'So you do think it's wrong… what you did, I mean.'

Neil leaned forward, elbows on knees like a basketball coach.

'The world is on the brink, Goodbook. I'm simply the first to cross over.'

Thomas knew what he was talking about, but for some reason found himself pretending otherwise. 'Brink. What brink?'

Neil wasn't buying. 'Is it the kids?'

'What are you talking about?'

'Are they the reason?'

'The reason for what?'

'The reason you moved back into Disney World?'

The confusion, the double-take disorientation, evaporated, and Thomas suddenly felt focused the way only whiskey and outrage could make possible. 'You're drunk, Neil. Leave them out of this.'

Disney World was their pet term for the world as understood by the masses, one papered over with conceit after comforting conceit. A world anchored in psychological need rather than physical fact. A world with a billion heroes and happy endings, where the unknown was irrelevant and confronting your own weaknesses was the breakfast of losers.

'You know, I find it hard to remember what it's like living with one foot in both worlds. To know, on the one hand, that paternal love is simply nature's way of duping us into perpetuating our genes—'

'It's not duping… Look, Neil, you're really starting to piss me—'

'Not duping? Hmm. Then you tell me, why do you love your son?'

'Because he's my son.'

'And that's an explanation?'

Thomas had glared at his friend. 'The only one I need.'

'Evolution wouldn't have it any other way,' Neil had said. 'It takes a lot of commitment to raise a child to reproductive age.'

Thomas tossed back his shot, clenched his teeth in revulsion and dismay. What the fuck was going on?

'Because you love your kids,' Neil continued, 'you expend tremendous resources on them, you train them, feed them, protect them, you would even die for them. You do all the things that your genes happen to require, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the harsh realities of natural selection.' Neil frowned, leaned back into the cushions. He hooked his toes on the coffee table. 'And that's not duping?'

'They're just different descriptions of the same thing,' Thomas said. 'Different angles.'

Neil paused to slam back his whiskey. 'C'mon,' he continued, gasping. 'This is your argument I'm making, Goodbook. Didn't you spend an entire chapter listing all the ways we bullshit ourselves to feel better? And how about your cognitive psych classes? Didn't you tell me that you spend the first two weeks discussing the relationship between gut feeling and socialization? How all those movies urging people to "follow their hearts" were simply another way for culture to reinforce the status qu—?'

'Enough!' Thomas cried. 'What are you saying, Neil? Are you actually trying to talk me out of loving my children,'