Read Online One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B. J. Novak - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: B. J. Novak
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parents pushing little kids in strollers, and bigger kids playing on bikes and Big Wheels.
Some of those bigger kids might even be dreaming of becoming astronauts someday. You know what? Let them.
The only area I can think of where the moon experience might have any edge at all over the walking trails of Knox County, Tennessee, would be in the symbolism department, in the sheer majesty of it all. When you think about how the moon is a celestial phenomenon that has dominated the nights of humans since before humans were even humans, a place so foreign to our understanding that, until recently in the history of our species, people didn’t even think of it as a place, or even as an object, but as an abstraction tied to God; a place that is still, even now that we do understand it, so alien to our everyday thinking that it is never included on any of our maps or globes and can only be reached by a dangerous voyage across hundreds of thousands of miles of literal, actual nothingness; and to know that you have been there and stood on that rock/God/place, with your own two feet, and kicked the dust and moved it a little, and come back home, with the story to tell … . And then, no matter where you are in life, to be able to always look downat those ten little toes that carry you through your house or the hallways of your job or around the same walking path you’ve been walking for years that you still love in a way even though, somehow, at some point, its loveliness lost its dust of luster in your eyes—to know that no matter where you are, no matter how dull the favorite colors of your life become, you can always look down at those ten little toes and think about how they have been with you to a place that almost no one alive can imagine, and no one dead could have conceived of. And then someday, when you’re about to die yourself, and you’re scared, at least you know you’ve already been somewhere mysterious.
That’s honestly all I can come up with, pro-moon-wise. To each his own, I suppose.
Sophia
The first thing to know about me is that I understand the significance of everything that happened.
Even though I did not recognize the moment immediately for what it was, of course I understand it now.
This may sound like too obvious a place to start, but since this is my first time on the record about this, and since in the meantime I have been so persistently, perhaps indelibly depicted as the one purely comic character in this drama—the selfish, perspectiveless fool who somehow wound up at the center of this civilization-defining story—it’s actually an important place to begin.
So, at the risk of being repetitive but just so there is absolutely no mistaking where I stand:
I am one hundred percent aware that the moment at which an artificially intelligent creation first independently developed the capacity to feel love is one of the pinnacle moments in the history of history itself, and I stand with the rest of the world in awe of its limitless implications for science, for philosophy, for love, for our species’ conception of itself; for our species itself; and for conception itself
.
It simply was not what I had in mind when I purchased a sex robot.
The other first thing you need to know about me is that I am a romantic, to an unusual degree among the men I know. I say this not to defend myself, or even to try to set the record straight for its own sake, but because it really is relevant to understanding how everything happened the way that it did.
I am a romantic. That is what drives me. My dreams are about love, and my daydreams are about love.
I have three recurring romantic fantasies, fantasies that lift me at my darkest and haunt me at my happiest, fantasies that I feel define me.
The first can hit me anywhere, though it’s most often when I am watching television or looking out the window of a train or subway, and it’s that there is a head resting on my shoulder that must have been there the
Some of those bigger kids might even be dreaming of becoming astronauts someday. You know what? Let them.
The only area I can think of where the moon experience might have any edge at all over the walking trails of Knox County, Tennessee, would be in the symbolism department, in the sheer majesty of it all. When you think about how the moon is a celestial phenomenon that has dominated the nights of humans since before humans were even humans, a place so foreign to our understanding that, until recently in the history of our species, people didn’t even think of it as a place, or even as an object, but as an abstraction tied to God; a place that is still, even now that we do understand it, so alien to our everyday thinking that it is never included on any of our maps or globes and can only be reached by a dangerous voyage across hundreds of thousands of miles of literal, actual nothingness; and to know that you have been there and stood on that rock/God/place, with your own two feet, and kicked the dust and moved it a little, and come back home, with the story to tell … . And then, no matter where you are in life, to be able to always look downat those ten little toes that carry you through your house or the hallways of your job or around the same walking path you’ve been walking for years that you still love in a way even though, somehow, at some point, its loveliness lost its dust of luster in your eyes—to know that no matter where you are, no matter how dull the favorite colors of your life become, you can always look down at those ten little toes and think about how they have been with you to a place that almost no one alive can imagine, and no one dead could have conceived of. And then someday, when you’re about to die yourself, and you’re scared, at least you know you’ve already been somewhere mysterious.
That’s honestly all I can come up with, pro-moon-wise. To each his own, I suppose.
Sophia
The first thing to know about me is that I understand the significance of everything that happened.
Even though I did not recognize the moment immediately for what it was, of course I understand it now.
This may sound like too obvious a place to start, but since this is my first time on the record about this, and since in the meantime I have been so persistently, perhaps indelibly depicted as the one purely comic character in this drama—the selfish, perspectiveless fool who somehow wound up at the center of this civilization-defining story—it’s actually an important place to begin.
So, at the risk of being repetitive but just so there is absolutely no mistaking where I stand:
I am one hundred percent aware that the moment at which an artificially intelligent creation first independently developed the capacity to feel love is one of the pinnacle moments in the history of history itself, and I stand with the rest of the world in awe of its limitless implications for science, for philosophy, for love, for our species’ conception of itself; for our species itself; and for conception itself
.
It simply was not what I had in mind when I purchased a sex robot.
The other first thing you need to know about me is that I am a romantic, to an unusual degree among the men I know. I say this not to defend myself, or even to try to set the record straight for its own sake, but because it really is relevant to understanding how everything happened the way that it did.
I am a romantic. That is what drives me. My dreams are about love, and my daydreams are about love.
I have three recurring romantic fantasies, fantasies that lift me at my darkest and haunt me at my happiest, fantasies that I feel define me.
The first can hit me anywhere, though it’s most often when I am watching television or looking out the window of a train or subway, and it’s that there is a head resting on my shoulder that must have been there the
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