They drove in silence for several moments.

'So really think about it now,' Thomas continued. 'Everything you live, everything you see and touch and hear and taste, everything you think, belongs to this little slice of mush, this little wedge in your brain called the thalamo-cortical system. For you, the road is as wide as a country road should be, the sky is as wide as can be. But in fact your visual connection to these things is smaller than the nail of your pinky. When I clutch your hand, your experience comes hundreds of milliseconds after the fact. And all the neural processing that makes these experiences possible—we're talking about the most complicated machinery in the known universe—is utterly invisible. This is where we stand in the Great Circuit that embraces us: out of sync, deceived, as fragile as cobwebs, entombed in a hardwired cage: powerless. This expansive, far-reaching experience of yours is nothing more than a mote, an inexplicable glow, hurtling through some impossible black. You're steering through a dream, Sam, through smoke and mirr—'

Suddenly they were slowing, veering onto the shoulder.

Gravel popped and crunched. Tall summer grasses whisked along the composite panels.

'Ooookay,' Sam said as she pressed the car into park, 'that was just a little too freaky.'

'You said you wanted to know how Neil thinks.'

'My brain may have said that,' she said, scowling. 'I'm not sure I meant a word of it.'

Thomas laughed.

She slumped back into her seat, raised a hand to her forehead. Sunlight flashed from her clear-coated fingernails. 'So all this—the highway, the trees, my pounding heart—is simply in my head?'

'Afraid so.'

'But… But doesn't that mean my head is also in my head?'

'Yep.'

Her eyes lost focus. 'None of this makes any sense.'

'Why should it? Why should we experience experience as it is? Given its complexity and consciousness's evolutionary youth, we should expect quite the opposite. As I said, we should expect experience to be profoundly deceptive. As far as nature is concerned, any old crap will do, so long as the resulting behaviors are effective.'

'And by "crap" you mean stuff like meaning and purpose and morality. You know, the crap crap.'

Thomas hitched his brows into pained arches, smiled. 'Well, it certainly explains why we humans are con-genitally puzzled about them. Think about it. Thousands of years, busting our nuts trying to figure out our souls, both social and personal, and we're just as baffled as ever. Exactly what you would expect… Exactly.'

He couldn't believe he was making these arguments again after so many years. The return of the college bull session. He could even feel that aura of uncertainty, that out-of-your-depth tingle that had made those days so sharp, so young.

And somehow he knew this was exactly what Neil wanted.