Read The Possibility of an Island for Free Online Page B

accompanied by the characteristic chuckles, which he called
laughter,
is impossible for me to imitate; I cannot even imagine its mechanism.
    The notes made by my predecessors from Daniel2 to Daniel23 generally indicate the same incomprehension. Daniel2 and Daniel3 assert that they are still able to reproduce the phenomenon, under the influence of certain liqueurs; but for Daniel4, already, it is an inaccessible reality. Several studies have been done on the disappearance of laughter among the neohumans; all concur that it happened quickly.
     
     
    A similar, though slower, evolution can be observed for
tears,
another characteristic trait of the human species. Daniel9 notes that he cried, on a very precise occasion (the accidental death of his dog Fox, electrocuted by the protective fence); but from Daniel10 onward there is no more mention of it. Just as laughter is rightly considered by Daniel1 to be symptomatic of human cruelty, tears seem in this species to be associated with compassion. “We never cry for ourselves alone,” notes an anonymous human author somewhere. These two emotions, cruelty and compassion, evidently no longer hold much meaning in the conditions of absolute solitude in which we lead our lives. Some of my predecessors, like Daniel13, display in their commentary a strange nostalgia for this double loss; then this nostalgia itself disappears, giving way to a more and more fleeting curiosity; one can now, as all my contacts on the network corroborate, consider it practically extinct.

 
     
    Daniel1, 5
     
I relaxed by doing a bit of hyperventilation; and yet, Barnaby, I could never stop dreaming of the great mercury lakes on Saturn.
    —Captain Clark
     
    ISABELLE WORKED OUT her three months’ notice, and her last issue of
Lolita
appeared in December. A small cocktail party was organized in the magazine offices. The atmosphere was a little tense, insofar as all the guests were asking themselves the same question without being able to say it out loud: Who was going to replace her as editor-in-chief? Lajoinie appeared for a quarter of an hour, ate three blinis, and gave out no useful information.
    We left for Andalusia on Christmas Eve; then followed three strange months, spent in almost complete solitude. Our new residence was sited just south of San José, near Playa de Monsul. My agent thought this period of isolation was a good thing; it was good, he said, that I step back a little, in order to stoke up the curiosity of the public; I didn’t know how to confess to him that I intended to drop it all.
    He was about the only one who knew my telephone number; I couldn’t say that I had made many friends during my years of success; I had, on the other hand, lost a lot of them. The only thing that can rid you of your last illusions about mankind is to earn a large sum of money very quickly; then you see them emerge, the hypocritical vultures. For your eyes to be opened thus, it is essential to
earn
this sum of money: the truly rich, those who are born rich, and have never breathed any atmosphere other than wealth, seem inoculated against the phenomenon, as if they have inherited with their wealth a sort of unconscious, unthinking cynicism, which makes them aware from the outset that they will have to encounter people whose only aim is to wrest their money from them, by any conceivable means; they behave, therefore, with prudence, and generally keep their capital intact. For those who are born poor, the situation is much more dangerous; speaking for myself, I was enough of a cynical bastard to understand the situation, I had succeeded in avoiding most of the traps; but as for friends, no, I no longer had any. The people I associated with in my youth were for the most part actors: future failed actors; but I don’t think the situation would have been different in another milieu. Isabelle didn’t have friends either, and, especially in the final years, she had been surrounded only by people who dreamed of