There's nothing to build, I said. The world is going.

I know that, you replied. But there isn't anything we can do about it.

That's what I'm saying.

I looked at you looking at me. I heard that we were saying the same thing, though I didn't understand how it was possible for us to mean it so differently. Later that night I asked you to quit your job [...] But you wouldn't. You liked being an architect. You said it would make you happy to have added even one thing to a world now headed for total subtraction.