I was disposed to let events slide past me in frictionless silence. The day had been long and intense. I’d been taken for a robot, had my proposal of marriage accepted, volunteered for instant fatherhood, learned of self-destruction among one-quarter of Adam’s conspecifics, and witnessed the physical effects of moral revulsion. None of it impressed me now. What did were smaller things—the heaviness in my eyelids, my comfort in a half-pint of tea, in preference to a large Scotch.
