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At the center of the screen is an acute triangle with a rounded bottom. Its shape resembles the pattern left by wipers on a dirty windshield, inverted. Before the device is activated it’s a gray blank and reminded me of the opening sentence of a novel I read more than forty years ago: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” -- the only thing I remember from William Gibson’s Neuromancer. This was my second echocardiogram in less than two weeks. The first detected “reduced systolic function,” though I remain asymptomatic. The second was performed using contrast. The technician puts transparent jelly on the left side of my chest and moves the transducer probe around until she gets a clean image. That picture replaces the “dead channel”: my pulsing heart. Seeing it is miraculous, a gift denied us for most of human history. I remembered the first time I saw an ultrasound performed, which was also the first time I saw my oldest son, in utero. The word…