The post Is this how it really is? first appeared on matfriends.

At the hotel he put his bag in the room then went right back out. The plenary session wasn’t until seven, so he had a few hours still to do as he pleased. A good, long walk seemed the best way to use the time, a long walk and stop for coffee somewhere. Out he went then, back across the Place des Vosges toward the Rue de Rivoli, toward the Rue de Rivoli and the criss-crossed river.

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She was young still, in the very way we are all young, without a hint of what it is really to be old, though she felt it, old that is, thirty years old, like her body held that whole story now as a heaviness that surprised her. Now one more lover again, one more of only a few but bending things past keeping, all the way back even to the first, the first young man she loved, the one with the bright blue eyes that failed them both. They went swimming, then lay on the warm sand together and she told him about school, about leaving for Cambridge for school. You’re not, he said. I am, she said. Then he said nothing else to her while they remained, though the silence was like something killing. I’d like to go now, she told him, and he gathered himself up and started off across the beach, without a word still until they reached the road, where he turned to her and said,

You are not who I thought you were, turned again and walked on.

She’d have followed him, sure, but she couldn’t. It had nailed her where she was, the hardness, yes, the way he looked at her, yes, but more than either of these things, something else she saw though she didn’t know how, that he still believed it, that she was someone else, and that he would go on believing it despite what he’d just mouthed. In time she could see all the sadness in it, for him, for men.

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A novella by Giaconte, she told him, set on a planet many light years away where the dominant species were human-like creatures of two very different kinds.

Different how? he asked.

You would have to read it to understand, she explained. But think of sexual dimorphism—except the two sexes are different subspecies.

Like homo sapiens and Neanderthals? he tried.

Mmm . . . no, she answered. Two subspecies but only one dimorphism.

You mean, say, if men were Neanderthals and the women homo sapiens?

No, she said again. There’s no suggestion that one subspecies will succeed the other. And the sexual dimorphism isn’t related to their reproductive roles. Anyone can reproduce with anyone else.

Then how is it sexual dimorphism?

Analogies won’t get you all the way there, she reminded him. Let’s forget it.

He was ready for coffee and cornetto at this point, but something told him to go a little farther. 

Try, he said.

She thought for a moment, then told him, Because the differences are biologically determined.

What differences?! he asked with a bit more strain than intended. 

One subspecies lives longer than the other, she explained. Eats less, has a different sleeping pattern and its own experience of time, remembers different things, sees other colors.

He said nothing now but drew a deep breath. Faraway planet. Human-like creatures of two subspecies. And biological dimorphism that emerges as different—different what?

She took another moment. Different . . . different relations to themselves and the world around them.

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X is orbiting our sun at roughly the same distance as Earth, she continued. So it’s almost certainly formed of the same elements and under the same conditions, correct?

Ok, he allowed.

The same geology, the same chemistry, the same conditions for the emergence of life. 

Ok, he repeated. And the next 3.7 billion years?

It occurred to her then that if she let him fuck her, he might try a little harder.

We can skip most of those, she said. Evolution is driven by the ecosystem. If the ecosystem on X was the same as on Earth, then evolution would have followed more or less the same path.

Wait. What?

That’s what evolution is, she told him. Life solving the problems of a particular ecosystem. If the ecosystem were the same, the solutions would have been more or less the same?

From jellyfish to Albert Einstein? he asked.

No, she would not let him fuck her, maybe not ever.

Yes, she said flatly. Because natural selection is pretty tightly constrained. A lot of the solutions life has to find will be the same. As soon as you get an organism that needs to eat another organism, you also get an organism that needs to move. As soon as you get an organism that needs to move you get bilateral symmetry, which makes it easier to move. As soon as you get an organism that moves more easily, you get levers.

Levers? he asked.

You’re a physicist! she said with the emphasis of someone who was now a little wound up. Levers! Fins, wings, legs, arms!

Which brings us to primates, he said.

So he was not so obtuse.

Now take me the rest of the way, he tacked on. From chimps to Einstein.

Not ever. She would never let him fuck her again.

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Both of them lay there quietly for a while the way people do at a moment like that, brooding and feeling the other brood. 

What’s happened? he said finally.

She said nothing at first, then after one long long breath as if she had finally come to something, she asked him, Do you ever think about them?

He had no idea whom she was referring to.

The Planet X people, she told him. The people or whatever they are?

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