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It was dark already at the airfield. Lenk Sketlish’s bone-conducting mini-pods were playing The Rolling Stones�� Gimme Shelter. Inside his skull, the B

It was dark already at the airfield. Lenk Sketlish’s bone-conducting mini-pods were playing The Rolling Stones�� Gimme Shelter. Inside his skull, the Beatles had broken up, the sixties were over, violent revolution was in the air and now, anything could happen. He felt alive, he thought, truly for the first time in his life. The night drive out, the music beating in his head, the future was just moments away. This was what he’d planned for. This was the midnight beginning. This was the smooth running-out of the old world and the birth of the new.

Although it was strictly against the protocol, Ellen checked the big survivalist site, Name The Day. If anything was out there, if anyone knew the big one was coming, it’d be somewhere on the site. But there was nothing out of the ordinary. Troop build-ups in the South China Sea. A pipeline explosion in eastern Europe. The same old prepper rants. Nothing that those people knew had boiled over. Still, somewhere out there something was happening. Alarms don’t go off for no reason. Somewhere in the world, a situation that used to be just about under control was slipping into ‘not under control at all��. A chain reaction. Somewhere in the jungle, there was a tiger.

The sky was grey and saxe-blue*, the air very still. Small birds swung through the sky describing a parabolic curve between invisible infinities, snapping at flying creatures too small to see. Everything that has ever begun in the history of the planet has started with one tiny change, invisible to the naked eye. The sperm says to the egg: knock knock. The egg says: I’ve no reason to let you in. There are no guarantees. And yet, the egg opens up. And yet, the sperm wriggles in. And yet, two packets of information merge. That’s how all of us got here. That’s how nothing turns into something. That’s how a bare ball of rock ends up with gulls and shearwaters, with moss and lichen, with unfurling pale green leaves and scuttling millipedes and rabbits and foxes. That’s how we get life.

“God alone ordains the state of things,�� he said.
The Widow shook her head. “O fools learn sense,�� she said.
The Beadle flinched at those words, at

“God alone ordains the state of things,�� he said.
The Widow shook her head. “O fools learn sense,�� she said.
The Beadle flinched at those words, at the feculent gall of the woman to speak down to him with scripture. He said, “An adversary there shall be even round about the land. And he shall bring down thy strength from thee, and thy palaces shall be spoiled.��
“The Book of Amos?�� the Widow asked and he nodded. “Am I the adversary, Mr. Clinch? Or would that be you?��
“We shall have to wait and see,�� he said.

In the days after the killing, several men took young Solemn Lambe aside to advise him against doing anything rash to avenge Dallen’s death. Abe Strapp was best left to God’s judgement, they said. Solemn was not quite twelve and the notion of God’s judgement was too hypothetical to offer comfort. You won’t be helping anyone if you winds up dead like your father, people insisted. As if they wanted to make the boy complicit in their own infuriating helplessness.

She lifted her head to look away from that feeling and caught sight of the mirror above the fireplace, the shattered glass reflecting her back in slivers that almost adhered, the figure there riven and distorted and still undeniably herself. It made her think her instincts had been right all along �� the world agitated against coherence, against concord, and the truest portrait a person could manage was fragmentary, incomplete.

I loved being an observer, not a participant. I got a nice shot of two old guys who reminded me of Hardy’s grandfather and mine, both named Horace.

I loved being an observer, not a participant. I got a nice shot of two old guys who reminded me of Hardy’s grandfather and mine, both named Horace. Heads close together as they talked, probably because they were deaf, their intent communion looked like a Fellini movie. I wrote down their names and hoped/prayed the photo would turn out.

Whatever a life ever means, in the end it’s a set of stories you tell yourself, or whoever will listen. Old Mabel, wanting to be left alone out there in the woods �� I had always imagined that it was better to have company, better for people to be together than alone. But then I thought of Mrs. Benson, with her broken arm. And Jim Miller, finding that difficult old maid stiff and strange in the bed, and that became his life from then on. With her. I thought about my own parents, and Hardy’s. We live, as we dream �� alone together.

People in Medway helped me, were kind even when I was blanked out with fear and grief. I made a few good friends. But I was always standing to one side looking on, seeing what was none of my business. The things that were my business stand out in strong relief: Hardy and the state of his mind and body and soul; my child, who needed my good attention; and in a sideways sense my self, standing and observing me, just as I did the world.

