He guessed what she meant and laughed. "Not really. I am a human being, a rational creature, a creature that looks at evidence and thinks about it...I assess it." "Yes, yes; I agree. Only by turning off our intelligence do we actually believe in such things." "I don't understand. Are you a believer or a non-believer?" "Well, certainly a non-believer; but I don't adhere to anything including non-believing. I let ideas whisk across me, weathering my obdurate convictions. What I am today is me now and what I am tomorrow is me then. There may be a God that is the cause of it all or some large thing that a human brain can't conceptualize enough to peg it with a label and if so I want an impression of the real one as much as I can and not the anthropomorphic god that society is trying to install into my head." "I see," he said. "Do you?" She giggled. He smiled and then sunk morosely within deep contemplation. "I was quickly looking through a Newsweek at a newsstand while I came here -- sorry, while I was coming here. Let me start again. While I was coming here I glanced at a Newsweek." "Bravo. Finally, good grammar!," she bantered. He smiled morosely. "The article said that in the Democratic Republic of Congo a door of a cargo plane fell open. The article said that most of the soldiers and their families who were inside were-" He could not think of the words so he used a gesture. "Sucked out?" said Gabriele colloquially. "Did you learn of it?" She thought of it for a few seconds: the consternation and yet cognizant beings nonetheless understanding what was happening to them and their families as they freefell into the abyss, the wailing and the flailing of limbs, the sense of being a morsel swallowed into an atmosphere that was so smothering in its vastness, the sense of complete hopelessness, the horrific winds, the passing through layers of clouds with the specious illusion of nets, falling concurrent with the rain, each human being hopefully experiencing a heart attack or stroke before the stroke of death, and the plops of red raindrops flying into the air at impact. She knew that the world had not been gently patted together and shaped like a piece of clay. It had been smelted in violence and chance. This being so, so it was with an individual life. "How horrible!" she gasped. "No, I didn't read anything about it." She slowly lifted her face and resurrected her sunken eyes. She even feigned a smile. "I am bad that way: I'd rather listen to classical music and read a book than know the news. Knowing how violent the world is does violence to one's need to believe that life is essentially good." "If God didn't care about those people why should I think that he cares about me?" "Absolutely. I agree." She tried to extricate herself from morbid thoughts by altering back to a more frivolous topic. "Do you agree that that squeaking is God awful!"