This cool logic only made me recoil even more. I agreed with every word of it – but I clung to my instinctive horror like a lifeline. “ The deepest truth would still have been true if you hadn’t sacrificed—”

“I’ve sacrificed nothing. Except some ancient hardwired behavioral patterns buried in my limbic system, triggered by certain visual cues and pheromones … and the need to have small explosions of endogenous opiates go off in my brain.”

I turned and let myself look at ver. Ve stared back at me defiantly. The surgery had been well executed; ve did not look unbalanced, deformed. I had no right to grieve for a loss which existed only in my head. Nobody had mutilated ver by force; ve had made vis own decision with vis eyes wide open. I had no right to wish ver healed .

I was still shaken and angry, though. I still wanted to punish ver for what ve’d taken from me.

I asked sardonically, “And where does that get you? Does hacking out your base animal instincts grant you some … great, rarefied insight? Don’t tell me: you can tune in to the lost wisdom of the celibate medieval saints.”

Akili grimaced, amused. “Hardly. But sex grants no insight, either – any more than shooting up heroin does – however much the cultists rant about Tantric mysteries and the communion of souls . Give an MR a magic mushroom or two, and they’ll tell you, sincerely, that they’ve just fucked God. Because sex, drugs, and religion all hinge on the same kind of simple neurochemical events: addictive, euphoric, exhilarating – and all, equally, meaningless.”

It was a familiar truth – but at that moment it cut deep. Because I still wanted ver. And the drug I was hooked on did not exist.

Akili half-raised vis hands, as if to offer a truce: ve’d had no wish to hurt me, only to defend vis own philosophy. “If most people choose to remain addicted to orgasm, then that’s their right. Not even the most radical asex would dream of forcing anyone to follow us. But I don’t happen to want my own life to revolve around a few cheap biochemical tricks.”

“Not even to be made in the image of your beloved Keystone?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Ve laughed wearily. “The Keystone is not some … teleological endpoint, some cosmic ideal. In a thousand years’ time, the Keystone’s body will be the same obsolete joke as yours and mine.”

I’d run out of anger. I said simply, “I don’t care. Sex can still be much more than the release of endogenous opiates—”