There isn't much to report on the party.There isn't much to report on the party. It was loud. It was raucous. Mostly there are snapshots that stay in my mind. Like the time when P'nyssa went up to the front of the room and said, "Excuse me, excuse me. I am the guest of honor here, right?" There was a loud agreement. "I... Uhm, I have an announcement. You see that big dead blue bunny there? Well, watch this." Saying that, she took the blue ball and threw it on the floor. There was dead silence except for the comical sound of latex rubbing latex as the giant pink dead bunny inflated. After a few seconds P'nyssa said, "What do you think?" Carroll was standing next to her and said, quietly (thank you, Dave, for the shotgun-miking job), "You're going to have TWO?" "Uh-huh. A boy and a girl." "Well, then," she said, regaining her composure, "Let's all... I don't know what to say." "How about, we turn the music back on and make more noise!?" I heard from the back of the room. Sounded good to me, I 'pathed to Dave, *make it so.* The music poured forth, loud and danceable. Or when Paul cornered me and said "Ken, I have to apologize for something." "Which is?" "I gave you bad advice about ten years ago." "What advice was that?" "I told you that nobody would give a damn if you went and had children of your own. Apparently every AI in the world agreed with me. Well, the people do not." "Who is 'The people?'" "There's a small minority, very small, but they're being stoked by the newspeople you've been keeping out, that claims that you're turning your back on them." "Paul... Fuck them. If they're not mature enough to handle the universe without me, that's their tough luck. I've got more important things to do." "It could get ugly. AI's don't have the power to intercept bullets in flight, Ken." "Are you suggesting they could be angry enough to want to kill God?" I said, assuming a mantle that belonged on the mantlepiece. "Yes," he said, smiling. He knows as much as I do just how human I am. "You depend on AI's too much, Ken. It's a major weakness of yours, and we both know it. We all depend on AI's too much, except for the fringers. Most of us accept the luxury of AI's without too much question. You have a tendency to walk in the wilderness, Ken, and you're a tempting target. |