The wonder reading came back at 31.
Orri is 38. He knows the sequence: 82 at 19, recording in the rented basement on Klauser Street, still startled at his own footsteps in quiet halls. 58 at 27, after the archive job but before the fellowship fell through. 44 last year. 31 now, in the small office on the third floor of the assessment building, the nurse's pen scratching against paper and the number appearing at the end of its decimal without ceremony.
The clinic asks for a concurrent behavioral log: one week, recording any moment he notices something that might have produced a wonder response. Biometrics where possible. He brought the notebook they gave him.
This evening on the fire escape, he watched a pigeon. He wrote: 8:14 PM. Pigeon on fire escape. Pulse 64. The pigeon blinked once and stepped sideways. He watched it for twenty minutes. He wrote: Nothing noted.
Below the fire escape, a crack in the concrete where something thin and pale has pushed through between sections. He knew that at nineteen he would have needed to know what it was. He would have gone down. He would have crouched and looked from very close, touched the edge of the crack with one finger, and written something in a notebook about the color, the effort represented by something pale breaking concrete. He sat on the fire escape and looked at it from above and tried to want to go down.
He put the notebook on the counter and lay down without changing his clothes. He counted his pulse out of habit: 67, slightly elevated; he wrote this down. He thought: 31. He watched the ceiling until the ceiling was just a ceiling again, and then he was asleep.