I am in perfect health.

Old pipes tick as the heating goes off. A floorboard moves at eleven at night in a house where nothing whatsoever is wrong. Systems that are working make noise; total silence would be the unusual report.

Bodies do the same. A flutter, a twinge, a strange warmth under the ribs — and a mind trained to look for meaning reads each one as a bulletin. A great deal of it is not a bulletin at all. It is the ordinary sound of a great deal of machinery running correctly and unsupervised, as it has since before you could walk.