“Nothing happened with Y2K because people made a big deal out of it,” I said. “Because it was a big deal. It took a lot of trained professionals doing a ton of hard work that no one would ever see the results of because ‘nothing happening’ was the proof that they’d done it right.”

“And yet I remember you being all ‘blah blah blah blah misinformation’ at the time.”

“Because people were talking about things like toasters and coffee makers not working because a chip in them that was keeping track of the date for some reason and they imagined their non-computerized kitchen appliances would care if it was suddenly 1900,” I said. “And easily disproved misinformation like that only makes it easier for people to ignore the actual consequences of ignoring something like the Y2K glitch… like how the crap stories about Obama vetoing SOPA or the senate voting it down are making people complacent about this.”

“Okay, yeah, but even if those news stories weren’t actually about SOPA… the senate wouldn’t throw out one bill and then pass this one,” she said. “And why wouldn’t Obama veto this one after saying he’d protect net neutrality?”

“Because this bill doesn’t have anything to do with net neutrality, according to its sponsors,” I said.

“You said it did.”

“I said it’s an end run around net neutrality and could be used to demolish it,” I said. “But to the people who are pushing this bill, it’s only about stopping pirates and boosting business, and we can’t count on a bunch of career politicians to know or care better.”

“Whatever,” she said. “What are you going to say if this whole thing blows over?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Whatever I feel like saying, I guess. That’s the nice thing about free speech, when it works.”

“Terrible!” she said.

“Oh?” I said.

“You know, none of the stores I went to had very many religious cards to begin with, and those they did have were mostly generic and vague references to ‘blessings’… few of them had so much as a direct reference to Christ, much less the nature of His sacrifice and resurrection. You know, every Christmas we have all those campaigns about how Jesus is the reason for the season. How does Easter get overlooked? Easter is the reason for Jesus. This is just one more example of the damage done by the creeping secularism of our increasingly liberal society.”

“Are you or are you not looking for a card that says ‘He is risen!’ so you can put the spooky sound chip from a Halloween card in it and draw a crayon picture of Zombie Jesus on the inside?” I asked her.

“Creeping secularism!” she said.

“Probably not,” I said.

“But if there’s an infinite number of worlds, there must be at least one where that happened,” she said.

“Not really,” I said. “Infinite worlds doesn’t mean that anything you imagine has happened somewhere. There could be an infinite number of identical worlds, for instance.”

“Okay, but if we assume the infinite number of worlds hinge on every possible outcome then wouldn’t there have to be be some where people decided to call it frozen cream and ice yogurt?”

“‘Ice cream’ was actually made with ice, originally,” I explained. “Frozen yogurt came about after refrigerating technology made it possible for something to be frozen without the application of ice. The names weren’t just a random outcome… they wouldn’t make sense the other way around. So, even if there are universes where people eat ice yogurt and frozen cream, it wouldn’t be ‘just like ours’ in every other way. Other things would have to be different, too.”

“Well, that makes sense,” she said. “I guess I was being silly.”

“You’re admitting you were silly?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course,” she said. “Imagine… suggesting there might be a universe somewhere whose inhabitants occasionally give things names that don’t make strict etymological sense.”

“You’re mocking me now, aren’t you?”

“Now?”

“That’s incest,” I said.

“Yeah, and if you rearrange the letters in incest and add a few more, you get ‘necessity’,” she said. “If it’s necessary for the survival of their species, they should do it.”

“It’s just wrong,” I said. “He would never do that.”

“He’s dooming his own species to extinction, then,” she said. “It’s wrong of him not to do it. Morally, it’s the first thing he should have thought of when she got off the ship.”

“And what about birth defects?” I asked. “How are they supposed to get a viable breeding population from two people?”

“I don’t know, it looks like they have pretty good genes to me,” she said. “Don’t you think their home planet was the kind of place that would be all eugenic-y and stuff, anyway? And besides, who cares if you have male pattern baldness or even hemophilia when you’re going to be freaking invulnerable anyway?”

“Okay, but what if they have super birth defects? I mean, look at what happens when a clone of him goes wrong,” I said. “They could end up making a breeding population of Bizarros.”

“But look at what happens when a clone of him goes right,” she said. “I’m sure this isn’t a new idea… there was a ton of ‘Superman Family’ stuff Pre-Crisis. Where did all of that stuff come from?”

“Superman wasn’t fucking his cousin Pre-Crisis. Seriously.”

“You just don’t want any of my ships to become canon.”

“Sure,if you’re going grocery shopping anyway we’re almost out of…

“Not that kind of store,” she said.

“What kind, then?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she said. “I just have the urge to go out there and, you know… get something. Don’t you ever get that urge?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I try to find some way to indulge in it that doesn’t take me beyond my means. Besides, haven’t you ever heard that the best things in life are free?”

“Of course,” she said. “That’s why I always ask you for money instead of working for it. It’s so much more satisfying when you just give it to me.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m feeling nauseous.”

