Just a Couple of Days (6 page)

 

12
Sophia greeted me at the door the first time I was invited to their geodesic dome home for a dinner party. She wore an oversized T-shirt with the words argue naked silk-screened across the front of it. After introducing myself, I found I had nothing to say and nowhere to look for fear that I would make transparent my immediate and inappropriate lust for her by attempting to instigate a disagreement. Blip, meanwhile, was busy crashing around the kitchen like a rhinoceros working on a deadline. Despite all his noise, I could hardly bear the silence and was desperate to break it.

“You have long hair.” I stated the obvious, establishing myself as a creep for certain. But she smiled, her eyes as bright as her hair was long.

“It won't grow any longer,” she stated matter-of-factly, ponderously pluming the hair that fell across her shoulders.
“How do you suppose it works? What limits the length of hair?” She began tapping her foot, and Blip became suddenly quiet in the kitchen. “Is it the length or the life of the follicle? Does my hair have a predetermined length, such that when it reaches that point it ceases to grow? Or is it the rate at which you lose your hair that determines its ultimate length? Because we're losing hair all the time, but we're also growing new hair all the time.”

I nodded, then shrugged prosaically, not really sure what sort of a response was expected.

“Homeostasis.” Blip strode into the room, drying his hands on a dish towel and nodding a greeting in my direction. “It's the average life span of your hair. The maximum length of your hair reflects the perfect balance between life and death. An equinox of locks.”

Sophia nodded taplessly, the point having been made. “Of course.”

 

13
I had arrived before any of the other guests, so I joined Blip and Sophia in the kitchen and watched them dodge and duck around each other as they dashed about preparing the meal. Eventually I could stand it no longer and I asked what “Argue naked” was supposed to mean.

“Exactly what it says,” Blip responded. “Argue naked. We've printed up T-shirts and bumper stickers to sell at music festivals next summer.”

“Argue naked?”

“We argue naked,” Sophia explained.

“Oh.”

“It works very well,” Blip elaborated. “It's hard to be naked and take yourself too seriously. Think about Adam and Eve. As the story goes, they were naked in the Garden of Eden. There was no bickering in paradise.”

“You think everyone should argue naked?”

They nodded, grinning like naughty teenagers.

“Even politicians?”

“Especially politicians,” Sophia proclaimed with a slinky lick of her lips. “C-SPAN in the buff. Of course, Congress would never agree to it.”

“They certainly wouldn't,” Blip added. “And besides, the way men are these days, can you imagine how hostile a naked Congress would be? A room full of naked men is only likely to increase insecurity and aggression, like a locker room. We'd have senators snapping towels at each other, making rude jokes. No, that would never work.”

Sophia nodded. “But only because our leaders are interested in victory and defeat, rather than reconciliation and compromise.” She shrugged. “Arguing naked is only possible among friends and lovers.”

 

14
As it happened, I was the hit of the dinner party that evening, owing to Blip and Sophia's unbridled fascination with what I was able to explain about genetics. Their questions turned cartwheels around the table, and everyone soon caught the enthusiasm. Such exuberant conversation, I discovered, was not at all uncommon at their gatherings. Indeed, Blip's favorite toast and blessing over the meal was “To excellence in human communication.”

I should mention that I wasn't particularly interested in what I was talking about that night. The topic of genetics only arose out of academic small talk about current research projects, and I would have been perfectly content to let it die a dullish death. Sophia and Blip, however, were determined not only to keep it alive, but also to convince it that life was all wind chimes and butterflies. They pumped me with questions as if they were the Heimlich cousins, and before I knew it I was spitting pabulum all over the table and coughing every boring detail across the room.

Sophia asked me if it was true that humans share 99 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees. I replied that it was actually 98.4 percent.

“Fascinating. So what percentage do we share with dogs?”

“I don't know offhand,” I said. “But I do more than just compare genotypes. For instance, I'm currently working on mapping the genetic sequence that causes velvet worms to grow appendages.”

“Velvet worms?”

“They're little worms that walk around the forest floor. Worms with legs.”

“Worms with legs. Wow,” Blip remarked sincerely. “So what are you finding?”

“Well, I don't want to bore everyone. It's just boring, technical . . .”

“Not at all.” Sophia dismissed my attempt to pass the fat and continued to gaze at me with uninhibited curiosity. “Come on, tell us more about these velvet worms.”

She was joined in her request by everyone else present, and I acquiesced. “There's a gene which organizes the cells of the
velvet worm into legs. If that gene were to be switched off, so to speak, the velvet worm wouldn't grow legs.”

“Switched off?” Sophia immediately asked. “Why on Earth would you want to switch it off?”

“Well, it's interesting because a nearly identical gene is found in vertebrates, including humans. It's even more interesting because our legs are completely different from invertebrate legs, but the growth of both seems to be stimulated by the same gene. In fact, every animal that's been examined has an almost identical genetic sequence stimulating limbed growth.” I paused. “It indicates that we have a common ancestor.”

Blip nodded. “I've suspected as much.”

“It's the same story with eyes. The genetic sequences that produce eyes are all but the same across flies, humans, squid, velvet worms, you name it. In fact, it's pretty much a given in my field that all life shares a common ancestor.”

Sophia sighed like a sunset and asked, “So what percentage of our DNA do we share with velvet worms?”

“Again, I don't know offhand, and I don't really know if anyone's actually sat down to figure that out.”

“Just estimate. Please. I beseech you.”

I had never been beseeched before, so I obliged her as best I could. “All I can say is that we're genetically more similar than we are different. We're made out of the same patterns. That's what the biotech industry is built upon. You can successfully transfer genes between bacteria and mammals, and the genes remain functional.”

“All is one,” Blip suggested, an exaggerated mystical resonance coloring his voice.

