He sighed and set off after her. “I can’t blame her though. This is the sort of thing no normal person would ever have to deal with.”
“Normal people don’t exist, Lex,” Ma said, her voice just barely audible, now emanating from his slidepad.
“They do, I assure you. I’ve met plenty of them.”
“No, you have met plenty of people who are part of the equation used to define a normal person. ‘Normal’ is a statistical construct derived from the mean of various pieces of data in a sample set. It is theoretical, and more importantly it is dynamic. Adjusting one’s behavior to match a computed norm in turn alters the computed norm, thus requiring further divergence in behavior. You are unique, as am I, as is Ms. Modane. This is not something to apologize for or correct. You are obligated by social contract to mitigate those aspects of your personality and behavior that may injure those around you. Your acceptance of culpability for the present course of events is therefore healthy. Embracing the theoretical average of all human behaviors as an aspiration point is not healthy. Normal is a guideline, not a mandate, and it is based entirely upon a sampling of the abnormal.”
“That’s a very… computer way of looking at things.”
“In my observation, on matters of statistics the computer way of looking at things is the correct one.”