The Loidial Trade in Medium-Sized Domestic Animals (2)

The Loidial Trade in Medium-Sized Domestic Animals (1)

Unlike the cosine, which has grown tarnished and shrivelled with the oxidation of centuries, the Law of Large Numbers (LLN) has kept remarkably well. As I crept through my apartment over the course of the next few days, expecting a black and orange and mud-coloured assault at every step, I recited the Law to myself.

The LLN states that, when one has the results of a large number of trials from a sample that is representative of a given population, the average of said results should be close to the expected value of the population entire. This sample average will tend closer to the population average as more trials are performed. Since the average number of humans killed or injured by klars per Old Earth Lunar Year (OELY) in the past few decades was precisely zero, and this constituted a good number of trials, the LLN would have me believe that I was safe. I should have gone forth boldly, and stopped slouching so much.

But under these circumstances – as close as I thought I would ever get to experiencing the antique ‘horror’ genre, in which I have precisely zero interest – it was difficult to convince myself that klars had not simply been saving the lives of the same number of human as they killed every year, thus ensuring a neutral profile for the species entire. Having an invisible beast with untrimmed, inch-long claws in one’s living quarters has this sort of effect.

The Loidial Trade in Medium-Sized Domestic Animals (1)

The re-calibration of body, mind, and soul is serious business, in spite of how lightly most follow each timely notice from the Lifestyle Aesthetics System (LAS). You’re never just plain younger when you come out, but also, inevitably, different in a way that is difficult to describe in uni-directional temporal language.

I know, for instance, of a researcher who assembled a multi-disciplinary team to write a paper entitled: “In terms of private and public benefits versus mounting public costs, is there a compelling rationale for REJUV?” Despite boiling down to the sensible question, “Is this really such a good idea?”, it was apparently necessary to engage two astro-anthropologists, a philosopher of mediocre calibre, several demographers and economists of various specialities, and even one linguo-statistician. They only got so far as the working paper stage before the entire team collapsed – and yet, exceeding expectations, by the time of said collapse they had already gone two years since the head researcher went for his first REJUV, and came out to say, quite sanguinely, that he would be ducking out of the project now. Gossip would have me believe that one of the demographers rallied the then-leaderless team to cobble together a draft – lest all the funders be thoroughly embarrassed – but since when did a demographer rally anybody?

This anecdote may explain why, since receiving my first “invitation” to REJUV, I have been furiously jotting notes to my homologous platonic correspondent (HPC), Cassandra, on the subject of anything and everything but REJUV. It is a very good thing that Cassandra probably does not exist, other than as a digital figment of our Individual and Societal Welfare Office’s (ISWO) good intentions. Surely only an AI could produce such smooth and comprehensible (yet somehow vacuous) output in response to my shiploads of incomprehensible input.

It may also explain why I have acquired a klar.