Anxiety

Through a muddled, murky lens, the image comes to him, rendered inch by inch (instead of pixel by pixel, block by block, somewhat annoyingly): a person - probably a man? hopefully - with gray hair, solid shoulders, good posture, and...

Well. Not the biggest smile anyone's ever seen. Not yet, anyway. It isn't a smile at all, because if it had been there would have been no competition, against Malos's nonexistent prior experiences.

Eventually, though, he comes to predict no end to Addam's smiles, on the good days.

It makes the bad ones all the worse; nihilism bites with twice the fury.