Lessons from Proust and a cyborg-crab

“Do you know what Proust said about conversation?”

Mahnmut resisted another sigh. “What?”

“He said… ‘When we chat, it is no longer we who speak… we are fashioning ourselves then in the likeness of other people, and not of a self that differs from them.’”

“So when I talk to you,” Mahnmut said on their private frequency, “I’m really shaping myself into the likeness of a six-ton horseshoe crab with a beat-up shell, too many legs, and no eyes?”

“You can hope,” rumbled Orphu of Io. “But your reach should always exceed your grasp.”

(From: Dan Simmons, Olympos. New York: Harper Collins, 2005. p. 75.)

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