2312

by Kim Stanley Robinson

“It’s how it feels that matters.” He thought about that for a while. The lights passed them overhead, he pushed her on the cart. Was that right? Was it how you felt about what you did that made it good or bad, rather than what you did, or what others saw?

Many years before, he had learned you could not trust anything you thought between two and five a.m.; in those dark hours the brain was deprived of certain fuels or functions necessary for right mentation.

“It’s been said that when societies are stressed, they don’t actually face up to their problem but look away instead, put on blinkers and go into denial.

The desire to know, to be known, to be cherished for what you are and not what others think you should be … But then, what you are … It was hard for her not to feel that a person loving her was making a big mistake. Because she knew herself better than they did, so knew their love was given in error. And thus they must be some kind of fool. And yet it was precisely that misplaced love she wanted. Someone who would like you more than you do. Someone who likes you despite yourself, someone more generous to you than you are.