While a number of people have pointed out the various costs and drawbacks of sentience, few if any have taken the next step and wondered out loud if the whole damn thing isn't more trouble than it's worth. Of course it is, people assume; otherwise natural selection would have weeded it out long ago. And they're probably right. I hope they are. "Blindsight" is a thought experiment, a game of "Just suppose" and "What if". Nothing more.On the other hand, the dodos and the Steller sea cows could have used exactly the same argument to prove their own superioirity, a thousand years ago: "if we're so unfit, why haven't we gone extinct?" Why? Because natural selection takes time, and luck plays a role. The biggest boys on the block at any given time aren't necessarily the fittest, or the most efficient, and the game isn't over. The game is never over; there's no finish line this side of heat death. And so, neither can there be any winners. There are only those who haven't yet lost.

Mel rolled her eyes. "You can't live your life based on 'what-ifs,' Liv. And change is inevitable. It's the one thing you can always count on. Stop worrying about what might or not happen and follow your heart. How can you expect to ever be happy if you don't?

What is that?_ Addison inspects the food with a look of sheer revulsion on her face. You__ swear I just handed her a plate full of arsenic. __he Works Burger with fries and extra onions and cheese, exactly as you ordered._ I keep my voice level.She sends me a scathing look. __o I look like I__ ever consume that amount of saturated fat?

I don__ think I__ feel any more violated if he__ stripped me bare. I might as well have lain down before him openly exposing all my flaws and my fears, inviting him to psychoanalyze me.

He knows I__e seen something in him. Something I recognize, only because it exists in me too.

I was wrong last night. Kyler isn__ just trouble. He__ an apocalypse-level disaster waiting to happen. I need to find some fallout shelter to hide in. And quick.