The crowd was larger, people up both walkways, chants and holograms everywhere. A bright orange drone floated above, slowly coming down.

“Hello, how are you doing?” It was the man from the Hive, now dressed and atop a glider, floating behind the drone.

“Want me to smash that thing?”

“We’re making a film,” he replied.

Dee frowned.

“Name’s Norich.” He raised his eyebrows at her as he glided down. “How would you feel about me filming you now?”

“For what?”

“A document.”

“For your personal pleasure?”

“Sort of Cinema Verite.” The camera-drone, an orange sloped contraption, floated down over his shoulder. “I’m examining the nature of The Hive for the Ark News. The impetus of that, right? I’m thinking individually, right? Why do we do the things we do?” He looked half drunk, the way he glanced back and forth between them. “Like, what is to experience it?”

Dee shrugged. “Go ahead and try it.”

He landed, leaning forward, wincing at the effort to think of an answer that could not be deflected. “Wisdom, knowledge, that is very human.”

Dee studied his long face, almost earnest, knowing he wanted to listen, his hands open in front of him, waiting for something. “Sex, that’s what I think you’re after, sex and more of it.” Norich nodded back at her. “You know how people say that men want to have sex with young women to avoid their fear of death? That gorgeous taut flesh, so primal and real, the dream of the boy through the old man, it’s got nothing to do with dying, my friend. It’s just being alive, that sexual drive, mindless and direct. But to avoid death? No, it’s not that. Everything is to avoid death. Eating, drinking, going to the bathroom—”

“What about good driving habits then?” Dee added.

“That’s sure as hell part of it, awareness of what you are – your limitations, that you have a perspective, that you’re aware that we tend to think that we know something—”

“You men?”

“Us people. That we know something that no one else can exactly understand. Even with as much as anyone might know, in their mind for a certainty, whatever is gathered through books and media, experience, relationships, there’s only that, only that perspective.”

“Humility then,” Dee ventured.

“Yes, that’s part of it.”

“I think what you really mean is sex,” Dee concluded. “And the answer is no.”

“It’s more our limitations.” Norich tried to pat her on the shoulder. “It’s all about being aware of that.”

“So we’re in agreement then.” Dee went past him into The Hive.