“Okay, Mom. I’m suspended. Go for it.”

“Well, Bettina, the time has come for a serious talk about love-contraception. You’re not a child Cloudlet anymore. You have responsibilities to yourself and to others.”

“Love-contraception? What the…?”

“Let me explain. It’s complicated. I think I need to start with humans on planet earth.”

“Humans?”

“Just hold on an interval or two, Bettina. Yes, humans. Humans are extinct, gone, caput. No one is sure why, but the prevailing idea is that they were so distracted by… …by love…there I said it…that they lost the ability to think rationally and eventually exterminated themselves.”

“Scary. Were humans anything like us?” asked Bettina as she fluffed her edges.

“NO! They were funny-looking creatures that depended on appendages called legs to move around. Humans were not particularly interesting, but you need to know something about them since they were the origin of love. You’ll see. It concerns Henle.”

Bettina glowed violet. “He’s googly!”

“Just listen to me for once, Bettina.”

“In addition to legs, humans had eyes for seeing and ears for hearing,” continued Loella. “Once one has been integrated by harmonic oscillations with twitter, as we have, it is hard to comprehend such crude, disjointed creatures of the past.”

“No problem, Mom. Eyes, ears. Keep going.”

“Humans had thoughts that originated in a special, gooey central control system called a brain. These thoughts were primitive compared to our independent THOUGHTS. Don’t confuse them! Human thoughts were potentially dangerous. And, imagine having each of your functions depend on just one specialized component connecting all the parts with fragile, minute strands, nerves they were called, that were easily damaged. Obviously, this was a catastrophic mistake of evolution. It was also isolating, it made people lonely, because each clumsy brain was hard-wired into only a single human making them incapable of adequate communication. Brains didn’t interconnect. Oh, it was sad. Fortunately we Cloudlets can intertwine orbitals and relate as one.”

“Brains?” repeated Bettina.

“This so-called brain generated many thoughts that seemed at the time responsible for emotions. Emotions like envy, greed, hatred, there were many, created havoc; they’re the reason humans scratched so much and continually oozed red stuff called blood. Scholars agree that emotions were the main reason that humans waged devastating wars, lied, cheated, never agreed on anything and even killed themselves.

“Wow!”

“That’s right, Bettina. Wow. Emotions wouldn’t mean anything to you because we Cloudlets aren’t contaminated with them…well…almost not contaminated.”

“What do you mean, Mom, almost?”
“Love…oh my… we’re still susceptible to love. It’s very dangerous, Bettina! Contamination with love is a huge obstacle to peace.”

“Love? What’s that? It rhymes with shove and glove, whatever those things are.”

“Pay attention, Bettina. No one has ever been able to define love exactly.” Loella hesitated for a moment, realizing that this was a confusing issue and she wasn’t being clear.