Logan follows, eyes on the path ahead. The silence between them thickens. He knows she wants to speak. She is sure, as women often are, that things can be resolved by talking, whereas he is sure that talking will only make them worse. Something is bubbling up inside of him: an ancient fury that he’s struggling to control. It feels like a monster that is poised to take him over. He can only imagine it comes from childhood, when he was powerless and the world was incomprehensible, and you weren’t allowed to feel, but you felt – a murderous rage. Just the wrong words, and she’ll prise off the lid.

Finlay, she says, you have to understand I was lonely.

I understand! It’s all my fault!

There it is. Just the edge of it. Jules halts, stumped by the sudden bitterness, and he puts another small road between them. The dog stops with her. Jules shouts after him, I’m not saying it’s your fault. It’s both our faults. But when a person gets lonely—

He turns to face her across the cracked and weedy concrete.

You’re telling me you were lonely yesterday? You were lonely in the five minutes when I went to pay for fuel? The ten minutes it took me to get the takeaway?

It’s complicated now, she says. It’s like – he needs me.

I need you! He has never said such a pathetic thing. He is furious with himself. Furious with her. But I can’t trust you any more. So you go and be with him. And good riddance to both of you.

I don’t want to be with him, it’s over!

The dog leaps off the kerb.

Jules cries, ACHILLES! and the dog falters, looks back a split-second, and her skull thunks against metal, vanishing under the car whose whispering electric engine had gone undetected, which is braking but carries on going, ger-dunk, ger-dunk.

All the sound is sucked out of the air.

And then Jules is on her knees crying and cradling the dog’s floppy head, with its tongue lolling out, and its crazy eyes, and the people from the car are running over saying, Oh my God, Oh my God, and all he can do is stand there.

‌3b.

Physics

‌

Through

There is a moment of paralysis as the decision takes shape. Behind him, the Alterman Centre’s bright corridors hum patiently. Here I am, he thinks, at one of those semi-transparent surfaces scientists use to split the wave of a single atom in the box pair experiment. If I were pure light, I would both bounce off and pass through.

Logan puts his hand to the glass door and it admits him. He steps through into an engineered garden. At the core of the Alterman Centre is a beating green heart. He needs time to think. This looks like a good place to think.