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Show -245 Buckdancer to give me my full name, sitting on my father's concrete steps with a cup in my hand, thinking about Life. Now, while I half-listened to Brady, I looked out the window and saw that the blue of the sky had been tightened another notch-it was near to breaking. In the distance I thought I heard the snap of thunder. • "We'll come see you Friday," I said. I hung up. In the dining-room Carlo was reading; I looked over his shoulder. "The Ascent of Man?" I said. "Yes. Wouldn't Adam have laughed at that title?" "Maybe he would have been wrong," I said. "We've improved." "Not very much. Take the Greeks-I could be an ancient Greek without changing more than half a dozen of my opinions and it wouldn't necessarily be for the better. They had insights: necessity, fate. They explain a lot of things." "What happens to free will?" I said. "Noise," Carlo said. I could see some of Adam's gloom in my baby brother; hidden under the smile was some of our father's despair at the world. Despair brings on recklessness, frantic pointless action, a search for pure feeling, an effect which is only exaggerated in intelligent people. In Adam it caused that terrible perseverance that made him even more desperate. "They knew better," Carlo said, meaning the Greeks. |