34856893457934

Francisco, he was unable to see how a single decision, made from behind a computer, could trickle
down and affect an untold number of real, living human beings.
I think we’ll allow it.
Back in that metal box at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, René began speaking again, looking
at his friend Ross and noting that in San Francisco, “it feels like we’re caught up in a moment.”
Ross, returning from another one of his daydreams, agreed. “I get that feeling as well,” he said.
“I feel like the world is in flux.” It was, and in many ways the people around them were causing all of
the changes.
For the next thirty minutes the conversation between Ross and René bounced from family and
friends to drugs (and how much Ross had loved them as a teen). Then Ross talked about his almostfiancée
from Texas, and how the experience of her cheating had battered him emotionally.
“Are you at all jaded?” René asked.
“Oh yeah,” Ross replied. “Big time.”
René then went on to explain that he had experienced an epiphany of late, that we all work so
hard in our jobs, and for what? “There is no level of success that would make me feel happy all the
time,” he reflected. “Those little achievements are little fleeting moments.”
Ross scratched his beard, seemingly disagreeing with his friend. “I imagine there is some silver
lining to . . . pushing yourself to the limit,” Ross said. “I’ve had similar experiences with my work,
where that becomes everything, more important than anything.”
They then started to wrap up their recording. But first, before they said good-bye, René asked his
friend where he would like to be twenty years from now.
“I want to have had a substantial positive impact on the future of humanity by that time,” Ross
remarked.
Then René asked, “Do you think you’re going to live forever?”
“I think it’s a possibility,” Ross declared into the microphone. “I honestly do; I think I might live
forever in some form.”