Author : Dylan Otto Krider

I don’t believe in love, but spent my entire professional life studying it, the last ten years in your lab. Our compatriots believed in it. They believed it made us human, separated us from the animals. They think love was the basis of morality: sacrificing yourself for others. You were one of these, yet, you are one of the most selfish people I know.

I am not so naïve. The kinships could be self-serving: the group with the genes for sacrifice had an advantage over the purely selfish.

Outwardly teaching self-sacrifice had the purpose of raising your standing in the community and encouraging others to follow your example. Not adhering to your example gives you an advantage over your upstanding colleagues.

I do believe in hypocrisy.

You feigned interest in my career, promised to leave your wife, as you promised others in your office. When I complained, the department didn’t listen because you are upstanding.

But love? Not anymore.

I believe in war. That was something I can quantify, study, mark down in a notebook, but not love.

We were the only animals who engaged in war, except for ants. Ants have no capacity for love. What they have is self-sacrifice so they can engage in battle, just as we have done, banding together, putting those careers you promised us on the line when we went to the press. What a scandal, a pillar of the community exposed.

That is love, in a way. A love I can believe in.