Recent events have  made me think about my son, observe him closely.

Jamie speaks fluently and with great conviction, but his eyeballs slide left and right as if he is nervous about being overheard.

His family is like a fixed network. It may be activated any time. You just get a call that he is in town and needs some place to stay. Or he wants you to do something. (But he is not really in the network himself for his phone often goes to message.) The fixed structure of this network is obviously important to him. Like he needs his childhood room to stay just as it always was up in Klamath Falls.

I have sometimes watched him thinking, completely focussed on some object. He told me he tags a thinking session with the object he was looking at. It remains linked to that object and that’s how he recalls it.

I am very conscious that he can be hurt, has been hurt. I do not know all of what happened. I wish I knew more. He won’t talk about it. He just says: “You weren’t there for me”.

He tends to speak in declaratory statements. “A body is a complex machine needing care and maintenance. Most humans are too lazy and ignorant to provide it.”

Jamie describes instincts as “feral”, as part of our “wetware”. “Humans will be re-engineered one day.” He gives me that look again, checking for reaction.

 Jamie is quite cool and pragmatic about everyone he knows outside the family. He might describe someone as “smart”, which is about the only compliment I have heard him pay.

I am beginning to realise that Jamie is a very unusual man.