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By Root 881 0

landscape, and were therefore able and willing to create a kind of polymorphous panmixia. Were these people really out there, or was this merely the collective fantasy life of a bunch of lonely souls like himself? He had never contacted any of the people putting in the ads to try to find out. He suspected the worst, and would rather be lonely. Although the sections devoted to people looking for LTRs, meaning “long-term relationships,” went far beyond the sexual fantasies, and sometimes struck him with force. ISO LTR: “in search of long-term relationship.” The species had long ago evolved toward monogamous relationships, they were wired into the brain’s structure, every culture manifesting the same overwhelming tendency toward pair-bonding. Not a cultural imposition but a biological instinct. They might as well be storks in that regard.

And so he read the ads, but never replied. He was only here for a year; San Diego was his home. It made no sense to take any action on this particular front, no matter what he felt or read.

The ads themselves also tended to stop him.

Husband hunting, SWF, licensed nurse, seeks a hardworking, handsome SWM for LTR. Must be a dedicated Jehovah’s Witness

SBM, 5’ 5”, shy, quiet, a little bit serious, seeking Woman, age open. Not good-looking or wealthy but Nice Guy. Enjoy foreign movies, opera, theater, music, books, quiet evenings

These entries were not going to get a lot of responses. But they, like all the rest, were as clear as could be on the fundamental primate needs they were asking for. Frank could have written the urtext underneath them all, and one time he had, and had even sent it in to a paper, as a joke of course, for all those reading these confessions with the same analytical slant he had—it would make them laugh. Although of course if any woman reading it liked the joke well enough to call, well, that would have been a sign.

Male Homo sapiens desires company of female Homo sapiens for mutual talk and grooming behaviors, possibly mating and reproduction. Must be happy, run fast.

But no one had replied.

He went out onto the bas-relief balcony, into the sultry late afternoon. Another two months and he would be going home, back to resume his real life. He was looking forward to it. He wanted to float in the Pacific. He wanted to walk around beautiful UCSD in its cool warmth, eat lunch with old colleagues among the eucalyptus trees.

Thinking about that reminded him of the grant application from Yann Pierzinski. He went inside to his laptop and Googled him to try to learn more about what he had been up to. Then he reopened his application, and found the section on the part of the algorithm to be developed. Primitive recursion at the boundary limit…it was interesting.

After some more thought, he called up Derek Gaspar at Torrey Pines Generique.

“What’s up?” Derek said after the preliminaries.

“Well, I just got a grant proposal from one of your people, and I’m wondering if you can tell me anything about it.”

“From one of mine, what do you mean?”

“A Yann Pierzinski, do you know him?”

“No, never heard of him. He works here you say?”

“He was there on a temporary contract, working with Simpson. He’s a post-doc from Caltech.”

“Ah yeah, here we go. Mathematician, got a paper in Biomathematics on algorithms.”

“Yeah that comes up first on my Google too.”

“Well sure. I can’t be expected to know everyone who ever worked with us here, that’s hundreds of people, you know that.”

“Sure sure.”

“So what’s his proposal about? Are you going to give him a grant?”

“Not up to me, you know that. We’ll see what the panel says. But meanwhile, maybe you should check it out.”

“Oh you like it then.”

“I think it may be interesting, it’s hard to tell at this stage. Just don’t drop him.”

“Well, our records show him as already gone back up to Pasadena, to finish his work up there I presume. Like you said, his gig here was temporary.”

“Ah ha. Man, your research groups have been gutted.”

“Not gutted, Frank, we’re down to the bare bones in some areas, but we’ve kept what we