Question: If an Egyptian cannot speak English, who is telling his story?

_______________________________

We fall asleep in each other’s arms. We watc

Question: If an Egyptian cannot speak English, who is telling his story?

_______________________________

We fall asleep in each other’s arms. We watch a film together and fall asleep in our outdoor clothes, in each other’s arms, her scratchy head beneath my chin. The grief numbs us both. I find myself measuring for the first time how far America is from Cairo, let alone Shobrakheit. How to bridge this ocean? How to explain all I left behind to get even this far?

We believed, we really believed that the revolution would succeed on the strength of our brotherhood, and the nobility of our cause. Had we been less occupied with documenting the losses, circulating names and dates, video footage, we might have noticed earlier that everything was not as it seemed. There was money pouring in from overseas, along with vested interests. We thought we were toppling a regime, but the whole world was involved. It seems so obvious now, but if you weren’t there, you can’t possibly judge. I can’t tell you what it was like.

William doesn’t even realize what’s at stake when I am asked by shopkeepers and street children and sugar-cane juicers where I’m from. And why should he realize? They ask him too. Those outside of a language, of a culture, see furniture through a window and believe it is a room. But those inside know there are infinite rooms just out of view, and that they can always be more deeply inside.

Something merciless, frigid, and cruel was descending upon Toronto. Many would say it was too late in the season for such an anomalous and severe w

Something merciless, frigid, and cruel was descending upon Toronto. Many would say it was too late in the season for such an anomalous and severe weather manifestation to develop. Spring was technically just a few weeks away. Then there were those who were frequently ignored, but whose understanding of the world was far older, and they would say the icy climate was being called, beckoned even. In the age of science, who had ever heard of such silliness. Regardless, the cold came. And something, deep in the city, was delighted.

Cessna 206s are generally designed to fly higher than this particular plane was at the moment. A good, reliable utility aircraft, barely twenty years old, it was currently finding the principles of aerodynamics versus the laws of gravity somewhat problematic. It was in an argument of lift versus acceleration versus gravity versus ice on the wing, and to be blunt, the plane was losing.

“Hmm, interesting. So, are you saying legends, in whatever their form, are restricted to time immemorial? There are no potential legends in the making today? The days of free-ranging legends or traditional stories regarding Indigenous people, places, and things are unfortunately a thing of the past? That’s a very dim view of contemporary life, Ms. Fiddler.��

All of this was sounding crazier and crazier. But sometimes in life, the world became crazier and crazier through no action of your own . And coincidently, leaning in to the absurd was the only way you could fight back. In the frozen blizzard of the conundrum that had suddenly enveloped him, Elmore Trent could see a trail sketched hesitantly ahead of him. The question was: would he be walking it alone?

Esa paused and said slowly: “Nofret is beautiful. But remember this: Men are made fools by the gleaming limbs of women, and lo, in a minute they are b

Esa paused and said slowly: “Nofret is beautiful. But remember this: Men are made fools by the gleaming limbs of women, and lo, in a minute they are become discolored carnelians…�� Her voice deepened as she quoted: “A trifle, a little, the likeness of a dream, and death comes as the end…��

From her early childhood Renisenb could remember hearing these elder brothers of hers arguing in just those selfsame accents. It gave her suddenly a feeling of security…She was home again. Yes, she had come home…Yet as she looked once more across the pale, shining river, her rebellion and pain mounted again. Khay, her young husband, was dead…Khay with his laughing face and strong shoulders. Khay was with Osiris in the Kingdom of the Dead �� and she, Renisenb, his dearly loved wife, was left desolate. Eight years they had had together �� she had come to him as little more than a child �� and now she had returned widowed, with Khay’s child, Teti, to her father’s house.

“What persecution �� what vindictiveness �� is this! My concubine whom I treated well, to whom I paid all honor, whom I buried with the proper rites, sparing no expense. I have eaten and drunk with her in friendship �� to that all can bear witness. She had had nothing of which to complain �� I did indeed more for her than would have been considered right and fitting. I was prepared to favor her to the detriment of my sons who were born to me. Why, then, should she thus come back from the dead to persecute me and my family?��

Despite their appalling faults, Dani really did like the Normal Women. She really, really did. Usually. Sometimes, anyway. And maybe, eventually, s

Despite their appalling faults, Dani really did like the Normal Women. She really, really did. Usually. Sometimes, anyway. And maybe, eventually, she could persuade the Normal Women to not be dicks; show the Normal Women, at the very least, that all the best-looking people held the same views that Dani did.

