David was a historian at the institute.
The machine had been cold, like the look on his father’s face when he cried.
The noises that erupted from it felt uncoordinated and overeager, like the dreams where he could not stop running and falling.
The nurse had been friendly, like the voices in his head when there was no one else to tell.
The doctor had been professional, like a salesman, like a monk, like a dictionary.
The map of his brain showed terrifying patches of darkness and broken symmetries. But these only worried him. Everyone else only cared about a small smudge – more likely the thumbprint of an amateur in the darkroom, he had concluded. Space, progression, options, choice, determinism, time, death. It was unclear whether anything had changed. Except for a very particular prescience; mildly heightened; he had carried it with him for many years already as a concern with the lifespan of the sun, and the cold nothing promised by Einstein.
On the way home he became distracted by the dangerous turns of another car, and the beautiful vision of a woman walking in sunlight.
