Logan wonders whether they are all mad. Then again, perhaps he is the mad one. He listens to the darkness: the shush of laurel leaves, a leaked ripple of laughter. If any of this is true, Flora’s broadcast is all around him, passing invisibly through him like the radio stations he could pick up if only he had a tuneable receiver. If any of this is true, all that is stopping him from receiving Flora’s broadcast is his emotional static. His persistent scepticism.

Yet what could matter more than knowing Flora wasn’t obliterated by gravity, but continues to exist? What if she is a continuing stream of consciousness with which he might connect? Should he not do whatever it takes to find out?

Gabrielle is having a discussion with the cell biologist. Logan can see them through the small square of fireproof glass in her door; her grinning as she swings to and fro in her chair, him pacing and gesticulating, almost dancing, in front of her. The door softens their words into melody as Logan leans against the wall of the corridor, his heart noticeably beating in his chest.

When at last the door opens and the cell biologist spills out, he catches sight of Logan and beams, You! before trailing threads of farewell down the corridor. Gabrielle pokes her head around the corner.

Come on, then, she says. Let’s sort out a date.

‌Particular

Logan can’t discern what is left of the self he knew as Logan. His mind is an emptied carrier bag: spacious, near-weightless. He moves through the house like his own ghost, haunting his former routines, smiling at himself. The world, as if it knows, stays away. The phone sleeps. The front door chums up to its frame. Like bees behind glass, e-mails bounce soundlessly back to their business. He sits alone, perfectly content. Twice a day, he lets himself out of the back door with the dog close to his heels, who glances up often as if to make sure that her master won’t be blown away.

Barely a thought passes through his mind. Or rather, the thoughts are so fleeting, so whispered, that it takes some days to recognize their existence. Everything loud – anguish, grief – is absent. Even the pain of his wisdom tooth, which had throbbed him awake for a week, has fled from Gabrielle’s ‘jellyfish’; vanished like some specious illusion, some sick note he’d invented to get out of lessons, leaving the jawbone quiet as an after-hours museum.