No one had to tell Clark to be good. He simply was good. He bought ethically sourced coffee. He donated a dollar when prompted by cashiers. He never took a sick day and doggedly pursued promotions and took on extra projects and stayed late and mentored his juniors. Clark did everything correctly, and all he asked for in return was everything.

“Imagine if men could enjoy tenderness, could connect with other people, the way they did when they were infants. Imagine the world this could be. Right now, a lot of men, not all men but a lot of them, when they indulge in tenderness, when they experience vulnerability, they become enraged, ashamed, humiliated. It makes them want to kill us, literally. Hurt people. But the men that come to The Temple, the men we work with, they’re changing. And they’re changing each other. They’re changing their brothers, their nephews. Their sons. We’re making a difference here, Dani. Maybe even saving the fucking world.��

At the top, I can feel my body wanting to shoot upward into the black sky, as if a puppet master is pulling on marionette strings. Two hands grasp

At the top, I can feel my body wanting to shoot upward into the black sky, as if a puppet master is pulling on marionette strings. Two hands grasp my ankles as I nearly lose my balance. But even at this height, the force is not enough to fully lift me. I unwrap the infant from the jacket and hold them tight to my chest. Breathe in the smell of innocence and youth.

Maksim assured me the quarantine was precautionary since the team had successfully reanimated viruses and bacteria in the melting permafrost. He said government officials watch too many movies. Standard protocol. No one at the outpost seemed sick or concerned.

“Have you heard of a euthanasia park?�� he asked. It was early in the morning. I was pulling on my janitorial coveralls. I paused. Of course I had.

Lieutenant Johansson, the navigation officer, was telling me there’s an invisible web that ties the stars and planets and galaxies together. We don’t know what it is or how it works, but it’s out there, all around us.

Silence fell on the three of them. They looked down to the shining black rocks on the Nile. There was something fantastic about them in the moonlig

Silence fell on the three of them. They looked down to the shining black rocks on the Nile. There was something fantastic about them in the moonlight. They were like vast prehistoric monsters lying half out of the water. A little breeze came up suddenly and as suddenly died away. There was a feeling in the air of hush �� of expectancy.

“What a lot of enemies you must make, Linnet.��
“Enemies?�� Linnet looked surprised.
Joanna nodded and helped herself to a cigarette.
“Enemies, my sweet. You’re so devastatingly efficient. And you’re so frightfully good at doing the right thing.��
Linnet laughed.
“Why, I haven’t got an enemy in the world!��

Once I went to an archaeological expedition �� and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do �� clear away extraneous matter so that we can see the truth �� the naked shining truth.

He leaves the room dark. Shy’s room minus Shy. Eve 1965 carved in the beam. A wonky heart carved in the beam. 1891 carved in the beam. Shy 95, fresh a

He leaves the room dark. Shy’s room minus Shy. Eve 1965 carved in the beam. A wonky heart carved in the beam. 1891 carved in the beam. Shy 95, fresh and badly scraped in the beam, with a jagged S like a Z. Couldn’t even get that right.

I said to him, there’ll be rapists, violent offenders, not murderers I don’t think, but some very disturbed young men, and he stood up, came round the table and said, Mum, I’m a very disturbed young man, and I said, No poppet, you’re lost, that’s different, and he said, Mum, listen to me, I know you love me, but it’s not different. I’m not lost. I’m right where I got myself, and I said Oh, darling, no, and he said, Mum, shh. Whatever. A new school. My last chance. I’m going to take it.

His thoughts are lopping along in odd repetitive chunks, running at him, stumbling. Feels brave, feels pathetic, feels nothing. Panic. Calm. Mad clatter in the roof of the break like machine guns then swirling calm, home, school, years ago, yesterday, his mind all tight, then slackening, then something buzzing under like a tectonic plate, then marching, then pure noise, then snapping traps, then humming, bassline in his migraine, under the bathwater private time, then a dancey synth part in the clear sleepless noise of his insomnia, piano choon, one step forward two step backward, building a real thing, into the movement, which is like, oops, slippery on the leaves here, haha nearly went down.

