He wanted to believe that his people were not like these nighttrippers thrashing around him. He wanted to believe that back home things were different, that his people had some memory of, and some honor for, the glory of their cultural past. He wanted to believe that he was superior to these Americans with their all-consuming lust for the new. But he knew that Europe's magnificent past had all but vanished from mind, as though it had never been. Technology had blurred the differences between nations, chipped languages had weakened the borders, and the Euro-Wars had utterly destroyed them.