Inside every group, he decides, there are more groups. Circles within circles, and inside of those, more circles still, all of them infinitely divisible. You could spend your whole life wondering which ones you’re in and which ones you’re not and which ones really want you and which ones are holes that have no bottom.

The whole is contained in every single fragment, in every piece.

The soul abides, I tell her. Some aspect of you does. You’re like a thought. Or an idea. An echo. An echo in search of other echoes. You do not end here, on this planet, but then again, neither does the questioning. Neither does the doubt. The search for meaning, as unbearable as it sounds, might not end with our death.

I wasn’t at all comforted by that idea, by the possibility of multiple afterlives and a soul hungering through them for eternity.

She was a planet, way out in space, out of its orbit, and he was an unmanned spaceship, taking measurements of the atmosphere. She was not suitable for habitation.

Why we dare to assume a physical form and brave a world such as ours, so full of tragedy and fear and pain, murders and rapes, war, ceaseless brutality and conflict. We wouldn’t subject ourselves to this unless it was worth it, on some level.

You're not going to get weird on me, are you?""How exactly would I get weird on you?""I don't know, but the way you just said weird felt a little weird to me.

Inside every group, he decides, there are more groups. Circles within circles, and inside of those, more circles still, all of them infinitely divisible. You could spend your whole life wondering which ones you're in and which ones you're not and which ones really want you and which ones are holes that have no bottom.

Through the metal bars of the jungle gym, she watches two gray squirrels chase each other around a tree. Around and around and around. So gratuitous.

A random act of violence," his mother called it. "A totally senseless thing." Unnecessary qualifiers, he sometimes wants to tell her, as the universe is random and senseless place.