A Lonely Age

What a man is and all that flows through his mind with the lapsing of clouds and ticking of time, is infinite. But what a man manifests, what he says and who he appears to be, is finite. To fall in love with another being then would be not to fall in love with that person and their infinitely varying selves, but to fall in love with the one face of an innumerably sided polygon. So it is not too difficult to believe that a man of young ambition fell in love with a woman that did not exist but as a sequence of numbers, of ones and zeros, the same way a real being exists as a sequence of peptides and heliotides. Yes, for this man fell in love with a finite woman; a very finite woman.

Even very early in the history of man, this dominant and burly being has been forever in search of a woman so perfect and lustrous as to satisfy the deepest bowels of his desire. A man was shallow, and his eyes alighted from bosom to bosom, in reconciliation of his wildest fantasies. Perfect, as one might eventually learn, is a conception which cannot be represented by the physical, but only by the iridescent mental. Perfect, one could not find, but custom, well, is perfection enough. A woman, if you will, designed specifically for you, from feet upwards, with as precise specifications as a man could dream. Yes, for it was possible in this time and age, where technology had clambered to peaks which words had not yet the ability to climb, that a man could design his mate in any way he so chose; where numbers had coagulated in a way that might finally arouse a man. For in this day, infants were born not in nine months, but in days, and the ambitious cell was incubated artificially in a way more efficient than nature could have ever conjured.

You see, a man who had never experienced human love knew not what it was, but what it seemed. Love, the same way light could not be described to a blind man, could not be delineated by mere mortals as words and sights, but must be felt; must make the vermillion blood within palpitate aloud. To an unworthy eye, love seemed a transaction; a mutual compromise of individual vicinity for the better satisfying of both party’s needs. By this scanty definition, it seemed a promising alternative for a wealthy man to not have to trouble himself with the pains and gnawing of seeking and sheltering a mate. No, for this was an age where money could finally buy love; where love was finally within the purview of technology. This was an age where no man would suffer the choice between the work that so dearly occupied his time, and the nipping cold that often crept into the hearts of those who lacked companionship. It was a time where a balance would not be required between family and enterprise, where the relationship between hours spent and money earned was directly proportional to the love a man could acquire. This was a lonely and desolate age.