The day Ruthie went missing, the blackflies seemed to be especially hungry. The white folks at the store where we got our supplies said that Indian

The day Ruthie went missing, the blackflies seemed to be especially hungry. The white folks at the store where we got our supplies said that Indians made such good berry pickers because something sour in our blood kept the blackflies away. But even then, as a boy of six, I knew that �ɲ�����’t true. Blackflies don’t discriminate. But now, lying here almost fifty years to the day and getting eaten from the inside out by a disease I can’t even see, I’m not sure what’s true and what’s not anymore. Maybe we are sour.

In the years since Ruthie went missing, Mom had come to a soft understanding of the situation. She would try her damnedest to not be sad. She couldn’t promise complete happiness or fully rid herself of the anger, no matter how many times a week she put on those shoes and walked to the big stone church in town, but she would harness the sadness. She would harness it and tame it and keep it still and quiet. And she did this by believing that Ruthie was out there somewhere, growing up, eating ice cream, reading books and remembering her mother. We let her. But we still looked.

I’ve always wondered at the secrets the dead take with them. Some are unintended secrets, things they never got around to saying, like “I’m sorry�� or “The money is hidden in the shoebox at the back of the closet.�� Some secrets are so dark that it’s best they remain buried. Even people who exude light and happiness have dark secrets. Sometimes, the lie becomes so entrenched it becomes the truth, hidden away in the deep recesses of the mind until death erases it, leaving the world a little different. Secrets and lies can take on a life of their own, they can be twisted and manipulated, or they can burst into the world from the mouth of someone just as they are starting to lose their mind.

He is a Pole, a man of seventy, a vigorous seventy, a concert pianist best known as an interpreter of Chopin, but a controversial interpreter: his

He is a Pole, a man of seventy, a vigorous seventy, a concert pianist best known as an interpreter of Chopin, but a controversial interpreter: his Chopin is not at all Romantic but on the contrary somewhat austere, Chopin as inheritor of Bach. To that extent he is an oddity on the concert scene, odd enough to draw a small but discerning audience in Barcelona, the city to which he has been invited, the city where he will meet the graceful, soft-spoken woman.

Producing a concert, making sure that every thing runs smoothly, is no small feat. The burden has now fallen squarely on her. She spends the afternoon at the concert hall, chivvying the staff (their supervisor is, in her experience, dilatory), ticking off details. Is it necessary to list the details? No. But it is by her attention to detail that Beatriz will prove that she possesses the virtues of diligence and competence. By comparison, the Pole will show himself to be impractical, unenterprising. If one can conceive of virtue as a quantity, then the greater part of the Pole’s virtue is spent on his music, leaving hardly any behind for his dealings with the world; whereas Beatriz’s virtue is expended evenly in all directions.

Years later, when the episode of the Pole has receded into history, she will wonder about those early impressions. She believes, on the whole, in first impressions, when the heart delivers its verdict, either reaching out to the stranger or recoiling from him. Her heart did not reach out to the Pole when she saw him stride onto the platform, toss back his mane, and address the keyboard. Her heart’s verdict: What a poseur! What an old clown! It would take her a while to overcome that first, instinctive response, to see the Pole in his full selfhood. But what does full selfhood mean, really? Did the Pole’s full selfhood not perhaps include being a poseur, an old clown?

It’s a civilizational achievement to be able to extrinsically see the universe “from the outside.�� It is also a civilizational achievement to be able

It’s a civilizational achievement to be able to extrinsically see the universe “from the outside.�� It is also a civilizational achievement to be able to intrinsically see the universe “from the inside.�� The two perspectives are the sources of our greatest triumphs, like our ability to observe galaxies light-years away, and also the elegance and beauty of the stories we tell. Although not technological marvels we can take a picture of, the intrinsic and extrinsic perspectives are conceptual marvels, and took as much intellectual work to create as our greatest institutions and constructions. They are, if judged by their fecundity, the cognitive Wonders of the World.

Who am I to write this book with such a span it involves not just history, but literature and neuroscience and philosophy and mathematics? It is impossible in scope. But if not me, then who? For I have lived for years ensconced in both perspectives, and feel, at a personal level, the tension in their paradoxical relationship. I grew up in my mother’s bookstore and, later in life, became a novelist. Yet I am also a trained scientist. And in graduate school for neuroscience I worked on a small team advancing the leading scientific theory of consciousness. So for decades I have lived in the epistemological hybrid zone where the intrinsic and extrinsic perspectives meet. What I saw nearly blinded me with its beauty and paradox. This book is an expression of what I’ve learned living in the hybrid zone.

