When did they—ah, the day Osbie Feel was processing the Amanita mushrooms…. Fascinated, she stares at twenty minutes of herself in pre-Piscean fugue. What on earth did they use it for? The answer to that one’s in the can too, and it isn’t long before she finds it—Octopus Grigori in his tank, watching the Katje footage. Clip after clip: flickering screen and cutaways to Octopus G., staring—each with its typewritten date, showing the improvement in the creature’s conditioned reflex.

Spliced on at the end of all this, inexplicably, is what seems to be a screen test of Osbie Feel, of all people. There is a sound track. Osbie is improvising a scenario for a movie he’s written, entitled:

DOPER’S GREED

“We open with Nelson Eddy in the background, singing:

Doper’s greed,

Oh, doper’s greed!

It’s the most disgustin’ thing I ever seed!

When you’re out there feelin’ fine,

It’ll turn you into swine,

If you ever get a taste of DOPER’S GREED!

“Now into town ride two trail-weary cowboys, Basil Rathbone and S. Z. (‘Cuddles’) Sakall. At the entrance to town, barring their way, stands the Midget who played the lead in Freaks. The one with the German accent. He is the town sheriff. He is wearing an enormous gold star that nearly covers his chest. Rathbone and Sakall rein up, with uneasy smiles on their faces.

“RATHBONE: That can’t possibly be real, can it?

“SAKALL: Hoo, hoo! Of course that’s real, you wretched eddict, you vent ’n’ chewed too much o’ that veird cectus, beck down the trail. You should hev smucked that nice veed I had, I tuld you—

“RATHBONE (with his nervous Sickly Smile): Please—I don’t need a Jewish mother. I know what’s real, and what isn’t real.

“(The Midget, meanwhile, is posturing in different tough-hombre attitudes, and waving a brace of gigantic Colts about.)

“SAKALL: Vhen you been out on the trail—and you know vhich trail too, don’t you you sniveling punk—for as long as I have, you know ah real midget sheriff from ah hallucinated vun.

“RATHBONE: I hadn’t known either class existed. You must obviously have seen midget sheriffs all over this Territory, else you would hardly have invented the category. O-or would you? You know, you’re just dodgy enough to try anything.

“SAKALL: You forgot ‘You old rescal.’

“RATHBONE: You old rascal.

“They laugh, draw their guns, and exchange a few playful shots. The Midget is rushing back and forth, furious, emitting high-pitched German-accented Westernisms like ‘This town ain’t big enough for both of us!’

“SAKALL: Vell, ve’re both seeing him. That means he’s real.

“RATHBONE: Joint hallucination is not unknown in our world, podner.