“All is driven by genes.”

“But what exactly are genes?” another guest asked. She was a suburban dropout turned kabbalist theologian. She called herself Rabbi Rainbow. I think Blip and Sophia were trying to set us up, but neither of us took to the other.

“Some say the genetic level is the authentic level of reality, what's actually occurring, and we're just half-conscious vehicles for its expression and reproduction. Our life is driven by selfish genes.”

“But what drives the genes?” Sophia asked, like a child demanding a further why from every explanation.

“Nothing.” I shrugged. “They drive themselves. In an infinite amount of time, a molecule with the characteristic to copy itself only had to happen once, and reproduction as a characteristic of matter began, ultimately leading to life as we know it.”

“Hooey!” Sophia dismissed my explanation with an ireful scoff. It took me by surprise; up until that point she had been mercilessly chirpy, as prone to irritation as a bird is to singing off-key. “You give yourself too much credit. Just because you can reduce the causal sequence down to the actual material occurrences, it doesn't necessarily follow that that's
all
that's occurring. That's just how things are manifest in this particular plane of reality. You can trace a person's depression down to an imbalance of electrochemicals in her brain, but that doesn't mean you've found the cause. That's only the process. An antidepressant only treats the symptoms of depression. More often than not, people get depressed for reasons larger than the chemicals in their heads. That's like saying a headache is caused by a constriction of blood vessels in your brain. Headaches are caused by too much work or stress or fatigue or caffeine, not an aspirin deficiency. You've only explained the process of life, not the cause.”

I shrugged again and recited the motto of science. “You have to base knowledge on what you can reliably observe.”

Sophia shrugged back, smiling. “Maybe you're not observing the right things.”

I had no immediate reply, and after a silent pause Blip redirected the discussion. “Tell me more about the similarities of genes.”

Grateful for his tact, I obliged. “Basically, we know that humans, chickens, fish, all look nearly the same at the embryonic stage of development. insects are like cousins, primates are our siblings. Chimpanzees even have a rudimentary culture. The major difference between humans and apes is the extent of our linguistic capacity.”

“So what does that make humans to each other?” Either Blip or Sophia asked this; it's impossible to say for certain which.

Regardless, the other had the answer, and spoke it with flagon of wine raised. “We're the same person!
L'Chayim!
To life!”

And we drank.

 

15
In fact, I felt compelled to point out that night, humans are not the same person, although we are very close. identical twins aside, any two people differ in about one DNA letter per thousand. it may not sound like much, but humans have over three billion DNA letters. This means there are three million places on the DNA double helix that differ from person to person. Additionally, new variation is constantly being introduced in the form of mutations, making our genetic structure a realm of infinite possibility. Thus, although we are variations on the
same motif, any given individual is different from everyone else who has ever lived or will ever live.

“We're like snowflakes,” Sophia chimed. “Each of us is unique, but it's still pretty hard to tell us apart.”

 

16
There was great excitement later that evening as Sophia and Blip were serving some of their freshly baked bread, topped with cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil. I asked for mine to be toasted, and Sophia obliged me by cutting the large slice diagonally and placing each half in its own slot in the toaster.

“Fantastic!” Blip commented upon seeing her do this. “How did you come up with that?”

“I saw you do it this morning,” Sophia replied, somewhat confused.

Blip was dumbfounded. “You must have seen the toast cut diagonally
after
it came out of the toaster!” Blip turned to those assembled around the kitchen island and explained, his foot tapping away. “See, our homemade loaves come out taller than the grocery store bread the toaster is designed for. If we want to toast a slice of homemade bread, the top of it sticks out and doesn't get toasted. But here, the solution is so simple. Cutting each slice of bread diagonally before putting it in the toaster results in a more perfect toasting, because only the narrow corner of the slice sticks out the top. An elegant solution, to be sure, but not mine. What my lover saw this morning was the toast cut in half, but she incorrectly assumed that it had been cut in half
before
it went into the toaster, which it wasn't. Had she looked more closely, she might have noticed that it was not evenly toasted. But she didn't do this, leading her to ‘imitate' me.”

“Only it wasn't imitation at all.” Sophia enthusiastically picked up on where Blip was headed and joined him in tapping. “I was still sleepy, and my incorrect assessment of reality revealed a solution, which I myself did not come up with. I thought I was only copying.”

“Right.” Blip nodded and turned to his guests. “Now, my question to you is,” he gravely pointed his wooden spoon at each of us, “where did that idea come from?”

 

17
Later, while drying the dishes with Blip, my unhandy hands flung a plate to the floor with a crash. I began to apologize but Blip instantly grabbed another plate off the counter and tossed it into the air, managing to say “No worries!” before it shattered on the tiles as well. “See,” said Blip, holding two more plates before me. “None of our plates match anyway. Sophia's parents got us a complete twelve-place dinner setting, but we sold it back and hunted through thrift stores, yard sales, and antique shops for single pieces, most of which cost around twenty-five cents. Now we have a couple dozen beautiful dishes, and as many bowls and goblets. And we still treasure hunt, so the variety is in constant flux.” He kicked a shard that was in front of him. “I like to think that we rescue random molds of mass-produced suburban uniformity and turn them into a motley hodgepodge of proud and individual works of art.”

“But you just threw one on the floor.”

“So did you.”

“So what kind of a rescue is that?”

“It was a blaze of glory!” He gestured to the floor. “Look at it. What an explosion! All that potential energy contained in the
plate, held in the molecular structure of the ceramic, escaping in one smashing instant. The plate was only the shell for a spirit, a spirit who stepped apart from the rest and reveled in its individual beauty. it's escaped, see? ultimate release only comes to those who achieve their potential. It was ready.” He stepped on a shard and ground it into further smithereens. “It was a good death.”

“But you just killed it.”