers was around his waist, helping him along. He didn’t seem to be suffering from any specific complaint, could no longer feel the thing in his ear. She realized this, recognized that their contact was completely unnecessary, and held on to him anyway.