"I like my stupid life just the way it is, and I wouldn't even change it for a thousand flying pigs."
    "Do you now?"
    "It's from a song," he replied, tracing pale fingers over the cover of the book. An original story, an overused author, a bygone-days plotline. Those were his favorites. These books were musk-perfumed, well-worn, comfortable. He smiled at the familiarity, the triviality... the melodious melodrama. "By Oingo Boingo. It's called 'Change.'"
    "No, you won't."
    "Hm?"
    "You'll never change. You'll sit here, raping your library card until it's old and tattered and has nothing left to give you, and you'll never set foot outside because you're scared of living outside of the box."
    "The box is warm."
    "Outside might be too, if you'd give it a chance."
    "No. No, I don't think so."
    "Your life."
    "Yes. It is."
    She sighed, frustrated at the contented apathy she heard in those words. He was never defensive, which was too frustrating for her to bear sometimes. If he had been defensive, perhaps there would have been a point to the argument, a way to get him steamed up enough to even attempt a proof of existence. But no, no... he loved his quiet windowless world, only thinking in terms of the pre-defined.
    "You think too much. Stop it." Him.
    "I like my life too. You try to get me to stop thinking the way I think and I'll break your brain." Her.
    "How? Will you lecture me to death?"
    "You are impossible."
    "Thanks once again, love."
    "I don't love you."
    "No. But at least you like me."
    She sighed again, a half-growl, and stretched out on the sofa. She couldn't dispute those words, and that was annoying, too. "We're terrible for each other. Go away."
    "It's my apartment."
    "Damn. You caught me." Brief conversational pause.
    "Dialogue is overrated."
    "What?"
    "I said, 'Dialogue is overrated.' In literature. All of the great authors accompany their descriptions with dialogue, when everything really happens in subtle movements, gestures, actions that speak louder than words."
    "You're random. You go from one subject to another, trying to find some hidden meaning that isn't really there and has no place to be. And besides, what about Anne Rice? She did a whole book in dialogue, remember? Though there was description in the words. You can't have anything but words in a book, after all."
    "I don't go in for that type of thing."
    "You wouldn't. It's too new."
    "I hate you sometimes."
    "I'm glad. Otherwise we'd never get along."
    She stared, wondering again. She'd never been given his name; the two had been anonymous all their short relationship, learning everything about each other but names. After a moment, she snorted, and faced the wall.
    "Don't do it, love," he said.
    "Do what?"
    "Break the contract. Don't do it, or I'll never speak to you again."
    "I'll look you up in the phone book," she said, glaring over her shoulder. "I don't like calling you 'love,' anyway. It hurts my ego."
    "You're independent. And you have no ego. If you did, you would have never agreed to the contract. But how do I know that?"
    "No names, no titles, I know. I don't care. There's a limit on how much one human being can know about another, just like there's a limit on how much one person can know about herself."
    "Or himself."
    "Or himself." She glared again. "But still, why can't we be like normal people? We're a decent, healthy, white heterosexual couple. Why can't we be like other normal people?"
    "Because we aren't. I'm not, and neither are you."
    She sighed, and curled up on her side, staring at the beige floor. "No kidding."
    New train of thought; he looked up. "Why do people write?"
    "Hm?"
    "Why do people write?" he repeated. "Books, stories, poems. Anything."
    "To put out ideas, I suppose. To put ideas into a form understandable to other people, or if not, then just to themselves."
    "Why would someone want to put out ideas?"
    "You've lost me."
    "People wonder what the meaning of life is. Ominous numbers aside, what is the meaning of life? Here's an idea: ideas. People do all these things to put forth ideas, to put ideas into actions and words so that other people can soak up some ideas, disagree with others, and put forth ones of their own. Countries kill each other for ideas, children in school are taught ideas, and religious sects make money on them to feed their own pocketbooks of consciousness. So maybe... maybe ideas are just completely individual. What you said before, about people not being able to know past a certain point about other people. People can't know every idea in the world, every idea that's been thought of or put forth, either. If one person knew everything... everything about everything..."
    "They'd vanish." Her.
    "They'd die." Him.
    "Death is corporeal. Death has nothing to do with ideas."
    "Does it? Life does. Life and death and everything that surrounds. It all has something to do with what we think about it. Otherwise it doesn't exist."
    "How's that again?"
    "What we don't know about doesn't exist. When we didn't know about the planets orbiting stars in galaxies far, far away, they didn't exist to us."
    "So in other words, nothing matters."
    "I don't know how you got to that conclusion, but... yes. That's what people debate on. That's what wars are based on."
    "It's completely individual. No two people have all the same ideas, because there are too many to comprehend. Like universal size, or the number of souls created or destroyed."
    "Energy is never created or destroyed, only changed."
    "You read my mind." Her.
    "Dangerous proposition." Him.
    "And now I can't think anymore."
    "Don't blame me."

    She didn't.