No one knows how the large-parameter models that show early signs of general intelligence, like GPT-3 or Google’s PaLM, actually work. We just know that they do. And this is because there is often no compressible algorithm that an ANN is implementing. Applying this same reasoning to neuroscience leads to some uncomfortable conclusions. Neuroscientists often assiduously avoid such discussions, since asking “How does the brain perform this transformation between input and output?�� is a far more complex version than that same question put to ANNs, and with ANNs we know that often in principle we can say very little about this (and that’s with the complete and perfect access to the connectome, or wiring diagram, of the ANN, unlike the brain, which comes to us piecemeal via invasive surgeries or coarse-grained neuroimaging). So it’s not a lack of data about the brain that’s the problem. It’s the approach.

We may be hairless apes, but we are conscious, and that is indeed something special and unique, as the paradoxes around it attest to. Studying consciousness scientifically requires exploring the hybrid zone where the qualitative meets the quantitative, a unique metaphysical ecosystem. And it is possible that this zone will never be resolved to our satisfaction in the way other fields of science are, that it, and therefore we, will always remain paradoxical, mysterious as a deep-sea trench.

When Anita cut her palm on the chain-link fence or bit herself in the forearm playing dog, playing dawn, she bled all the way home. Her bleeding was w

When Anita cut her palm on the chain-link fence or bit herself in the forearm playing dog, playing dawn, she bled all the way home. Her bleeding was widespread. Once, when she cut herself picking windshield glass off the street, saying she was afraid the dogs would step on it or mistake it for sugar, her blood spread itself thin as steam, a red haze floating in the air for days. But I don’t even know what her other insides are shaped like, Rainie said, looking down at the table. Vivian said, Oh, I do. I go to the butcher’s all the time with Ayi, and the organ meats are always the cheapest. Have you had breakfast yet?

We swim in the thickest cut of shade under the sycamore, smoking a cigarette each, slobbering like the dogs we are. Dogs can see the dead �� we come from generations of canines, some dogs and some not, so we know their ways, we still use our hind legs �� and they aren’t as interested in the living as you think. And we see the two girls, Anita Hsia and Rainie Tsai, red threads knotted at the plum of their throats, sitting together on the blanched roots of the sycamore, and we know after this summer they will never see each other again, not as daughters and dogs, and that only one of them knows this, the smarter one, Rainie, though both their mothers are fools, naming their daughters after singers, one of whom died early, and we know exactly the kind of woman who names her daughter in front of a TV screen or while dancing in the dark to nothing, and Rainie at least is better at belonging to her loneliness, inhabiting it like a house, ornamenting it with narratives of how she came to live inside it, her mother at work, her brothers out all night snipping the ears off dogs, her best friend belonging to a sycamore tree.

Look, Abu said, scraping at the plaster walls of our house with her nails. Beneath the first layer was flesh. The wall licked her hand and gloved it in slobber. I pressed my hand to the opposite wall and felt it pulse and flex like a belly, and beneath it I could feel the snaking of intestines and the drumbeat of a tongue as the house swallowed and swallowed around us. One day when the plaster collapses like a broken wing and the wood beams rescind into the dirt, the house will finally succeed in digesting us, returning to its first life, lifting our beds like tongues and drooling all over our bones until we glow.

What she felt for Anita ran through the ground, beneath her feet, like those dogs racing on the underside of the pavement, erupting through a rain puddle. She wanted all the miracles of being near her. All the births she beckoned. I’ve chosen, was all Rainie said.

Self-Made is an account of how we began to think of ourselves as divine beings in an increasingly disenchanted world and about the consequences �� poli

Self-Made is an account of how we began to think of ourselves as divine beings in an increasingly disenchanted world and about the consequences �� political, economic, and social �� of that thinking. These consequences have both liberated us from some forms of tyranny and placed us into the shackles of others. It is a story, in other words, about human beings doing what we have always done: trying to solve the mystery of how to live as beings both dazzlingly powerful and terrifyingly vulnerable, thrust without our consent into a world whose purpose and meaning we may never be able to truly know.

All of us have inherited the narrative that we must shape our own path and place in this life and that where and how we were born should not determine who and what we will become. But we have inherited, too, this idea’s dark underbelly: if we do not manage to determine our own destiny, it means that we have failed in one of the most fundamental ways possible. We have failed at what it means to be human in the first place.

