It’s not all smoking craters, though. April will bring with it another set of tiny fingers and toes (and all the other adjoining bits I’m assured). We’re talking names right now and it’s pretty fun. Curiously, we haven’t started thumbing through The Silmarillion yet. As far as you know. Little fingers, little toes, probably some gorgeous little knowing coals staring like the abyss into my dumb face.

I’m a bit bittersweet on the world today. We’re finally in a state where the counterfuturist schtick about “Where’s my hovercar already?” is baldly ridiculous. Except the future that’s consuming the present isn’t the Art Deco raygun floating metropolis. No, the sky’s the color of static these days. North Korea’s probably behind WannaCry. The Russians conspired to ruin the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Conspired with the winning candidate. And his son-in-law who’s going to fix the Middle East by wearing a Kevlar vest in the desert and posing for pictures. We found norms are weak in that they’re not only easy to break but easy to forget and easy to replace. We have sex robots now. We have animal robots who can run fast and do back flips. Robots might be the fastest-growing political constituency in the world.

And here comes this baby. I really feel like I’m much better prepared to be a parent, to be a guardian and mentor, than ever before. I have so many people to thank for this, at all levels of acquaintanceship and proximity. I can’t wait to meet her, to rock her to sleep, to change diapers (thank you, anosmia). I can’t wait to see what she has to teach me.