The old Dudi is still in there, alive and kicking. You won’t tell me what to do, Ima. You won’t tell my wife what to do

Nechami’s simulation is beautiful. It’s the perfect finishing touch to Dudi’s term paper. The atom’s nucleus has fifty-five protons. Seventy-eight neutrons. And fifty-five electrons flying around it on six different energy levels.

Dudi lifts his head from the screen and looks around him. Avital is sleeping, but even if she were awake, the toddler wouldn’t be capable of seeing the sublime magnificence of his term paper. At best, she’d embellish it with crayon scribbles.

Sometimes he feels like a tourist in the Swiss Alps, standing before mountain peaks and blue skies so beautiful it hurts, with no one to share it with — because all his companions are blind. You try to tell them about the incredible view, and you get blank stares for your efforts. What was that you said? Oh, an isotope? Oh, of course, fascinating.

“Come, show me,” Yaffa’le says, seeing his wistful look, putting her phone down on the table. “I’ll try to get excited. Really.” She puts her hand on her heart theatrically.

Dudi sighs. He’ll try. “How do you know that time passes?” he asks.

“I look at the clock, and I see the seconds ticking by.” Avital throws a pile of shirts onto the ironing board, and waits for the steam to rise.

“But how do the people who manufacture clocks know how to define a second? How does it happen that a second is the same on every clock?”

Yaffa’le scratches her neck pensively. “Mmmm, I dunno. There must be a standard for it, like the meter stick in that museum in Paris. Maybe there’s a world standard clock in a museum… somewhere in Switzerland, probably?”