Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose. 'They only seem like people because you can't access the processes that make them tick. So they become floating instigators, things that can only be tracked and predicted via your own neural systems. Our brains are exquisitely attuned to one another, to the point where everything you do or say triggers the same patterns of neuronal activity in my brain as in yours. They network by continually mirroring each other's processes. But since consciousness can't access these processes, we simply "get it".' Thomas hooked his lips in a mock smile. 'People seem like people for the same reason we seem to be free thinking, act-initiating selves.'

'Because our brains,' Mia said slowly, 'can't see what's going on inside themselves. Because they constantly confuse the middle for the beginning.'

Thomas nodded. 'Thus the illusion that we stand outside of the arrow of time. That we somehow transcend the statistical clockwork around us.' He watched his thumb trace the rim of his coffee cup, glanced back up at his Number One Neighbor. 'That we possess souls.'

Mia was no longer looking at him or through him or anywhere for that matter. He had fallen back in his chair, his hands poised between a gesture of warding and disgust. 'So all of this… this right here right now… is a kind of magic trick? A dream,'

Thomas stared down at his socked feet, cursed himself for wondering, once again, what Neil would say.

'Tommy? This isn't true, is it?'

'Neil certainly thinks so,' he replied without looking up. 'And no one knows the science like him.'

'It's just more reductive scientific bullshit,' Mia declared with an air of angry resolution. Like most Marxists, he possessed the unsettling ability to take abstractions personally. 'They can't even figure out what foods are fucking healthy.'

Thomas stared at him for a moment, fending the urge to argue, to press and pin. He could tell Mia it wasn't about what was more fundamental than what, but about which kinds of claims people could take seriously. He could remind him of Hiroshima, or any of the other horrors and wonders that so set science apart. He could remind him that other claim-making institutions, including those that reduced scientific fact to 'social constructs',

'Language games', or the work of Mammon, had no way of arbitrating any of their assertions.

Instead he asked, 'How's your coffee?'

'No you don't,' Mia exclaimed. 'I know that look—'

'Daddy! Daddy!' Frankie cried out from the living room.

Thomas turned to see his son come thumping into the kitchen.

'I found Sam's underwear!' he proudly declared. He waved Samantha's white panties over his head, panty-liner and all.

'Herr Doktor?' Mia drawled in mock astonishment.

Thomas snatched the panties from Frankie and stuffed them in his blazer pocket. He flashed Mia a grim smile.