Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [53]
He stared at a website photo of a hand axe as he thought about his life in the park. He had written commentaries for the Journal suggesting that people would be healthier if they lived more like their paleolithic ancestors had. Not that they should starve themselves from time to time, or needed to kill all the meat they ate—just that incorporating more paleolithic behaviors might increase health and well-being. After all, a fairly well-identified set of behaviors, repeated for many generations, had changed their ancestors a great deal; had created the species Homo sapiens; had blown their brains up like balloons. Surely these were behaviors most likely to lead to well-being now. And to the extent they neglected these behaviors, and sat around inside boxes as if they were nothing but brains and fingertips, the unhealthier and unhappier they would be.
Frank clicked to this commentary and its list of all the paleolithic behaviors anthropologists had ever proposed as a stimulant to the great brain expansion. How many of these behaviors was he performing now?
• talking (he talked much of the day)
• walking upright (he hiked a lot in the park)
• running (he ran with Edgardo’s group and the frisbee guys)
• dancing (he seldom danced, but he did sometimes skip along the park trails while vocalizing)
• singing (“Home-less, home-less, oooooooooop!”)
• stalking animals (he tracked the ferals in the park for FOG)
• throwing things at things (he threw his frisbees at the baskets)
• looking at fire (he looked at the bros’ awful fire)
• having sex (well, he was trying. And Caroline had kissed him)
• dealing with the opposite sex more generally (Caroline, Diane, Marta, Anna, Laveta, etc.)
• cooking and eating the paleolithic diet (research this; hard to cook in his current circumstances, but not impossible)
• gathering plants to eat (he did not do that; must consider)
• killing animals for food (he did not want to do that, but frisbee golf was the surrogate)
• experiencing terror (he did not want to do that either)
It appeared by these criteria that he was living a pretty healthy life. The paleolithic pleasures, plus modern dental care; what could be nicer? Optimodal in the best possible sense.
He went back to the Acheulian hand axe link list, and checked out a commercial site called Montana Artifacts. It turned out that this site offered for sale an Acheulian axe found near Madrid, dated at between two hundred thousand and four hundred thousand years old. “Classic teardrop shaped of a fine textured gray quartzite. The surface has taken a smooth lustrous polish on the exposed faces. Superb specimen.” One hundred and ninety-five dollars. With a few taps on his keyboard Frank bought it.
PRIMATES IN AIRPLANES. AACK!
Flying now made Frank a little nervous. He gripped his seat arms, reminded himself of the realities of risk assessment, fell asleep. He woke when they started descending toward Logan. Landing on water, whoah—but no. The runway showed up in the nick of time, as always.
Then into Boston, a city Frank liked. The conference was at MIT, with some meetings across the river at Boston University.
Quickly Frank saw that getting an opportunity to talk in private with Dr. Taolini would be hard. She was involved with the organization of the event, and much in demand. The one time Frank saw her alone, in the hall before her own presentation, she was talking on her cell phone.
But she saw him and waved him over, quickly ending her call. “Hello, Frank. I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“I decided to come at the last minute.”
“Good, good. You’re going to tell us about these new institutes?”
“That’s right. But I’d like to talk to you one-on-one about them, if you have the time. I know you’re busy.”
“Yes, but let’s see . . .” checking her cell phone’s calendar. “Can you meet me at the end of my talk?”
“Sure, I’m going to be there anyway.”
“That’s very nice.”
Her