'I was explaining how the brain simply isn't equipped to keep track of itself, how it lacks the processing power, the evolutionary pedigree, so that even though it's remarkably proficient at modeling its external environments, the best it can do is scribble cartoons of itself.'

'Ah yes,' Thomas said. 'You mean the mind.'

'Exactly. The cartoon extraordinaire.'

'But it doesn't seem that way.'

'Of course not. It has to seem as deep as deep, as wide as wide, as sharp as sharp, simply because "deep", "wide",' and "sharp" are part of the cartoon. We can't step out of our minds and take a walk around them, like we can the brain.'

'Which is why,' Thomas cried with what he could only describe as drunken good humor, 'you'll never convince anyone that you're anything but crazy!'

'Who said anything about convincing anybody?'

'But then why do any of this?'

'Why?' Neil repeated. Once again, he began thumbing through Thomas's book. '"Our brains,"' he read aloud, '"are able to track their own prospective behavioral outputs, but are entirely blind to the deep processing that drives them. Rather than doing things because of this or that feed forward mechanism, we do them 'for reasons', which is to say, for desired outcomes. Causality is turned on its head for consciousness. Results and consequences—goals—become the engine of our actions because the neural correlates of consciousness have no access to the real neurophysiological movers and shakers down below."'

He popped the pages shut as though snapping at a fly. Thomas flinched. 'Purpose?' Neil said. 'Point? These things are ghosts, Goodbook, hard-wired hallucinations. They only seem real because we're riding the neural horse backward.'

Thomas snorted, equally amused and unimpressed. 'So then what's your illusory point? What does the cartoon called Neil think it's doing?'

These words seemed to catch Neil by surprise. For a heartbeat, he stared at Thomas with almost lunatic intensity, 'Neil,' he repeated, as though his name were some absurd Chinese expression. 'That cartoon no longer exists.'

Thomas would have shaken his head if he could. 'Then what does exist?'

'I've disconnected certain performance-inhibiting circuits,' Neil said with what seemed to be reluctance. 'What you folk-psychologists call anxiety, fear; all that bullshit. They're little more than memories to me now. But I've also shut down some of the more deceptive circuits as well. I now know, for instance, that I will utterly nothing. I'm no longer fooled into thinking that "I" do anything at all'

Thomas could only stare at his friend in wonder. Where did he find the balls to do the things he did?

'And I've gone deeper,' Neil continued. 'So much deeper.'

Pause.

'You see through the cartoon,' Thomas said. The words tingled on his tongue.