Can’t own a woman, Mike. Wonderful companions, can’t own them. — Greg Bear

Nothing will ever be the same again.

Good! Wonderful! Wasn’t it all badly flawed anyway?

No, perhaps not. Not until now.

“You’re a romantic, aren’t you?” she said.

“I suppose I am.”

“I am too. The silliest people in the world are romantics.”

“Very evocative. He seems to be confirming what I said last year—that the universe really has no underpinnings, that when a good hypothesis comes along, one that explains the prior events, the underpinnings shape themselves to accommodate and a powerful theory is born.”

“Then there is no ultimate reality?”

“Apparently not. Bad hypotheses, those that don’t fit what happen on our level, are rejected by the universe. Good ones, powerful ones, are incorporated.”