trust math, never trust the father you can see — "Never trust the father you can…"

Possalthwaite weeping "Nothing's true" after his father welches on a promise, and Pemulis's consolation is a full retreat from the human channel into the one that "never fails you": math, whose truth is "deductive truth, independent of sense or emotionality." The advice is tender and it is also the sealed-world creed — when the people you're wired to trust turn out to transmit nothing dependable, fall back on the abstract, which asks nothing of anyone and answers the same forever. Comfort offered as the abandonment of contact: don't trust the father you can see, trust the syllogism you can't.