Page 131 of Under Story

Laurel drifts through the trance that precedes sleep. She sees boxes open out of boxes and a skull shaped like a cave. The cave is empty of water, empty of thought. Bone holds the skull open, as the basin holds the Arc. Without the Arc, the basin is dormant. Inanimate, the skull waits. The members of a playgroup stand around a parachute.

Then the tide changes. Water flows into the cave, and neutrinos fill the Arc. The parachute becomes a dome; a current sparks in the skull. From the soil issues something invisible but sensed: not a sight, not a sound—

It’s a scent.

“Gloria…?”

Laurel’s voice issues in a warble. When she opens her eyes, Gloria is several feet away, eating Cheez-Its and pretending not to hear.

“Gloria!”

“What,” says Gloria, flatly.

“Odor. Chemical messaging,” Laurel says. “Volatile signals in fungi and plants: that’s our analogy for consciousness.”

Chewing, Gloria turns. “But we don’t work on volatiles.”

All around them is a frothy, humming buzz: insects weave between flowers, and animals rustle through grass. Laurel pushes herself into a seated position.

“I know someone who does.”

—

There are things that pain Laurel about every age, too. One day, Silas can’t remember how to tie his shoes. Tantrums become more frequent. His mouth scrunches to the right when he registers some absence—that a cubbyhole of previously stored information is empty.

What saves her is his ignorance. Immaturing is natural here. Sometimes it seems that Silas is simply going deeper into his own consciousness—and into the world. He loses language, not observation. When he is three, they have the same conversations they did five years earlier, but the tenor is different.

“Tree?” he asks, on a walk.

“Tree,” says Laurel, confirming.

“Tree,” he says, observing.

There is a long pause. Silas steps toward the trunk.

“Tree,” says Silas. This time, he seems to speak to it directly.

He still loves puddles, music, hats. When Clare babysits, she puts on one of the new classical composers, something zippy with strings, and they dance.

IceCube hasn’t found strange oscillation patterns. To widen the search, they’ve partnered with another detector: the Super-Kamiokande in Japan.

“Why does that name sound familiar?” asks Laurel.

“Because it was pictured on the other Eli’s book cover. He’s worked with them,” Eli says. “It’s kind of like he led me here.”

The observatory—a steel tank larger than the Statue of Liberty—lies three thousand feet beneath Mount Ikeno. The tank is filled with water. Eleven thousand golden light bulbs line the walls. To make repairs, physicists row through the water in boats.

“When a neutrino collides with water,” Eli explains to Laurel, “it makes a flash. The human eye can’t see it. But these bulbs could catch a lit match from the moon.”

Super-K is even more sensitive than IceCube. It could be their last chance.

There are two tracks in Eli’s mind: the one that follows Laurel and Silas, and the one that searches madly for some crucial piece of data. He begins to stay up at night again. He and Laurel kiss less, touch less. Periodically he travels to Japan. Laurel doesn’t tell him she suspects that they won’t escape in time. She questions this choice constantly. But she also remembers how Eli responded when she shared her doubts before.

Most of all, she still wants there to be a chance she’s wrong.

Eli returns from his most recent trip dejected. The next morning, they bring Silas to the park.

“How do they live like this?” Eli asks, looking at other families.