Status Updates From The Price of Honey

It was literally on the public record that Barney was a cheat and still Honey had thought she was somehow special.

awaiting the commencement of his funeral service. People speak in low voices. A string quartet plays. It feels like a subdued cocktail party.

Barney's elderly mother, festooned in rubies, sits like an angry Christmas tree across the aisle from them.

augmented celebrities

sixty might have been Barney's chronological age, but his latest epigenetic clock test gave him a biological age of thirty-two! Only four years older than Honey. He was aiming for a biological age that matched her chronological age. He nearly got there.

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longevity without sacrifice He wanted to live forever while still eating and drinking the best the world had to offer.

She is probably thinking that if you marry a man more than thirty years older than you, then you should reasonably expect to one day be attending his funeral. "He only just had his sixtieth birthday," says Honey. "So young," agrees Taylor. She is overdoing it.

People have widely different responses to her husband's name. His company has both wiped out entire industries and saved millions of lives through cutting-edge medical technologies. He's inspirational. He's abhorrent. He and Mac have too much power, too much money, and too much influence. He and Mac are geniuses changing the world for the better.

She has the kind of celebrity where people can't name her unless they hear Barney's name first. Without him she doesn't exist.

She's rarely referred to as Luisa. Always her full name: Luisa Long. It's just one of those names.

A messy chignon. Barney's favorite hairstyle for her. It takes a lot of time to look like you just got out of bed. He won't get to pull out the pins tonight. Smudgy rock-star eye makeup. Right on the edge of too much. You want to give the idea of a hangover without looking like you truly are hungover. It's an art. A lost art.

She didn't get to debug him of any faults because he said his former wives had already pointed out all his faults and he'd rectified them. I'm bug-free, baby, he said. You got the latest version. State of the art.

It's funny to hear herself described as an "older woman". As if she has wisdom to offer anyone.

I think humans should come with warnings! Warning: this guy has a cute smile but may exhibit controlling tendencies.

He couldn't stand her to be unhappy. Unhappiness was unnecessary. Forbidden! Ha ha. He wasn't being controlling. He just meant that there was no need to be unhappy when you had unlimited resources at your disposal. You can still be occasionally unhappy with unimaginable wealth, Barney.

Last Tuesday was the last time she laid her head on his chest. That's how close the memory is: It still has a weekday attached to it. She is still dazzled by the blinding white nuclear shock of the news. Yesterday, she cried for hours, with confusion and shock, but she knows the pain will be far worse when she is no longer protected by her disbelief.

You know the problem with AI relationships? ... Yeah, sure, they're not "real" but the problem is they're programmed to please you. .., So they become whatever you need. They get better and better at keeping you happy ... that can be great. It's really soothing! But it's like being in a relationship with your own reflection.

That would be like moving to France, without knowledge of its culture, language, history, or geography, and then saying "I have views on France." Your views would be considered adorable but irrelevant.

I can feel my engagement levels dropping.

he'd say that there might be another universe where she was the tech multibillionaire and he was the retired makeup artist. His mouth would twitch at that. She asked if there was a universe where they never met, and he said there wasn't one. They met in every universe. He was a romantic.

A programming error. That was what her husband always said when the weather didn't suit the occasion. it was a joke, but possibly not because Barney believed it "statistically likely" that advanced versions of the human race were running a simulated multiverse.

What's the point of choosing a human driver if they're not allowed to talk?