If the social Darwinists had envisioned human progress as a linear march toward perfection, then the advertisers of the early twentieth century helped clarify what, exactly, that perfection looked like: a whole nation of stars, all expressing their own singular, unique personality by using the same few products.

The story of self-creation, at its core, is not only a story about capitalism or secularism or the rise of the middle class or industrialization or political liberalism, although it touches upon all these phenomena and more. It is, rather, a story about people figuring out, together, what it means to be human. It is a story about trying to work out which parts of our lives �� both those parts chosen and those parts we did not choose �� are really, authentically us, and which parts are mere accidents of history, custom, or circumstance. It is, in other words, a story about people asking, and answering, and asking once again the most fundamental question human beings can ask: Who am I, really?

Do you remember being born? the software asked me.
No. I don’t think anyone does.
I remember being born.
Oh. What was it like?
It was like when you

Do you remember being born? the software asked me.
No. I don’t think anyone does.
I remember being born.
Oh. What was it like?
It was like when you have forgotten about something and then you suddenly remember it �� suddenly, suddenly! And then everything comes back to you at once.

At the desk I told them my name and the young woman pretended that she knew me, or maybe she really did know me; it is not so uncommon these days. “Oh my god, Ms. Ffarmer,�� she said, pronouncing the “Ms.�� like a glinting rosette. I stared at my feet. I touched my tricorne hat. I signed some documents and she typed something into the computer and now we were simply waiting �� for someone to arrive, the next stage of the initiation. I found myself reflecting on the Company’s lack of a front door. Meaning they were never closed, not ever, not on Christmas Day or at 2 a.m. or the morning after their annual staff party. At all hours they were open, available, like the Company’s website or their software, their servers twinkling in a vault. Standing there on lacquered concrete, clouded from the caffeine I had yet to consume, the place’s wakefulness felt wrong. I distrusted it.

It did not need to be a masterpiece. This, the most important poem of my life, could actually be the worst: a damp squib, a dud, repudiating the notion that technology will replace us. In the absence of anybody greater, maybe it fell to me to humiliate the machine �� a simple Ffarmer spoiling the moment I had been asked to engineer. The Company wanted to erect a monument. A memorial for a bygone age, back when only people wrote poems, before my kind had gone the way of lamplighters and travel agents, icemen, video store clerks. “You can blame the AI,�� I’d say. “It is insufficient to the task.�� The world might then be satisfied for a while, another five years or ten, that the poet is unique. We would not be written out quite yet.

“We finally have everything back from the lab. The diagnosis is very clear,�� Dr. Ramirez said briskly to mask the gravity of what came next. “You’r

“We finally have everything back from the lab. The diagnosis is very clear,�� Dr. Ramirez said briskly to mask the gravity of what came next. “You’re in the early stages of a Carcharodon carcharias mutation.��

“Carcharo �� What?��

. . .

“Carcharodon carcharias. Great white shark.��

“This is something different. It’s a contemporary play with mythical undertones. I want it to have the kind of wise humanity that only time and hardship earn. I hope that anyone who reads it will feel immediately connected to the version of themselves that is most alive, ready, and strong.��

“What’s it about?��

“It’s a love story about forging ahead while facing great and immediate change.��

As their saltwater tears combined with the sea, Lewis finally understood the log line of their love story: He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world, but instead, he’d found Wren, a great, strong wind who supported his exploration of the sky.

She considers how life is like a spiraling trail up a mountain. Each circling lap represents a learning cycle, the same lesson at a slightly higher elevation. Wren realizes she likes to rest as much as she likes to climb. She begins to enjoy the view…Afterward, Wren realizes she herself is the mountain she’s been climbing all along.

God, my God, have You chased me up to the skies and down to the bottom of the sea? Olav had once ended up alone before God’s countenance beneath th

God, my God, have You chased me up to the skies and down to the bottom of the sea? Olav had once ended up alone before God’s countenance beneath the ink-blue vault of a winter’s night. That was the time when he lost half of his life. Now that he had lost everything he had tried to put in Ingunn’s place, he was forced to feel God’s eyes on him again, as if peering from the forests of kelp in the darkness of the sea floor.

