That bothered some engineers because discomfort was not a measurable quantity.
Evan never claimed it was.
What he would do instead was run the device again, usually under slightly different conditions, until whatever had bothered him became visible as a number.
A drift of two-tenths of a percent.
A response delay.
A thermal change that appeared only after the fourth cycle.
A pressure curve that looked technically acceptable until compared against the three units built before it.
Evan trusted instruments.
He simply did not worship them.
He believed every reading was a claim.
Claims required evidence.
That philosophy followed him home.
At thirty-nine, Evan was raising his fifteen-year-old daughter alone.
Sophie Ror was tall, quick-witted, and increasingly aware of all the things her father attempted not to worry about in front of her.
She could tell how a day had gone by the way he put his keys on the kitchen counter.
A soft placement meant normal.
A louder drop meant the plant had done something stupid.
If he kept the keys in his hand while standing in the kitchen for several seconds, Sophie knew he was calculating money.
There had been no single catastrophe in their household.
No dramatic foreclosure notice.
No medical disaster.
No month when all the lights suddenly went out.
Their life was held together by smaller mathematics.
Mortgage.
Insurance.
Utilities.
Groceries.
Sophie’s braces.
A water heater that failed in February.
A transmission in Evan’s nine-year-old Chevrolet that developed a groan every time he climbed Shiloh Road.
School fees.
Gas.
Prescription glasses.
The replacement laptop Sophie needed because the hinge on the old one finally snapped.
Evan did not consider them poor.
He owned a house.
He had stable employment.
He had health insurance.
There was food in the refrigerator.
He also knew the exact date every bill left his account.
He knew which two utilities could be paid three days late without a penalty.
He knew that the difference between a manageable month and a difficult one could be a tire, a dental appointment, or a furnace part.
And he knew December was the month that demanded money from every direction at once.
Sophie had never asked for much at Christmas.
That somehow made it harder.
That year she wanted a used digital drawing tablet she had found online for $190.
She showed it to Evan once, then immediately said she did not need it.