So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,

Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

—Henry W. Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn, 1863

Charlie was getting ready to leave for school when his mom came downstairs. “I see you’re taking some heat already,” he said.

“Heat about what, Charlie?”

“Going out with the Eiferman.”

“Oh.” No surprise there. It was perfect fodder for the talk shows. “What are they saying?”

“Jessie Hoffman was on The Morning Show today.” Hoffman was the National Security Advisor. “He thinks you have a moral obligation to back off.”

•  •  •

She stopped by Dr. Gordon’s office and got her treatment. Then she headed for a lunch date with Tom Axler. In this difficult time he was exactly what she needed. His gift to Hutch was that he didn’t live in the stars, the way every other male did with whom she’d had any kind of romantic entanglement. Tom was strictly two feet on the ground. He worried that football had effectively disappeared, that comedians weren’t as funny as they used to be, that the initiative to revalue the dollar again was going to create havoc, that people needed to stop thinking of their house AIs as conscious entities, and that churches no longer had the support they did when he was a kid.

He knew that Hutch was uncertain whether God actually existed. She’d told him that the universe was so big that it just seemed impossible that a single functioning deity could have set it all up. But she admitted that she didn’t want to let go of the idea. Her mother was a believer, had taken her to church every Sunday. And the reality was that the size of the cosmos also worked against any effort to deny His existence. It was a lonely place. Hutch knew that traveling among those distant stars was much more comfortable when you could focus on the possibility that someone out there knew about you and cared. It explained why she’d eventually joined a church choral group.

She got to Larry’s Diner first, took a seat, and ordered a glass of apple juice. It wasn’t quite noon yet, but the place was already beginning to fill. Tom walked in the door just as the juice arrived. He lit up when he saw her. It was one of the qualities about him that she especially liked. He enjoyed being with her, and he showed it without, unlike most guys, putting it on display. With him, it was somehow more real than simply a transparent way of trying to win her affection.