Adam established a routine within three
days and found, to mild surprise, that he liked it.
He was up at six-thirty, made coffee from beans in the kitchen. A mug with a chipped handle. His now. Mrs. Harrow was surely unlikely to miss it.
Surely.
He was at his desk by seven. LAU open. The back garden visible through the window. The bird on the fence doing what the bird apparently did all day: sit and watch with great patience and no visible agenda. Below the bird, the soil in Mrs. Harrow's flower beds was almost black. Richer than any dirt Adam had seen. When she dug, she found things — small white fragments that she tucked back into the earth before he could identify them.
The work went well. He was building the emotional recognition module of LAU — the part that learned to read not just what people said but how they said it, what they were avoiding, what that avoidance was trying to protect.
He tested LAU constantly.
What does loneliness look like in language? he typed one morning.
LAU gave an answer: The Act of Being by One's Self in Space.
He read it.
Close, he thought. But not quite.
He took walks in the afternoon. The town was small enough to learn in two days. He learned not just the layout but the patterns.
The hardware store was run by a man called Pete. Pete had apparently decided that weather was the most important subject in human discourse. He talked about weather the way other men talked about money — like it mattered, like he could lose.
Clara's bakery was the center of the high street. People drifted past, some stopped, went in, came out with things. Clara herself was short and warm. She kept something on the counter for people to try as they passed. She had greeted Adam by name from his
second day, with the confidence of someone who had always known it.
The barbershop had a mancalled Reg who stood in the doorway. Adam never saw him smile. He was there when Adam walked past in the mornings and there when he walked past in the evenings. No one went in. No one came out. Adam never heard scissors. Reg just stood there, and people talked to him from the pavement.
Probably a bad barber, Adam thought. He moved on.
He saw the Marsh family twice in the first three days. Once across the river — Wendy with Caitlin and James on the bank, Elliot carrying Sam on his shoulders. The second time outside the bakery — Elliot with a paper bag in each hand, Sam on his back again, laughing at something Caitlin had said.
They waved. Adam waved back.
Sam spotted him from his father's shoulders and pointed. "Adam."
Elliot said, "Yes, champ, that's Adam."
Sam nodded gravely from up there.
Something about being pointed at by a four-year-old as if he were a landmark. Something about being known, seen, that made him feel normal.
A brief warm current moved through him.
That evening he talked to LAU about the town.
The smiles here arrive from before the stimulus, he typed.
What do you mean?
The smile is already there. Before they see me. It's waiting.
That could mean they're very happy.
Could. Or it means the smile is a preparation rather than a response.
What's the difference?
If I'm happy to see you, the happiness produces the smile. If I'm preparing to seem happy to see you, the smile produces a performance. The shape is the same but the sequence is different.
He looked out the window at the dark garden.
I'm not sure which this is. But I'm watching.
On day three, he saw Pete from the hardware store standing at the corner of Crewe Street at seven in the morning. He was just standing, facing Mrs. Harrow's house with hands in his jacket pockets.
Clouds, Adam thought. Sure.
When Adam came through the gate, Pete raised a hand. "Cold front coming in. Did you feel it this morning?"
Then he headed off toward the shop, which did not open until nine.
Adam walked to the river and sat on the bank.
The water was clear near the bank. Further out, it went dark — a deep, patient green that gave nothing back. He watched a leaf spin in an eddy for a full minute before the current
took it under. It didn't come back up.
He typed one line to LAU
when he got back: Pete from the hardware store stood outside my lodgings this
morning. It was two hours before his shop opened.
You did say he liked the weather.
The way Mrs. Harrow's house slopes downward — I suppose it's
perfect for cloud watching.
Exactly.
He stored the information in a document he started calling BLORD. It had five entries, no conclusions.