generated, John?” he demanded, almost angrily. “Onset at about fifty-two, fifty-five? I see you haven’t made it yet, so that has to be about right. Now it’s sixty-five to seventy, and climbing. Of course, the inhibitors have also pushed our life spans up beyond two hundred years, so that shouldn’t sound so bad. In fact, all the time a Human has before his hormones become obsessed with reproduction is supposed to be why we’ve advanced sofar intellectually. We’ve successfully moved a bit farther away from our animal natures. Supposedly.” Deckenson drew breath, and sipped his water.
“Supposedly?” John was resigned now. The man was a typical poet: he communicated to use words, rather than the other way around. John would just have to ride out the chatter until Deckenson got down to business.
“Yes, supposedly. Look at me, John. On a scale of twenty, with twenty being the perfect achievement of the Conservancy’s ‘guided evolution,’ I score a seventeen point six-three. We’re not supposed to be able to get casual access to that data, but one can, if one is determined enough. And the interesting thing is that most of us who attain those high scores are determined enough. Perhaps because we, trapped inside these ‘improved’ bodies, sense, more than anyone else, that something is going wrong. Very wrong.”
“Looks fine to me.” John gave an offhand wave at the restaurant around them. “Things are going better than ever; or at least that’s what the update reports on the Wakeup line told me as we were coming in. Dirty technology is getting cleaner. Use of plastics is almost down to zero, what with the new cell-meld techniques and bacterial information storage system. Waste from harvested asteroids is down to less than six percent, and the on-rock mining techniques do even better than that. The interpopulation of the space stations by the Rabby is obviously a successful venture. The populations on both Castor and Pollux are stabilized at a constant that is ten percent under what was considered the population safety mean for human habitation thirty years ago, and …”
“Stop there,” Deckenson suggested quietly. “And think about what you just said for a minute.”
John had more than a minute, as the food arrived just then. John recognized none of it, but it didn’t bother him. Styles in serving food changed just as styles of wearing clothes. There were twenty-two native plants on Castor and seventeen on Pollux that Humans could safely eat. Thirty-nine plants that met all nutritional needs of a Human when eaten in a judicious mix. John had eaten them all, and expected to continue eating them all for his entire life. They could make them look different, and they could vary the flavor somewhat, but what it came down to was that tapa lilywas tapa lily, and it was the basis of your diet, whether your gourmet chef prepared it or you ate standard rations from the ship’s dispenser.
There was a brown rectangle in a brown sauce, a salad, small orange cubes of something, and a tangle of white noodles with pinkish flakes of something in it. The waiter refilled Deckenson’s water glass, and set a small steaming mug in front of John, then departed. John picked up the mug immediately and sipped at it. Stim. Sort of. A little too bitter. He sweetened it with taro syrup from the dispenser on the table and tried it again. Better. But already almost gone. He was beginning to see Deckenson’s point about a world scaled down to smaller people. He set the mug down, but Deckenson had already noticed his wry expression.
“I’ll order more. For both of us. I think I’d like to try it.”
“What did you mean, think about what I had just said?” John asked. He found he was hungry, and tried to fork loose some of the brown rectangle, but it clung together stubbornly. Fibrous. Probably tubers from Pollux barber cane, then. He found a small knife by his plate and used it to free a chunk while Deckenson
“Supposedly?” John was resigned now. The man was a typical poet: he communicated to use words, rather than the other way around. John would just have to ride out the chatter until Deckenson got down to business.
“Yes, supposedly. Look at me, John. On a scale of twenty, with twenty being the perfect achievement of the Conservancy’s ‘guided evolution,’ I score a seventeen point six-three. We’re not supposed to be able to get casual access to that data, but one can, if one is determined enough. And the interesting thing is that most of us who attain those high scores are determined enough. Perhaps because we, trapped inside these ‘improved’ bodies, sense, more than anyone else, that something is going wrong. Very wrong.”
“Looks fine to me.” John gave an offhand wave at the restaurant around them. “Things are going better than ever; or at least that’s what the update reports on the Wakeup line told me as we were coming in. Dirty technology is getting cleaner. Use of plastics is almost down to zero, what with the new cell-meld techniques and bacterial information storage system. Waste from harvested asteroids is down to less than six percent, and the on-rock mining techniques do even better than that. The interpopulation of the space stations by the Rabby is obviously a successful venture. The populations on both Castor and Pollux are stabilized at a constant that is ten percent under what was considered the population safety mean for human habitation thirty years ago, and …”
“Stop there,” Deckenson suggested quietly. “And think about what you just said for a minute.”
John had more than a minute, as the food arrived just then. John recognized none of it, but it didn’t bother him. Styles in serving food changed just as styles of wearing clothes. There were twenty-two native plants on Castor and seventeen on Pollux that Humans could safely eat. Thirty-nine plants that met all nutritional needs of a Human when eaten in a judicious mix. John had eaten them all, and expected to continue eating them all for his entire life. They could make them look different, and they could vary the flavor somewhat, but what it came down to was that tapa lilywas tapa lily, and it was the basis of your diet, whether your gourmet chef prepared it or you ate standard rations from the ship’s dispenser.
There was a brown rectangle in a brown sauce, a salad, small orange cubes of something, and a tangle of white noodles with pinkish flakes of something in it. The waiter refilled Deckenson’s water glass, and set a small steaming mug in front of John, then departed. John picked up the mug immediately and sipped at it. Stim. Sort of. A little too bitter. He sweetened it with taro syrup from the dispenser on the table and tried it again. Better. But already almost gone. He was beginning to see Deckenson’s point about a world scaled down to smaller people. He set the mug down, but Deckenson had already noticed his wry expression.
“I’ll order more. For both of us. I think I’d like to try it.”
“What did you mean, think about what I had just said?” John asked. He found he was hungry, and tried to fork loose some of the brown rectangle, but it clung together stubbornly. Fibrous. Probably tubers from Pollux barber cane, then. He found a small knife by his plate and used it to free a chunk while Deckenson
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