She said, “We look at a flock of birds and we think one bird is the same as any other bird—a bird unit. But a bird looks at thousands of people, at a Giants game up at Candlestick Park, say, and all they see is ‘people units.’ We’re all as identical to them as they are to us. So what makes you different from me! Him from you? Them from her? What makes any one person any different from any other? Where does your individuality end and your species-hood begin? As always, it’s a big question on my mind. You have to remember that most of us who’ve moved to Silicon Valley, we don’t have the traditional identity-donating structures like other places in the world have: religion, politics, cohesive family structure, roots, a sense of history or other prescribed belief systems that take the onus off individuals having to figure out who they are. You’re on your own here. It’s a big task, but just look at the flood of ideas that emerges from the plastic!”

I stared at her, and I imagine she was assuming I was digesting—compiling—what she’d just told me, but instead, all I could think of, looking into her eyes, was that there was this entity—Karla—who was different from all others I knew because just under the surface of her skin lay the essence of herself, the person who thinks and dreams these things she tells to me and only me. I felt like a lucky loser and I kissed her on the nose. So that’s me for the day.