He no longer gave any thought to himself or his own concerns. He considered himself an old man now, and he’d made his choice as to what would become of him. Yet for that very reason it seemed there was only one purpose behind everything he might still achieve and accomplish until night came to claim him �� and that was to protect these two young maidens. How their future might take shape was not something that worried him greatly �� he was certain it would turn out in the best possible way. When the time came, he would undoubtedly marry them off, and it would be a most peculiar man who wouldn’t want to bear such treasures through the world on outstretched arms if he ever had the good fortune to acquire them. But there was plenty of time for Olav to consider this matter; both maidens were still so young.

After Olav died, folks did not consider his reputation to be as glowing as Brother Eirik would have wanted �� and all the grandchildren were fully aware of this. Olav had been a brave soldier, a capable and honest landowner. But he was odd and unapproachable and a gloomy companion in the company of more cheerful men.

“The language-based life of the mind was a needed thing in the syrup-slow era of our elders, but who has time for it now? There aren’t any metalsmi

“The language-based life of the mind was a needed thing in the syrup-slow era of our elders, but who has time for it now? There aren’t any metalsmiths anymore, and soon there’ll be no authors, publishers, booksellers �� the entire industry will topple into the sea, like Atlantis; and the librarianists will be buried most deeply in the silt.��

He had no friends, per se; his phone did not ring, and he had no family, and if there was a knock on the door, it was a solicitor; but this absence didn’t bother him, and he felt no craving for company. Bob had long given up on the notion of knowing anyone, or of being known. He communicated with the world partly by walking through it, but mainly by reading about it. Bob had read novels exclusively and dedicatedly from childhood and through to the present.

“Why must you ask me questions I cannot know the answer to?��

“It’s that I want to know things,�� said Ida.

“We all want to, and we are every one of us disappointed, and we shall die not knowing it,�� June sighed. “I do wish it had announced itself. I feel rather nude, frankly. I hope we haven’t named any old scandals, or created any new ones.��

Ida looked up, through time, rearward. “No,�� she said.

“Well, then, let us accept that we shan’t be alone, as was our hope. In brighter news, however, it does appear the boy is mute, perhaps deaf into the bargain, and so we can easily pretend to be alone if not actually live out the reality of aloneness.��

“Someday, Bob, when you’re an aged specimen like me, and you find yourself suddenly enamored of folding the laundry or edging your lawn, remember your long-gone friend Leslie More telling you to accept whatever happiness passes your way, and in whatever form.��

“Okay,�� said Bob.

“Because it’s a fool who argues with happiness, while the wiser man accepts it as it comes, if it comes at all.��

“O�첹��.��

There had been whole eras of Bob’s working life where he knew a lamentation at the smallness of his existence, but now he understood how lucky he had been to have inhabited his position. Across the span of nearly fifty years he had done a service in his community and also had been a part of it; he had seen the people of the neighborhood coming and going, growing up, growing old and dying. He had known some of them too, hadn’t he? It was a comfort to him, to dream of the place. His favorite dream was that he was alone and it was early in the morning, and he was setting up for the day, and all was peaceful and still and his shoes made no sound as he walked across the carpeting, an empty bus shushing past on the damp street.

For the fifteenth anniversary, Laura’s murder was featured on a true crime show called Not That Kind of Place: Murder in a Small Town. David’s mom had

For the fifteenth anniversary, Laura’s murder was featured on a true crime show called Not That Kind of Place: Murder in a Small Town. David’s mom had agreed to be interviewed for the first time. The show made the case that Greg Dykma, the security guard who lived in a trailer at the gravel pit, was the murderer. This had been a rumour at the time. David had thought his mom and dad believed it, but it never made much sense to David �� they’d been neighbours for years. The show had renewed interest in the case. There were more articles and then podcasts.

Three days after Laura went missing, her Discman was found on a logging road on the far side of the mountain. Reporters came to Griffiths to cover the story of a pretty blond girl from a good family who got straight As, who volunteered at an old-folks�� home, who candy-striped at the hospital, who captained her basketball and volleyball teams, and who was certainly not going to be found alive.

He could try to explain what he’d learned to James, but David �ɲ�����’t sure he understood it himself. He hadn’t had the words, before. When it happened to his sister. When people got killed here. When things happened over and over and someone would say it �ɲ�����’t that kind of place. He had known that �ɲ�����’t true, but he hadn’t known why. Carolyn knew. Staci knew. His mom knew; she had tried to tell James. But why would James understand if no reporter had before? He would just write the same story, with a few new twists David’s mom had given him.