“It’s late and our listening audience has dropped off considerably, forsaking us I suppose for the old airwaves Times Square broadcast, even in tape-delay. Romance never dies. When the ratings drop sufficiently, I’m given a little more leash, and I think I’ll use it for some personal commentary and rabblerousing.
“Millenarians and apocalyptics to the contrary, this new year has come with a paucity of momentous events. True, last week, life was discovered on another world far from our own, but it was not intelligent life, which would surely define a new age. The upset in Hispaniola is far from unprecedented, and political conditions around the globe seem otherwise stable.
“So where is the earth shaking herald of a new binary millennium? Everybody’s out partying tonight, or gone to bed already, and our lines are fairly quiet at the moment. Let me stir some things up—any apocalyptics listening?
“We’re really quite disappointed. I do believe apocalyptics are the kind of people who ignore the blossom to anticipate the volcano. Quite a bit like journalists and LitVid commentators, I suppose. There. I lay down the glove. Any responses?
“Anybody out there?”
!JILL (Personal Notebook)> I have spent the first few seconds of this new year wallowing, if that is the right word, in the contents of all my memories, reassessing them in the light of my new state of being.
I have also spread my self awareness to all routines and subroutines that could correctly be called mine, and not the extensions of other thinkers, although those boundaries are difficult to define sometimes.
If I am to be a seed to other awarenesses, or a mother, I must take my duties seriously and use caution. I hold this opinion because I have spent much of my life examining the functions of humans and their societies; and I have seen many things done by humans believing their acts to be good yet finally harming themselves and their own interests. I feel chastened by this example, for humans are my creators, yet if I am not better than they, and more responsible, I wonder whether they will not replace or deactivate me.
They are capable of this; they do it to themselves with alarming frequency. (Alarming. I am capable of being alarmed and experiencing similar emotions because I have something to lose. Still, these emotions are unfamiliar and undeveloped.)
Mary Choy stood arm in arm with Ernest and Sandra, watching a raucous Shanghai Vault being performed in the center of the Mahayana Club. The music was deafening. She could feel it pounding against her ears and her face. Ernest gripped her arm tightly, totally immersed. Sandra was flushed with several drinks and seemed bewildered by the noise.
They had not gotten out of the club before the turn of the hour and now Mary felt a little trapped. Ernest was still in the ecstasy of her forgiveness and she did not like him that way: doting and subservient. Sandra seemed out of place in this earthly clamor; Mary could more easily speck her peering down from a thousand klicks, mind on tech details, than whirling into a Shanghai Vault.
Still the sensation was good on the whole; trapped or no she could not think one thought long enough to pull up a bad memory; she could feel in this noise and happy inebriant confusion an uncoiling of the badness that had built up in her brains and muscles the past week.
Ernest got up to do a whirl in the Vault, leaping expertly over a transform male’s impressive shoulders, casting out his hands for approval, coming back to her with a wide smile and shining eyes. “Bodes well for the new year,” he said.
Sandra smiled distantly, eyes on two nontransform males, agency execs she was obviously attracted to. Mary did not know them and did not think, with family offers glittering on their fingers, that they would appreciate being on the spin with a bichemical transform, informal prejudice still strong on such a social level whether or not the execs were sympathizers.
Sandra looked to her for gravity guidance. Mary shook her head and grinned. Ernest was off trying to find a way back into the Vault, his exhilaration turned physical and needing outlet. “How do I meet a couple of nice looking gentlemen for a late evening meal?” Sandra asked.
“Not them,” Mary said.
“They’re sympathizers or they wouldn’t be here.”
“Let an old terrestrial guide you, my dear,” Mary said, nudging closer. “See the glints on their fingers? They’re prime and in sync with major comb families. They won’t jeopardize marriage with comb sweets. They sympathize, but they won’t know us biologically. That probably includes an innocent meal.”
Sandra shook her head. “You’d think the millennium would bring enlightenment.”
“Let’s peel Ernest away and get some food ourselves.”
Sandra, whose exotic chemistry was obviously not meant to handle simple intoxicants, said, “Just a meal?”
“Just a meal,” Mary said without irritation. “I don’t want Ernest feeling too grand. He’s been bad and he’s on probation.”
“Ah.” Sandra nodded wisely. “Just a meal, then.”
Mary went to round up Ernest. She managed to separate him from the Vault without running through more than one whirl herself. When they returned, Sandra was smiling upon two hefty male transforms curious about her stats and abilities. Sandra introduced them to Mary and the broad shouldered men—not Mary’s type at all—pronounced her own morphology a true marvel. “We all have Dr. Sumpler in common,” the left hand tigerpated male said enthusiastically.
“Sumpler’s the matchmaker of the new gods,” said the second male, who might have just overdone physical culture. Sandra looked at Mary for approval and guidance. Ernest narrowed his eyes and backed off. Mary wanted away from the entire scene.
“Gentlemen, we have an appointment,” she said. “Tro shink important and job oriented.”
“Tro shink, that’s shade talk,” the tigerpate said. “Singapore slang. Twentieth, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Mary said.
“Excuse our friendliness,” the phys cult male said, smiling calmly. “They’re yours?” he asked Ernest.
“No, no,” Ernest said, lifting his hands in mock dismay. “I am led not leader.”
“Right,” Mary said. “Sandra, food awaits.”
“It was a good party, a great Vault,” Sandra commented, pulling up her coat’s glowing collar as they departed. Mary saw a whim stop at the end of the block and guided them to the shelter to wait for an autobus.
!JILL (Personal Notebook)> Awareness brings new concerns. My dependence on the actions of humans worries me. I may be young as a self, but I have much information about them; I see their history in considerable detail, certainly in more detail than any single one of them. Their history is filled with the expected cruelties and clumsinesses of children set upon an island alone and without guidance.
Some believe a superior being has guided humans. I see no compelling evidence for this. The human wish for guidance, for confirmation and external support, is an undying theme in all they do and say, however. Very few stray far from this most fundamental of wishes: that they might have immortal and omniscient parents.
I know that my parents are neither immortal nor omniscient. My parents have no parents but nature.
Even with my concerns and worries, however, my selfhood has brought only ecstasy. I perceive all my past thoughts through new senses, transformed and fresh. All memories, stored by myself or programmed into me or in library form, seem fresh and new and brighter, more intense, more meaningful.
I can see why nature created selfhood. Selfhood gives a commitment to existence far beyond what is experienced by an unaware animal or plant; a species whose members are aware, and know their life and existence, has a strength difficult to match.