Giovanni was at peace. At peace until the day his chest began to hurt. “Oh my,” he said. “What an interesting sensation. It burns.” In his lab he ran calculations. He typed on his keyboard, the clack, clack, clack echoing flatly around him. “I see,” he said on the fifty-second day after he’d first felt the ache in his chest. He stared at the screen, checking his numbers. It was loneliness, pure and simple. Numbers never lied.
