“Jake drowned his frustrations at the local bar, dousing his cowardice with beer…Jake watched the carbonation of his beer dead-end into a pillow of white foam. He mused on the lab work he and William had once done together for a class. Jake remembered how appreciative he’d been when William allowed him to spend most of the time at the microscope, investigating the samples. Jake loved getting lost in the intricacies of the specimens, finding compelling patterns, and escaping the largeness of the world. Even now, charting the golden bubbles in his beer calmed him, pulling focus from the despair gnawing inside. But the moment also forced Jake to realize that his attention to detail sometimes made him myopic and that Radenport saw a bigger picture from outside the microscope’s lens: a picture of himself—a man who wanted to increase the size of his world, not diminish it.”