“You mean nauseated,” I said. “‘Nauseous’ refers to something that invokes feelings of nausea, not the state of…”

“How would you feel if I threw up all over you, right now?” she asked.

“Nauseated,” I said.

“Then shut the fuck up, I’m feeling nauseous.”

“What do you mean, ’still’?” she asked.

“Well, I mean… it’s over and done with.”

“They never admitted they were wrong,” she said.

“They apologized,” I said.

“It wasn’t a real apology,” she said. “They said they regretted if anybody was offended. They didn’t give any indication that they agree that what they did is wrong and that they won’t do something like it again.”

“You’re talking about a multinational corporation,” I said. “They’re not going to admit wrongdoing over what really probably was just a mistake… especially since everybody else has moved on. They might have lost a few customers, but not as many as threatened to leave and didn’t… and no one else is still making a stink over it.”

“Well, I’m not giving up,” she said. “I’m right and they’re wrong, and I’m going to keep after them until they admit it.”

I looked at her.

“What?” she said. “What?”

“Don’t you… don’t you ever worry that you’re going to waste your life tilting at windmills?”

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t even play mini-golf.”

“You mean the one about how he invented peanut butter?” she replied.

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” she asked.

“I asked if you know the story of Zhuangzi and the butterfly,” I said.

“Uh, yeah,” she said. “And I asked if you mean the one about how he invented peanut butter. It’s a simple enough question.”

“I’m talking about the story where the man has a dream where he’s a butterfly, and then when he wakes up he doesn’t know if he’s a man who dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming that he’s a man,” I said.

“That’s stupid,” she said.

“Okay, maybe it seems a little simplistic, but it’s got a sound point at its core,” I said. “If you can’t always tell that you’re dreaming when you are… and conversely, if it’s possible to mistakenly think you might be dreaming when you’re awake… then how can we ever know for certain that we’ve awakened to true reality? Is there any level of being ’sure’ at which our confidence is justified? Really, at its core, it’s just taking the Socratic maxim that the only true knowledge is knowing one knows nothing to its logical endpoint, that we cannot be sure of any reality that depends on our flawed senses and fallible reasoning to detect.”

“Well, sure,” she said. “But it’s still stupid.”

“How?” I asked.

“The story acts like those are the only two possibilities,” she said. “For instance, he could be a gorilla who dreamed he was a butterfly who dreamed he was a man. Or he could have been a man who misremembers a dream about being a fish.”

“You’re kind of just proving the point of the story,” I said.

“The point that I’m awesome and Zhuangzi can suck it?” she asked.

“Just for the sake of my own personal reference… did you think peanut butter was invented by an ancient Taoist thinker, or by a butterfly?” I asked her.

“If he can’t tell the difference, neither can I.”

“With the nymphs and the golden apples of immortality?” I replied.

“Yeah,” she said. “And the apples are supposed to be guarded by this hundred-headed snake/dragon thing.”

“Ladon,” I said, nodding. “Yeah.”

“I don’t think he’d be a very effective deterrent,” she said. “I mean, if the apples make you immortal, you just have to get one of them and you’re set for life, right? Very long life.”

“I don’t know if they worked that way,” I said. “I think maybe you had to keep eating them or something.”

“Well, that’s not forbidden apples of immortality,” she said. “That’s forbidden apples of living slightly longer. Anyway, if the apples did make you immortal, I don’t think a giant serpent would be the way to go.”

“Oh? And what would you propose instead?”

“Instead of a hundred-headed snake?” she said. “How about a hundred worms?”

“Worms?” I repeated.

“Yeah, worms,” she said. “You know that old joke, ‘What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?’”

“Finding half of a worm,” I said.

“Yeah, and what would be worse than that?”

“Tell me,” I said.

“Finding half a worm in your apple and realizing that it’s going to be alive forever,” she said.

“Ew,” I said.

“What, you mean like Superman?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she said. “Or Peter Pan, or whoever. Just… lift your feet off the ground and soar up into the sky.”

“I suppose everybody must,” I said. “I mean, I’m afraid of heights but I still wish I could fly. I think there’s a tacit assumption that if you could fly like that, suspended under your own power, then heights don’t matter any more.”

She nodded.

“What would you do, if you could fly?” she asked.

“Travel, probably,” I said. “Fly out over the ocean, out to Hawaii, or up into the Rockies. I’d go find beautiful, out-of-the-way places that I could have all to myself. What would you do?”

“I think I’d start going to church more often,” she said.

“What, are we assuming that suddenly possessing the power to fly would be proof positive of the existence of a kind, benevolent, and distinctly Judeo-Christian God?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “But I’d want to go every week for a while at least, just to make it seem more credible when I pretend to be Raptured in front of the rest of the congregation.” She shrugged. “It seems more creative than pretending to commit suicide by jumping off a building.”

“You see this right here?” I said. “Things like this are why the universe doesn’t hand out superpowers.”