He looks confused. “Coding? That’s surprising. If your father is the same person that I taught, he was more interested in mathematical theory. He wanted to work for the university. He wanted to work in academia. Coding’s not a natural extension of that, really.”

That may be why he decided to do it, I almost say. It was a way to hide in a field adjacent to the field he was interested in, but far enough away that no one would look for him there.

“Is he officially a suspect?” Cook asks.

“No,” I say. “Not officially.”

He motions toward Bailey. “I imagine you’re just interested in finding your father. Either way.”

She nods. And Cook turns his attention to me.

“And how does the name change fit in, exactly?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” I say. “He may have been in trouble before The Shop. We don’t know. We’re only just learning about all the inconsistencies between what he’s told us and…”

“What’s true?”

“Yes,” I say.

Then I turn and look at Bailey, to see how she’s processing that. She looks back at me, as if to say, It’s okay. Not that she is okay with what’s going on, exactly—but maybe that it’s okay, all the same, that I’m trying to get to the bottom of things.

Professor Cookman stares at the computer screen, not saying anything at first. “You don’t remember all of them, but I do remember him,” he says. “Though I remember him having longer hair. And being much heavier. He looks quite different.”

“But not entirely?” I say.

“No,” he says. “Not entirely.”

I take that in—trying to imagine Owen walking through the world, looking the way Professor Cookman is describing. I try to imagine Owen walking through the world as someone else. I look over at Bailey and I can see it on her face. I can see it in her frown. How she’s doing the same thing.

Professor Cookman closes the laptop and leans across the desk, toward us.

“Look, I’m not going to pretend to imagine what this all feels like, but I will say, for whatever it’s worth, in my years of teaching, I’ve discovered one thing above all else that makes me calm in moments like this. It’s an Einstein theory originally, which is why it sounds better in German.”

“You may have to go with English,” Bailey says.

“Einstein said, So far as the theories of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality.”

Bailey tilts her head. “Still waiting on the English there, Professor,” she says.

“It basically means, we don’t know shit about anything,” he says.