The hippocampus was one of several specific brain regions that had been very strongly stimulated by the treatment. This meant that his limbic system, spread under the hippocampus like a net under a walnut, was likewise stimulated, as if the nut were bouncing up and down on a trampoline of nerves, causing the trampoline to resonate or even to jangle. Thus Sax felt the start of what would no doubt be a flood of emotions— registering not any single emotion, he noted, but many at once and at nearly the same intensity, and free of any cause— joy, grief, love, hate, exhilaration, melancholy, hope, fear, generosity, jealousy— many of which of course did not match with their opposite or with most of the others present in him. The result of this overcrowded mix, for Sax at any rate, sitting on a bench outside the barrel vault, breathing hard, was a kind of adrenalized breath-stopping growth in his sensation of significance. A suffusion of meaning through everything— it was heartbreaking, or heart filling— as if oceans of clouds were stuffed in his chest, so that he could scarcely breathe— a kind of nostalgia to the nth power, a fullness, even bliss— pure sublimity— just sitting there, just the fact that they were alive! But all of it with a sharp edge of loss, with regret for lost time, with fear of death, fear of everything, grief for Michel, for John, for all of them really. This was so unlike Sax’s usual calm, steady, one might even say phlegmatic state, that he was almost incapacitated; he could not move well, and for several minutes he bitterly regretted ever initiating any such experiment as this. It was very foolish— idiotically foolhardy— no doubt everyone would hate him forever.

Stunned, nearly overwhelmed, he decided to try to walk, to see if that would clear his head. He found he could walk; push off the bench, stand, balance, walk, avoiding others who were wandering by in their own worlds, as oblivious to him as he was to them, everyone getting past each other like objects to be avoided. And then he was out in the open space of the Underhill environs, out in the chilly morning breeze, walking toward the salt pyramids, under a strangely blue sky.

He stopped and looked around— considered— grunted in surprise, came to a halt— could not walk. For all of a sudden he could remember everything.

• • •