Gerard looked at her with dull incomprehension, the look of a man jarred past the point of copying. 'But if it's all just in our heads, then… then…'

'Then what?' Atta asked.

'Then he's right, isn't he?'

Atta rubbed the back of her neck. 'Professor?'

Thomas looked away.

'I could use some help here, professor.'

'Neil's simply showing us facts,' Thomas said. 'When our brains fire in particular ways, we have so-called spiritual experiences. It's as straightforward as that.'

'You think he's right!' Gerard exclaimed. 'You actually agree wi—!'

'It's not Neil I'm agreeing with,' Thomas snapped. 'He's not tricking us, or pulling the wool over our eyes. He's simply showing us how it is. If you were Halasz, you wouldn't think, "Oh, that bastard is forcing me to do this." You wouldn't experience his manipulation as a compulsion, as something external you couldn't overcome. You—you!—would be like Cynthia Powski. You would want to do those… those things. Don't you see? That's what you would choose. Gladly. Freely—as freely as you've chosen to do anything in your life. No alien spinal taps hijacking your body as you sit back helpless, paralyzed. Just you, because it was your brain he mucked with, and your brain is all that you are.'

'Bullshit,' Gerard said, his face somehow pale and flushed at once. 'Total bullshit.'

Thomas shook his head. 'Everybody thinks they're the exception, don't they? Even after they're diagnosed with schizophrenia, or Alzheimer's. "If I can just concentrate hard enough," they say, "I can conquer this." Don't you see? Don't you see what he's showing us? There's no such thing as the "triumph of the human spirit". There's no such thing as a human spirit! All of them—Gyges, Powski, Halasz, Forrest—have bootstrapped their way to success, more success than any of us here could reasonably expect. That takes moxy, doesn't it? That takes a will to succeed—far more than you could muster, agent. So what makes you think you'd be the exception?'

'Now look, professor,' Atta said sharply. 'I've done some research on this. It's not the slam-dunk you make it sound like—'

'Research, Shelley? Then tell me, what's Neil's argument?'

She looked at him warily. 'That we're fundamentally biomechanical. That our choices are the result of physical processes over which we have no control, and so—' she shrugged—'aren't really choices.'

'Then tell me, what are the contrary arguments?'

'Well there's…' Atta paused, looking at once angered and uncertain.