Shannon winced. “And of course she read you thinking that.”
“Yeah. I feel so sorry for her. There’s way too much pressure for a little girl. She tries to cope, hiding behind her hair and her video games, but—” A thought struck him with almost physical force. He had that behind-the-eyeballs feeling of an idea, the tuning out of the world to examine it.
Was it possible?
Millie seemed to think so. And this was the Holdfast. The most technically advanced place on the planet, a closed society where brilliants worked with enormous funding and little restriction. They’d brought him back from the dead here.
“Cooper?” Shannon looked at him with both concern and curiosity. “You okay?”
He picked up his bourbon and swallowed the rest, barely tasting it. Then he turned his face to her.
“Carrot.”
TIME Magazine
10 Questions for Sherman VanMeter
Dr. Sherman VanMeter has made a career of unpacking the densest areas of scientific endeavor in accessible—if not polite—terms.
You’ve written books on everything from astrophysics to zoology. How are you able to achieve expertise in so many disparate fields?
There’s a perception that scientific disciplines are separate countries, when in fact science is a universal passport. It’s about exploring and thinking critically, not memorization. A question mark, not a period.
Can you give me an example?
Sure. Kids learn about the solar system by memorizing the names of planets. That’s a period. It’s also scientifically useless, because names have no value.
The question mark would be to say instead, “There are hundreds of thousands of sizable bodies orbiting the sun. Which ones are exceptional? What makes them so? Are there similarities? What do they reveal?”
But how do you teach a child to grasp that complexity?
You teach them to grasp the style of thinking. There are no answers, only questions that shape your understanding, and which in turn reveal more questions.
Sounds more like mysticism than science. How do you draw the line?
That’s where the critical thinking comes in.
I can see how that applies to the categorization of solar objects. But what about more abstract questions?
It works there too. Take love, for example. Artists would tell you that love is a mysterious force. Priests claim it’s a manifestation of the divine.
Biochemists, on the other hand, will tell you that love is a feedback loop of dopamine, testosterone, phenylethylamine, norepinephrine, and feel-my-pee-pee. The difference is, we can show our work.
So you’re not a romantic, then?
We’re who we are as a species because of evolution. And at the essence, evolution is the steady production of increasingly efficient killing machines.
Isn’t it more accurate to say “surviving machines”?
The two go hand in hand. But the killing is the prime mover; without that, the surviving doesn’t come into play.
Kind of a cold way to look at the world, isn’t it?
No, it’s actually an optimistic one. There’s a quote I love from the anthropologist Robert Ardrey: “We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted to battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen.”
You used that as the epigraph to your new book, God Is an Abnorm. But I noticed you left out the last line, “We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.” Why?
That’s where Ardrey’s poetic license gets the better of his science, which is a perilous mistake. We aren’t “known among the stars” at all. The sun isn’t pondering human nature, the galaxy isn’t sitting in judgment. The universe doesn’t care about us. We’ve evolved into what we are because humanity’s current model survived and previous iterations didn’t. Simple as that.
Why is a little artistic enthusiasm a perilous mistake?
Because artists are more dangerous than murderers. The most prolific serial killer might have dozens of victims, but poets can lay low entire generations.
CHAPTER 16
Soren dreamed.
He strolled a foreign city, ancient cobblestones beneath his feet. Weathered buildings of white stone, tall doors painted deep green, curtains flickering through open second-story windows, old men watching the world go by. Rome? He’d never been to Rome. A direct flight would have taken eight or nine hours of “normal” time, close to a hundred hours in his perception, but the hours weren’t the problem. Time was the sea he swam, and alone he could spend that in meditation, in pursuit of nothingness.
It was the time trapped in a cramped space with other people.
The agony of watching them move as though paralyzed, each expression warping and deforming, their worm lips twisting into tortured syllables, drops of spit arcing lazily from their disgusting mouths. Fat bodies and patchy skulls. The simple, horrible energy of their being, just being, and so loud about it, so garish and cheap. Even asleep their snores filled the world, their farts scented it. The only grace existed where they were not.
That was how he knew this was a dream. On rare occasions his curse was lifted in dreams. He wouldn’t have to endure the slow descending footfall of every step, wouldn’t wait in the prison behind his eyes while the world caught up to him. He could walk amidst human beings and not hate them.
The cruelest dreams were the lucid ones, where he had control. He could pause outside a restaurant and savor the rich scents of basil and garlic wafting through the open doors. Could scratch an itch on the back of his neck and feel his fingernails. Could note the small chapel ahead and admire the way its every line was in proportion, every stone tested by weather and time. As Soren approached the chapel, he heard sounds coming from within. Automatically, he winced. Sounds were unpleasant. Voices, sighs, laughter, all drew out to grate like metal against teeth.
Only.
These sounds.
He’d never heard anything like them.
A layered swelling, a soar of textures and moods. They had a rhythm that built like love, like when he moved inside Samantha and each slow stroke was an ecstasy to lose himself in, each tingle of sensation a world in its own right. The rhythm seemed almost to have a theme, as though someone had found a way to represent the brightening of dawn after a night so cold and long it seemed it might never end. The lower tones were the inky darkness, the loss and fear, but against them higher notes were insistent, swelling, moving together in a way that made his chest hurt.
He stepped in the door of the chapel, marveling at the way the sound echoed off ancient stone. The interior was lit by thick white tapers with flames that danced, fast, so fast, it was jarring but somehow liberating, and the smell was rich and safe, wax and fire and incense. At the front of the room, a choir sang.
People? People made these sounds?
He moved down the aisle, found a dark pew, and sat. As the choir moved their lips, noises came out like he’d never heard before. A calculated tangle of voices, pure and sweet and strong. It took him, shook him, lifted him. His hands twitched in his lap, and his chest heaved. He was crying.