Days blended into one another in the empty house. Reuben walked the vacant rooms like a planet whose sun had gone nova, stuck in a cold, silent orbit of his own grief. He ignored the secure comms device vibrating with messages from Anna and Liam. He ignored the world. The dust settled upon his shoulders, a fitting pall. The System, for a change, was silent, its constant hum subdued, as though in respect for the breakdown of its operator.
He was downstairs in the basement, which he had always avoided—a realm of half-finished projects and abandoned diversions, the archaeological layer of a life before Oracle. On a workbench there was a model sailboat he and Miriam had started to build, its hull sanded but not painted, its sails still in plastic. The ghost of her intent, small face, concentr
