"Because it's addicting," he says.

"How many of you have ever been to see a kite race?" I ask. It sounds like one of those teacher-questions (I am amazed at how much I sound like a teacher.) Most of them raise their hands. "Well, a flier experiences the kite as a kind of second body," I say. "The flier feels the kites sail as if they were the flier's wing, and if the kite develops a structural problem then the flier feels it as an ache. Something has got to be stimulating the flier's nervous system," I say. They glaze over. Did you know you can see boredom? I have other examples, the medical stuff in China, for one, but I decide to just finish up on fliers and forget other examples. I tell them about the system at Wuxi, where people didn't jack in. Some of them look interested but nobody uses their highlighters. "In the future we might all be cyborgs linked into systems. In that future, we would all be organic engineers." This sounds like a teacher lecture. Amazing how you don't have to have any training to sound like every dull teacher you ever had in middle school.

I explain about organic engineers. I expected the lecture to take an hour, but I find it's only taken twenty-five minutes. I tack on a little about the relationship of science to society, about how social thought always lags behind scientific change. Mostly because of thinking about Xiao Chen. Then I realize I need an example.

What's an example of how social thought lags behind scientific change? I mean, it's a cliche, but other than talking even more about how everyone is afraid of feedback but how it is the way things will go in the future, I really can't think of anything. Religion. But everybody knows about religion, and it's not relevant to them.

"Take for example the diagram behind me on the board. Does anyone recognize it?"

They all look at me, blank. Of course they all recognize it. But it's politics. Nobody in their right mind is going to volunteer anything about politics. Keep your head down, don't get into trouble. Nervousness makes me a tyrant, I point at one young woman. "Tell me what it means."

She looks around, hoping for escape. Normally I'd feel sympathy for her but now I am only concerned with how to fill another fifteen minutes.

"Ah, it's Marx's analysis-"

Her voice is so soft I can barely hear her. "Sweetheart," I say, trying to put her at ease, "you've got to talk loud enough to be heard on Mars."

Louder she says, "It's a Marxist diagram of historical progression."

"Right. Now, what the diagram says is that primitive society eventually organizes into feudal society. Usually as a result of farming. That society eventually allows a few landlords-whether you call them lords or landholders or whatever-to accrue enough capital to invest in something other than farming. That capital forms the base for an industrial revolution, which paves the way for capitalist society. Capitalism exploits workers the way Feudalism exploits serfs. But capitalism is an unstable system, with it's boom and bust cycles, it's violent corrections, and eventually there is a proletariat revolution and a socialist system is established. So far so good?"

I expect them to be bored out of their minds, they've been chanting this relationship since junior middle school, but they are rigid with attention, the glaze of boredom is gone. Apparently there is some novelty in having an engineering teacher lecture them on politics.

"Okay," I say, "when did China move from primitive to feudal?"

"The Emperor Qin," someone says dutifully.

"From feudal to capitalist?"

There is a moment of silence. Finally an ABC raises his hand.

"Laoshi," he says formally, 'Teacher,' "Mao Zedong changed the diagram. The revolution in China was a peasant revolution, not a proletariat revolution."

"Wrong," I say. The young man's eyes get large. "Lenin changed the diagram. Other than that you are perfectly correct." I sound like Comrade Wei, my calculus teacher in middle school. Marx and Lenin I hated that man.

There is a nervous laugh. I find it very exciting to have their attention. "Can you name me an example of a country that did have a proletariat revolution?"

A young woman pops out without raising her hand, "We did."

"Right. In the early twentieth century the national debt and the trade deficit of the old United States precipitated the second depression. In effect, the country went bankrupt, and as a result, so did the economy of every first world nation at the time except for Japan, which managed to keep from total bankruptcy but lost most of it's markets, and for Canada and Australia, which created the Canadian-Australian alliance, a holding measure to preserve their own systems which survives until this day. The Soviet Union also went into bankruptcy because it was deeply invested in the U.S. bond market, whatever that was," they all laugh, we've all been taught that the U.S.S.R. was deeply hurt in the economic collapse because of their involvement in the U.S. bond market, but I'll be damned if I ever met anyone who really knew what that meant. "And what did China do?"

"Went back to a soft currency system," someone volunteers.

"What is soft currency?" I ask.

Silence.

The boy who called me laoshi has his nerve back. "Ah, it is an economic system which does not tie it's own currency into the world market."

"Meaning?" I ask.

"Meaning," he takes a breath, "that a Chinese yuan inside the borders of China had value-that it bought things-but that outside the Chinese border it was just a piece of paper."

"Ah," I say. Then I tell the truth. "You're the first person ever to explain that to me. Unless I slept through it in Middle School, which is possible." Honest laughter this time.

I continue. "The U.S. could no longer provide social services, keep schools open, hospitals, banks. Eventually, the Communist Party organized well enough under Christopher Brin to take over portions of New York City and attempted to provide basic social services. We will skip over the struggles of the early party, which was, as everyone knows, given a major shot in the arm by the help of the Chinese who had managed to get their economic shit together."

Grins in the room.

"Along comes the Second Civil War, led by Brin until he was killed in Atlanta and after that by Darwin Iacomo and Zhou Xie-zhi and the United States becomes a socialist country. So there we have it, Capitalism to Proletariat revolution to Socialism. Now," I ask, "where is the American Feudal period?"

Actually, it was a Canadian who first asked me that, Karin, happily poking holes in my education. The class has the same answer I do, which is to say that they have no idea.

"Well," I say, enjoying myself immensely and not giving Karin any credit, "unless you count slavery, which was regional, there was no feudal period. And the only American primitive period was the Native Americans, and their economic history is discontinuous from ours."

A young woman who hasn't spoken thus far raises her hand. "Our feudalism was in Europe," she says.

I nod. "Okay," I say, "I'll give you that."

Up until now everything I've said has been fine. I stop. I don't really have the nerve to go on. I look up, there are students in every seat, and there are two people leaning on windowsills. They are all waiting, waiting for me to make my point. "But now, all of this so far has been very fine from a political point of view. But from a scientific point of view it is clearly a very Newtonian way of thinking."

They all watch me. I don't know what they are thinking.

"Newtonian," I say, "From Newton. The guy with the apple." Marx and Mao Zedong, I am the last person anyone would ever expect to be standing here lecturing on science and politics. Maybe I can just explain why it's Newtonian and stop there, that doesn't seem too dangerous.