When Ha looked up, she saw Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan watching them. She recognized that look: A scientist watching a test subject. A biologist, examining a DNA sequence.

Chapter 42

The mind and the body are not two things—they are one. The destination of every neural pathway is the synaptic connection to muscle fibers. Thought leads to action, down bundled axons that terminate in the tools that make novels, factories, cathedrals, and nuclear bombs.

—Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds

42

RUSTEM HAD BEEN WALKING MORE and more in the city. Walking helped him think, to process the work. But he often felt like, even on these walks, it was all a closed loop. The problem was that there was no one he could talk to about his work. It was, by necessity, solitary. And if he spoke of it …

But this line of thinking brought him around again to Aynur. How long had they spent together, in total? A few days? Not even that. Hours. The ghost of her he clung to was nothing, he knew, like she had been in life. And who had she been? He had only glimpsed the person behind her deflecting ironies. And felt her—the way they fit together physically. But that, as well, was nothing. Many people fit together that way, and didn’t make more of it than what it was.

I am not well.

This thought came to him more and more. I am not well. He felt, walking the streets now, as if he were seeing everything with more clarity than he had in years. The almost agonizing clarity of childhood had returned. A few days before, he was on a crowded tram. A young woman sat down next to him, on the edge of his coat. And as he readjusted to remove it, and she apologized, he looked at her face and became aware, in that moment, of the fact that everyone—everyone—on that tram with him was alive. As alive as him. That all of them were living lives as important to them as his was to him, with worries and goals and connections to others as valuable as he felt his own were. And he was filled, in that moment, with a wonderful sense of belonging. He felt that warmth in him that sometimes came from a good conversation.

This is the truth of the world. And none of us sees it, because we must ignore it in order to live within our shallow system.

Moments later he had also thought, still smiling, I will be dead soon.