The Hopkins family are enjoying a picnic at a half-broken trestle table near the edge of a forest when nine-year old Ethan suddenly stands.
‘When I’m thirty-five, daddy will be dead,’ he says.
His sister’s powder blue eyes judder like a computer glitch.
‘Don’t say that!’ she screams.
Ethan is bemused by Cadi’s response, the jerky eye action, the drama. He only said it because he loves figuring out the math of all things. The math of people. The math of life. The math of death. There is only a one in three hundred trillion chance of being born. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine percent of a person’s body is empty space. If the age of the universe is a year, humans would only appear for the last twenty seconds. These are his favourite facts.
‘Men live until they’re
